Many firsts have come and gone

Wow, it's been quite a long time since I've blogged. I guess would be a good time for a quick update.

1) B & I did finally purchase our first house! We closed escrow in November 2010. I don't have any pictures of the house right now (isn't that pathetic?). I'll be sure to get one uploaded... one of these days.

2) B & I also added a family member to our household. Meet Sheriff, our first...



dog! We got him from the local animal shelter as an early Christmas present to each other last year. He is a 4 year-old Golden Retriever and he is honestly the best dog ever! He is so sweet and loves attention, which prepares us for another first (not yet! But hoping for one).

3) We're also planning on going on our first vacation in a LONG time. Sure, we've taken weekends off here and there for local trips, but this will be our first REAL vacation since our honeymoon, which was... jeez. 2 1/2 years ago. Work has been super stressful lately, so this is just the break we need.

3 1/2? Haha) The reason for our vacation is we're treating it as a "Last hurrah" of sorts. One last time for us to enjoy ourselves before we start a family. So no, we're not pregnant yet, but maybe this vacation next week will lead to that? Who knows. We're just leaving it up to Mother Nature for now. So instead of a Babymoon, it'll be a Babymakingmoon? Ha. Very clever.

So that's it for the updates for now. It's a Friday night and I want to get as far away from my computer as possible. Looking forward to B's best friend's birthday celebration tomorrow. HOLLLAAAA weekend!

Back from our first hiatus

It's been a long time since I've updated (not like anyone is reading, anyway)... but a lot has been going on and to be honest, I just didn't feel like updating. In my last entry, I mentioned that we almost owned our first house. Well, if you look at the listing, you'll see that it's no longer active and the last sale was back in 2004. Put 2 and 2 together, and it's obvious that we lost the house. We opened escrow, didn't close in time, and then the banks (it was a short sale) decided to foreclose rather than sell the house to us. So we're back to square one. We actually packed up half of our stuff and were living out of boxes for 2 months or so, thinking that we'd be moving "any day now." Well, the boxes are still packed, but we've come to the conclusion that we won't be moving anytime soon. We got rid of our realtor (the 2nd one we've worked with), and are looking for houses exclusively through Redfin. Needless to say, we were a little pissed about the situation, but have gotten over it since. We're just starting out again, and have been to an open house and a few other showings to get our feet wet (again). Nothing good so far. Booo. And we might have to up our price range. Double boo.

In other news, I'm gearing up for a girls' weekend trip to this place:

Source.

E and I will be spending three fabulous nights in Vegas, just having fun and getting away from our oppressive husbands (kidding, of course). I'm looking forward to just zoning out by the pool, dancing my butt off, and eating about $1000 worth of crab legs. We'll see how everything plays out. The last time I had a girls' weekend in Vegas, this happened:


it's totally normal to not be able to stand up on my own, right?

So hopefully I won't enjoy myself as much so I can actually enjoy myself.

In other news, B and I have decided to put our baby-makin' plans on hold, just for a little while. Currently, I'm working at an amazing company, making great money, as a temp. I'm about halfway through my one-year contract and should know by the end of the year if I'll be hired on permanently or not. One of the temps in my department was recently made permanent, but another temp is currently on her third contract. SOOOOooooo... hopefully I'll have a job to come back to, and once that happens, we'll start "trying." Although if I find out in November/December about my job, I won't want to start trying until April at the earliest. But that's another story for another post.

Do you think it's a good idea to put your "plans" on hold based on a job? Is that the responsible thing to do right now (with the economy and all), or would you do something different?

Our first house... maybe?

Ok, so it's definitely more than "maybe," but it's still not 100%. Our loan is in the "final approval process" (whatever that means) and we're expected to close on May 26 (whatever that means... I still don't know what "being in escrow" really means). But of course, things aren't going super smoothly.

