Yet Another Offer

We pulled the Walnut offer yesterday and placed an offer on the new one, Muirfield. It all happened really fast, but we didn't want to waste any time after getting news from our agent that afternoon.

Apparently, the understanding that there were no offers in on it was wrong - there were two. But they have been in long enough that the bank has done all of the work that they need to do regarding appraisals and paperwork involving the short sale. All the bank has to do now is pick an offer and they are expected to do that within the next 30 days. The listing agent was very forthcoming about the current offers in and told us what the highest one was, which meant we were able to put in the highest offer. Obviously, this means that the agent will be forthcoming with everyone else and so there is the chance of it turning into a bidding war, but we will decide how high we're willing to go if that happens.

We made the decision to go ahead and get the offer signed just a few hours later as one of the sellers is in Hawaii and it could take some extra time to get the offer signed before it can be sent to the bank. Hopefully the bank will wait to make the decision until after they have received our paperwork.

Now, we're just waiting again. We'll be notified when the sellers have signed our offer and when the offer has been received by the bank. I do like that we have a time frame for this one and we should know what's going to happen by Halloween. I just really hope that this one is it, because I'm going to be able to sign offers in my sleep if we end up doing this too much longer.

Quick Update

Since the offer on Walnut is basically down the drain, we are planning on pulling that offer sometime next week. We could just sit and wait to see if something happens, but we found another house today! I actually feel really good about this one and it (as of this morning) had no other offers in. We forgot to take pictures, but will be planning another tour for next week. We are planning on getting an offer in ASAP (it's the exact same list price as Walnut), so the 2nd tour may be after the offer is sent in. After feeling super frustrated about Walnut, this new house makes me feel re-energized about home buying. It could still take a while since it's yet another short sale, but I'm definitely prepared to wait for this home.

On another note, I had my vision checked yesterday and after going this long with no glasses or contacts, I'm now an official contact lens wearer. They are definitely taking some getting used to and I was ready to toss them and ask for glasses at the end of the day, but I'll give it a week. I go in next Friday, so if they are still bothering me then, we'll talk about switching to glasses.

Aiden had his first field trip yesterday. His class went to the fire station! I forgot the actual camera, but got some on my phone before my battery died - I just need to figure out how to get them off the phone and onto the computer. They're really cute!

That's it for the little update. I'll go into more detail on things later and hopefully have some pictures for you.

Aiden's Name

I really love Aiden's school. We're two weeks into the school year and he has learned to write his name. I didn't know this until earlier today when he was coloring and I happened to see that he was writing some letters. I asked him, "Can you write your name? A-I-D-E-N?". He happily said, "OK, mommy!" and quickly wrote it down. Here is our little guy's hand-written name:

Yes, the E has an extra little dash in there, but who's counting? As soon as he wrote it down, he handed it to me and said, "Here mommy, this is a present for you to keep forever". And you know what? It's going straight into his baby book to be kept forever. He's growing up so fast!

Walnut House Update

We received news on our house offer this morning.

After the sellers signed our offer to send it off to the bank, the bank informed them that they needed to choose just one offer to send in and not all three (yes, yet another offer has been put down on the house). They chose the first offer that was put in just before ours. Apparently just because the down payment was a little bigger. Ours is still considered a back-up offer, but it looks like we won't be the ones to get the house, unless the bank decides to pick ours randomly.

Not great news and I guess I was expecting something like this because I didn't get myself attached to this home like I did the last one. There's so much frustration surrounding this in general, I feel like I need to cry, but nothing's coming.

Between getting derailed by the layoff this past spring and having to deal with on-going bidding wars on every house we're interested in, house hunting is causing me more stress than I ever expected. We'll be choosing some more homes to view and will hopefully get back out there by this weekend.

Taking a Much Needed Break

For some reason, there's been a lot of stress running rampant around our home. Once it hits the boiling point with parents, the kids start reacting to it as well and then the stress level skyrockets even more. It's gotten to the point where I'm struggling to get to the end of each day without having cried multiple times or locked myself in my room for a few moments to keep from screaming at the top of my lungs. I've been frustrated that it seems like all I do is break up fights, clean up messes, go to work, come home for an hour with my husband, then go to bed and do it all over again.

