What a week...

What a week...we have been on an emotional rollercoaster with this whole house buying situation. Here's the update since the last blog posting. Our counter offer on the house got accepted on Monday, and boy - were we excited! OK - I was excited and Brant was super nervous...par for the course for first time home buyers. We had the appraisal and inspection set up and were headed in the right direction. Here's the weird thing about the house we were buying - it has an unpermitted addition. The house is actually a 3/2, but since the added master bed and bath were unpermitted, the tax records only reflected it as a 2/1. The current owner purchased the house with the addition already in place, and never got it permitted. We figured if we wanted to get it permitted somewhere down the road, we would investigate. But the appraisal came back about $90K UNDER the agreed upon selling price, which once again threw our lives into disarray. Since we're going with an FHA loan, that means that the bank isn't going to loan us a penny over what the house is worth. And honestly, why would we want to buy a house for more than it is worth in the eyes of the bank? So our agent talked to the seller's agent, who talked to the seller, who was of course shocked at the appraisal. Our position was that they should consider dropping the price to make this work (of course, right?) because anyone they tried to sell this house to was going to have the same issues unless they were buying this house with cash. There was a lot of back and forth, and the bottom line is that the seller dropped us. They believe that they can get what they're asking for the house, and we weren't the ones who were willing to pay it, given what we'd learned in the past few days. So...back to the drawing board. We're disappointed, but there wasn't a thing we could do about this situation. There is another house out there for us, and we'll just keep on the hunt!

The good news is that we like the house we're renting. It's big enough, comfortable, cute and our neighbors are just the best. So it's not like we're living in some hell hole and can't wait to get out. Yes, the market is picking back up. And yes, there is the $8K tax credit incentive to buy a home before December 1st, but it's only August 2nd and getting into a rush isn't going to help anything!

Brant and I had tickets to see Jim Gaffigan, one of our favorite comedians, live on Friday night, so Ellie got to spend the weekend at Mimi's. I took her to the meeting spot in San Clemente (half way for both Mimi and us) on Thursday afternoon, and then she proceeded to throw up at the restaurant. I knew immediately this wasn't a fluke - she had the bug that was going around daycare. But, she was hysterical at the thought of giving up her weekend with Mimi and Papa, and Mimi said it was fine for her to come, throw up and all, so off she went. She was sick all night on Thursday, and had a low fever on Friday, but seems to have recovered just in time for us to get her back today! Poor Mimi had to clean up lots of throw up, but she didn't complain. And Brant and I got to go on our date night - the first one we've had in quite a while. It was a blast! When Brant and I first started dating, Friday nights consisted of a Digorno pizza and stand up comedy on Comedy Central. This unofficial date night continued until we had Ellie, so it was great to be able to go see one of our favorite comedians live! This is a one arm shot of us on our date - Brant is just trying to look tough...he's really having a great time! Ellie has a favorite Mother Goose nursery rhyme book that we read every night. We've been doing this for probably a month, and now she "reads" her favorite nursery rhymes to us! Here is one of her favorites...

It's Sunday morning and I'm enjoying a rare treat - drinking coffee and blogging in SILENCE! Brant went fishing with Billy this morning on Billy's kayak, and Ellie is still at Mimi's for a few more hours. I hope Brant and Billy have a great time, but honestly hope they don't show up with fish for me to cook for dinner! Have a great week everyone! I'll try to post more often...the weeks just go by so fast that it's the weekend again before we have a chance to take a deep breath!