OH WOW

Ok, so it's a REALLY good thing that we got a house when we did. Remember how crammed that apartment was? Well....imagine it with tons of BABY stuff! Yes, we found out in the middle of March (and coincidentally, in the middle of the first couple weeks of house-training the puppy), that Sarah is pregnant! A little bit of a surprise, but one that we are VERY happy about. Here is a picture of Sarah as she is showing now. The baby is due November 7th!!!

Now That We're Here....

So it was a REALLY good thing that we got a house when we did. We never got a husky (kinda expensive) but we did get a wonderful collie mix dog from the animal shelter (which is for free). He's a great dog, very smart and playful without being too hyper.

Fixing Up The House

In all honesty, the house did not need much fixing up. It was beautiful right when we moved in. Besides adding furniture and putting up pictures, the only thing we did when we moved in was paint our bedroom. Here is a picture of it. We love the color.
Now we just need to get a bookcase and some nicer pillow cases and blankets....but one thing at a time

Moving Day

So it took us all of one night to be ready to move. We packed like crazy on Friday night and were ready to go on Saturday. We made some calls and got some awesome church people to help, Sarah's parents helped, and my mom came over to help with lunch.
Our movers were totally awesome. Sarah and I took one load with a truck in the morning. Then we met up with four of our friends and their big trucks and got everything in one trip. The apartment was empty, Sarah and I cried leaving our first home (not really cried, but.....), and we moved in. Josh Soble stayed extra long to put away books and hang up my dress clothes. It was an exciting day. So we are in. Here is a sweet picture of the house!!

Closing is Next

Wow. Closing time came quickly here. We took work off Friday to go to our closing meeting. This is the meeting where we lose all our money... oh well, I guess we get a house out of the deal. :) So, the meeting was very good. We met with our lawyer for over an hour to go over all this legal stuff that is pretty complicated. Our lawyer, from Kruk and Cambell did very well. After learning about all that legal stuff, we got to the big time. We gave away all the money we'd been saving for our whole life and they gave us keys. It was totally sweet. As soon as we got the keys, we went over to see our new house. It was the coolest thing. While this meeting was quite complicated, Sarah and I were totally excited. We'll let you know how moving went.

The Mortgage

Next we had to meet with a Mortgage Consultant. The person we met with was named Mary Ann Chanler who works for a company called Mortgage IT. This was very helpful because mortgages are CONFUSING. She answered all of our questions and helped us find the best interest rate that we could. We brought some of our bank statements, pay stubs, and tax returns so that she could give the bank all the necessary information so they could approve our loan. She also gave us a worst-case scenario of what our closing costs would be. It was a very good thing that she did this, because we realized that we would probably have to make a smaller down payment than we thought. Finally, once we felt we understood things as best as we could, we signed an application for a mortgage. Now that all the information has been submitted, we need to wait for it to be processed. From what Mary Shelsby has told us, not much will happen from here on out, until we close. But don't worry, we'll keep you updated with anything that comes up.

The Inspection

Sorry that it has been awhile since we've posted. It has been a busy week for us. On Monday it was our 6 month anniversary so we went out to dinner. On Tuesday we had our engineer's inspection of the house and it went fantasically. On Wednesday we called around for mortgage rates and picked up our car (it broke down on Tuesday night). On Thursday, it was Sarah's brother's birthday, so we had to ride out to see him.

Now back to Tuesday's inspection. The house is in fabulous shape. Our inspector (named Adam Backus) from the company Pillar to Post gave us a ton of information about the house (18 pages of printouts to be exact) and took us through the house, showing us the things he noted, good and bad (there was nothing bad really).

We are very fortunate because the house is older, but it has been very well cared for. The next step was for us to respond to what Adam told us and finalize the deal with the sellers. We sent our request and came to an agreement with the sellers (they are wonderful people by the way).