The boys have been fighting non-stop and yesterday it all hit the fan. I was breaking up yet another fight when I happened to get in the way as Aiden was winding up to throw a Thomas the Tank Engine toy at Nathan. I was beaned with Bertie the Bus right in my eye. It hurt so much, I couldn't keep from crying in front of Aiden. I felt a little bad for doing that because he got very, very upset that he had made me cry, but maybe he needed to see it to understand that hitting someone with something actually hurts them. He kept apologizing for quite a while afterwards, so I think he got it. But my eye was swollen and turning purple....a great way to look while at work. I got a lot of the swelling to go down, but an hour or two later, while breaking up another fight, Nathan ended up head butting me right in the nose. We added some purple to the other eye! I was able to make-up myself fairly well before work, but people could still tell that I was slightly swollen around the eyes. I also had some trouble driving because my actual eyeballs hurt and I had some difficulty in adjusting my vision from near to far (a problem I do actually have since I'm farsighted, but it doesn't usually affect my driving). I'm still in some pain around the eyes today and had some issues getting my eyelids to open all the way when waking up this morning. Who knew being a parent was so darn dangerous??

So since I was about to snap and feeling like I wanted to run screaming from our home, John decided that it was a good idea to plan some no-kid time. Thank goodness for my husband....we will be completely separating ourselves from being parents tomorrow night as we leave the kids with John's parents, go out to a fun dinner (a jazz club downtown!!), and then we'll be staying the night at a hotel! I don't have to go home on our date night to a kid toy covered living room!! And maybe I'll actually get some decent sleep since our mattress really needs to be replaced and I haven't slept through the night in months. This is so needed, I'm getting a little teary eyed just thinking about it.

I love my children so much, but I will tell you that as a parent, we are not meant to spend every waking moment with our children. It will drive you insane. You cannot be a good parent if you're stressed and frustrated to the point where you just want to leave and not come back. Thank goodness for grandparents who love their grandchildren enough to keep them overnight so mommy and daddy don't go crazy! I'm looking forward to this more than I can say, not just to release myself of parenting duties for a while, but also to spend more than an hour with my husband. Hopefully this will prepare me for a heavy workweek for both of us - we won't see much of each other until next Friday evening.

Let's hope my next post will be coming from a fresh and re-energized perspective!

Back to School!

Aiden returned to school on Friday and oh boy, he was ever so excited! But the day didn't go quite as smooth as we were intending....

We were down to one car on Friday, due to the car that we have been borrowing needed to be worked on a bit. So John went off to work in the morning and then came back home around noon to pick us all up. The plan was for us to drive by his office so he could pick something up for his meeting, then I would drop him off at his meeting, and then take Aiden to school.
So we got to his office and he ran in to get whatever it was that he needed. But when he went in, he turned the car off. When he came back out, the car wouldn't start. One of his co-workers was attempting to help us jump start it, but it wasn't working. As they're trying to jump the car, Aiden keeps saying, "Come on! Let's get to school!". I knew that if he didn't get to school that day (something he'd been talking about for a good two weeks), we were going to have the meltdown of all meltdowns. I was scheduled to work that evening and thought that I'd better warn them that I might not make it, so I called to let them know what was happening. They sounded pretty stressed at the thought of me not coming in.

After about 15 minutes of attempting to jump start it, we got the car started. John called out of his meeting and we decided to drive Aiden to school, have John sit in the car with the engine running while I took Aiden in, and then we'd take it to Les Schwab. So Aiden got to school after all....thank goodness!! We took the car in to get the battery replaced, walked over to Fred Meyer and had a deli lunch while we waited. After getting the car back, I took John back to work and then picked up Aiden from school. He had such a great day and didn't want to leave! So it all worked out in the end (although John got in only about 3-4 hours of work that day) and I was even able to make it to work.

It was just the beginning to a hectic, tiring weekend (I'm including Monday in that as well....), but we are so happy to have Aiden back at school and he is enjoying himself even more than last year. Here's his first day back to school photo. I think he looks so happy and you can kind of tell in the picture that he wouldn't stand still! He picked out his own school outfit for the day. :^)

And the Wait Begins

We met with our real estate agent this morning and put an offer on the Walnut house. I don't have too much to say in addition to that, but it sounds like we won't have an answer from the bank for 6-8 weeks. Ick. But I am ready for this and I will somehow find the patience to deal with waiting for this home. If we're meant to have it, we will get it.

I was asked for pictures and while we forgot to take any while we were touring the house, I have taken a few from the real estate listing (copyright of the listing agent). The person who took the photos did a terrible job at capturing how open it actually feels, so the photos make it look a bit crowded. So, they just aren't the best pictures, but we are hoping to tour it one more time within the next week or two, so I will take some better pictures then. These will just have to do in the meantime. :^)

The backyard. We thought the size was great and very ready for some cute plants. There is a little area just off to the right where we could plant a small veggie garden.