--our termite report says we should expect to do about $2k in repairs (it's a short sale, so the sellers aren't gonna do shit)
--there are leaks ALL OVER THE HOUSE. seriously. the hallway bathroom shower leaks, the laundry sink leaks, the sprinkler in front of the house leaks... leak leak leak.
--we have to borrow money from B's parents to get the house. it's a long story, but let's just say that the upfront costs are a lot more than we thought they would be
--the seller isn't moving out until memorial day weekend (saturday? sat & sun? all three days? not sure yet), so we might not be able to move in until the first weekend in june... which of course, is also when we're doing the 10k camp pendleton mud run and will be too exhausted afterwards to lift a finger, nevertheless move the entire contents of our 2-bedroom upstairs apartment into our new house
--there's no "for sale/sold" sign in front of the house (once again, short sale). although this isn't an "issue" per se, i'm just really bummed that we won't be able to pose in front of the thing with goofy smiles plastered onto our faces, while standing proudly in front of that sign. oh well. like my good friend E said, "there's always photoshop!"

There are GOOD things about this place, of course. #1 is WE CAN AFFORD IT. Not in a "Wow, we have buckets of money leftover after our mortgage is paid" afford-it, but in a "Yes, it's spaghetti special night at Haus of Pizza, time to splurge!" kind of afford-it. But I think we'll be looking forward to spending more nights in, eating out less (it can only help our pocketbooks and our waistlines), and just enjoying our homeownershipness. But we'll see how that all pans out after eating Top Ramen for the nth straight night.

Oh yeah, other good things about the house. There's copper plumbing (something B's dad has ALWAYS been singing praises for), a 2-car garage, a semi-decent neighborhood (in the lowest median price-range zip code for Fullerton, but who's counting?), nice hardwood floors, and 3 bedrooms for our family to grow into in the future. Near-future? Far-future? Who knows? Just... future, in general.

We were thinking about buying new locks this weekend so we'd be prepared when we move into the place, but then forgot if the front door locks had a deadbolt or not. I honestly can't remember. Oy. So I guess we'll do our lock-shopping after the final walkthrough.

And since all blog entries are boring without pictures, I'll include this one of our house:




Ahhh... it's our almost-first house.

What's the first thing we should do once we get the keys? Scrub the place clean? Change the locks? Christen every room?

Our first entry

Hello hello. So for our first "Our first ____" entry is titled "Our first entry." Yes, very original, I know. But a first is a first!

So we should be exactly one week out from our closing date. But from what I've read online and heard from other people, your closing date could change? So... we're not 100% sure when we're moving yet. Luckily, we're on a month-to-month with our apartment, and our apartment manager has already let us know he would just pro-rate the rent for June based on how many days we're still in the apartment. So if all goes according to plan, we hope to move on Memorial Day weekend. If not, then it'll be the first weekend in June, which is also the same weekend as my First Mud Run. So that's no good. I guess it's not really up to us; we're still waiting on the loan docs and to get a move out date for the seller (it's a short sale).

Now on to our first "first" of the blog: Our first home conflict. It's not really an argument or a battle, just one little thing (but yet, the first thing!) that we've disagreed on. B wants to put cabinet liners in our kitchen. I don't. As you can tell, this is a small conflict, but a conflict nonetheless. B "likes" liners and thinks it keeps things clean. I don't see the point of them and think that if there's going to be dirty stuff on the shelf, there will be dirty stuff on the liner-- hence, you'll have to wipe either surface down regularly. So why bother with buying, cutting, and applying the liner? Not to mention, liners look totally tacky.

Also, another minor conflict. B likes to put the drinking glasses mouth-side-down. I prefer to put them mouth-side-up. His argument? "To prevent the dust from getting in the glasses." What dust? We honestly go through all of our drinking glasses once a week. I don't think that enough dust (well, enough to "hurt" you) will accumulate in that short period of time. We don't put or plates and bowls open-end-down. Or our pots and pans. So I don't see the point in putting our glasses that way (especially since your mouth is directly touching these surfaces). So that will be another conflict we'll have to resolve in a couple of weeks.

We've already started to pack and feel "ahead of the game," but I'm pretty sure we'll still be frantic and feel rushed at the end of it. Our realtor suggested we do our final walkthrough this weekend, so we'll see what comes of that. The inspection and appraisal both came back with good news, and the termite report suggested we do about $2k in repairs. Not tooooooo bad, I guess. It could be a lot worse.