This is the master bedroom. This picture basically just shows a window and where the bed goes without showing anything else. There is a master bathroom and a large closet, along with some extra space that isn't shown off the left.

This is the updated fireplace and living room, but of course, it cuts it off and makes it look super tiny. It's not the biggest living area anyway, but just fine for our family.

This is most of the kitchen. It has updated counter tops and backsplash. What you can't see around the pantry on the left is the additional counter space on the other side of the stove and the fridge (side by side doors!).

This is the dining area. Again, the picture totally cuts off the room and makes it look smaller than it is.

Once we tour again, I'll take some better pictures and actually show you the whole house. There weren't any pictures of the entry, the two smaller bedrooms, the bathrooms....pretty much most of the house wasn't photographed for the listing.

I guess that's it for now. Whenever we hear anything, I'll update. But for now, it's just time to wait.

An Update on Walnut House

We received an email from our agent this afternoon with some interesting news. Wouldn't you know that an offer was put in last night for the house we want? (I'll be referring to it as the Walnut House for future reference) But the listing agent said that if we were really going to be putting an offer in, he would wait to send any offers into the bank and would submit ours along with the other one to give us a fair chance. So that's nice of him and definitely appreciated.

We don't have information on what the other offer is at this time (hopefully we can find out before Saturday), so we will need to play with what our offer is going to include (closing costs, appliances, etc). Because this is a case of the owners losing their home to the bank, it's going to take a while. The listing agent expects "at least 45-60 days" to get an answer. So it looks like we're still going to be apartment dwellers for quite a while as we wait for this. Obviously, since it's going to be that long, we will continue to keep an eye out for homes that go on the market. Especially since there's no telling which offer will be accepted.

Ah, the stress of this is just amazing. And I just realized that if it takes 45-60 days to get an answer and our offer gets accepted, after the inspections and closing and all that, we would be moving right around Christmas. Oh yuck. But I will try to look on the bright side of all of this and continue to hope for great news as we move this along.

And the 4th time...?

We went on our 4th house hunting trip today and we found a townhouse that we really like. The price is great and it's on a cute little dead end street, so we wouldn't have a bunch of traffic going by. The neighborhood looked like it had a lot of younger kids and they were all out riding bikes, so we felt like it was pretty family friendly. It's in Hillsboro off of Brookwood and very close to John's work. It would put us a little bit further from Aiden's school, but not enough that it's a huge deal. The neighborhood was really well taken care of and while it was an interesting mix of "newer" (late 90s) and older (70s ranches), it never looked trashy or unsafe. It was all very quiet too.

It's a little over 1400 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, a very sizable back yard, and I love the kitchen. It's really just perfect for a starter home.

So we're taking a 2nd tour on Saturday to make sure there isn't anything that we missed during our tour today. Our agent is gathering the info on the listing tomorrow and we're going to make sure that there are no red flags with pricing or financing or anything.

I can't say that I'm not nervous. Since the last time we put an offer in on a place, John lost his job a week later, I'm having a hard time getting excited over this without worrying a ton about it. Thankfully though, John's work is going very well and they are looking to hire more people because of all the work they have, so I can pretty confidently say that he won't be laid off due to not enough work a week after we put in our offer.

We're so ready for a home and I really do hope everything goes smoothly with this. I'll keep updating as this progresses and let's hope for good news all along the way!

One Week to Go

I am so ready for Aiden to go back to school and I think he is too. I suppose I should be lucky that we didn't hit what I like to call the "summer wall" until two weeks before school is scheduled to start. We could have hit it halfway through the summer, but I think signing him up for three summer day camps at school over July and August helped us tremendously.
I just can't keep him occupied enough throughout the day. This is how I imagine John was like as a kid. I'm going to need to come up with some creative activities to get us through the last summer week.

I went to Aiden's school orientation last night and I definitely felt a lot more comfortable this year. I actually knew people and I felt more open to volunteering my time for things. Last year, as we were getting comfortable with the school, I just did the basics: parent helping in the class twice a month (you get a discount off the tuition), having a support job (every parent is required to do one or you have to "buy out" of it), and attending the annual auction. This year, I'm still parent helping since our discount is bigger due to increased tuition cost (Aiden is moving from twice a week to three times a week and adding an extra 15 minutes per school day), I'm planning on having my same support job (working with the school newsletter team editing, proofreading, and writing an occasional article), and I also indicated interest in working with the auction planning team for this year's auction or with the school development team in helping with general planning for fundraising. I'm excited to branch out a little!

So Aiden starts back next Friday and he has already been wearing his backpack around the apartment for a few days. He was supposed to start back next Wednesday, but they ended up with a big enough class that they wanted to split their start days up, so the teacher could spend a little more time getting to know each child. And because our last name begins with a letter after 'L', we got bumped to Friday. I'm sure waiting two days won't push us over the edge. :^)

The boys have been fighting non-stop and when they're not fighting, they're running around in circles screaming. I've tried all our usual little activities and they want nothing to do with them. Aiden decides to make his own activities sometimes....as I type, he has poured water on their kid table from IKEA and has made his own water table (there's a bit of a raised edge on their table so the water stays on instead of dripping directly to the floor). I'm thinking that maybe we'll make flubber today. I've got to do something with these crazy little boys!

The Third House Hunting Trip

So was the third time the charm? Not really. Things didn't go exactly as planned, but we did make some progress, so it wasn't all a bust. This might be a little boring for most people, but I need to get my thoughts about last night out somewhere.

First, we were a little late getting the kids over to the babysitters and we needed to put some gas in the car. Then we got stuck on 185th just before Johnson and couldn't figure out why traffic wasn't really moving. We were originally supposed to meet our agent at 6, but had called him to tell him we'd be there at 6:15 after we stopped for gas....we didn't make it until 6:30 due to traffic. We thought it was starting to be a little late for work traffic to be so bad, but didn't have an indication that it was due to anything else.
We finally made it to the first house where we were meeting and it was a nice size (great kitchen!). It was a little beat up due to the fact that they had dogs and cats that had definitely worn the place a bit. What was strange was that the owners stuck around while we looked....a little weird to look through someone's home while they're standing there watching you. Especially since it was being sold because they were losing it to the bank....awkward. They were very nice people, but we didn't feel like we could really say anything about the place until after we left.

We made our way to the next house and that took a full half an hour because Johnson was backed up worse than I've ever seen it. Turns out that a car hit a power pole on TV Highway and there were power lines laying across the highway, so it had been completely closed down and traffic was being diverted in all different directions. All the directions that we needed to be going in, of course. The place wasn't bad and right across from an elementary school (and about three blocks away from Hannah and Merrick's!), but we would have had to replace all the flooring (the fake hardwood floor was bubbling up all along the entry and it was just a terrible job in general - even our agent commented on what an awful job it was) and tear out a horrible pond that was taking up half the backyard, so John felt like it wasn't worth pursuing it.

We made it to the next place without a problem by taking back streets. This one was really cute and the location was great. The only problem is the listing price (it's a little confusing - they put a price range instead of a set asking price), so we're waiting to get some feedback about that from the listing agent.

Sadly, because of the traffic, we only had time for those three house out of our original seven. But we did make progress during our discussions in the car between homes. I think we're finally on the same level when it comes to what we're looking for right now. While I will admit that I'm not really that open to ranch style homes, I agreed to look at some. Maybe we will find one that I'm ok with, but John wants me to make sure that the concerns I have would actually be a problem and that I'm not just basing my worries off of the one that we briefly looked at before. And John finally agreed that he was basing a lot of his rejections off of the lot size. He wants land and while I would love a huge piece of property, we are not in the correct price range for that to be an attainable goal right now. We came to the agreement that buying a home that we feel good about in terms of it working with our family and it being a good investment with the goal of buying a larger home and lot years down the road after we've built up some equity is really where we are right now.

I think last night was a turning point in our house hunt and we will be much more effective in our search from now on. The house for us is out there and we will find it when the time is right.

And This is How My Day Started

I went into my children's room this morning to find the above disaster. I think we can attribute this to the fact that we took the side off of Nathan's crib. He is now able to roam free once he wakes up and can help Aiden in any sort of mess making that strikes their fancy. But what you can't see in this picture is the poop smeared in various places. Yes, the poop moment that happens to every parent decided to rear it's ugly head this morning. I'm pretty sure we've dealt with poop smearing moments before, but I've blocked them all out of my memory.

At first, Aiden started blaming it on Nathan and was pointing out all the places where the poo had ended up. Thanks, Aiden....that really doesn't help mommy emotionally at all. Then I asked him whose poo it was. "Well, it's my poop, mommy." Great. Then Aiden got upset because I screwed up his typical morning routine by making them both get immediately into the bath. They are used to being night bathers and it bothers Aiden if that changes.

For now, their bedroom door is locked and I will tackle it as soon as I have finished eating and feel adequately prepared. At least Aiden and Nathan are clean for now. It looks like bleach will be my best friend today.