Mutual Acceptance

Today was the day that we got the paperwork back from the sellers/broker. The papers are all signed and we are in mutual acceptance! The broker also uploaded it to a program that sends it to the lender. Now we just wait for the lender to approve the sale. This is very exciting. Our first step to owning our first house together is complete.

This Saturday we are planning to go to Home Depot's Seattle Garden Party in Issaquah. It sounds like a fun event, and we can also spend time in Home Depot getting ideas for our new house. After that we might be able to go to the house to take measurements. :) We also want to squeeze in time to go to a flooring store! At the end of the night I work my event job from 9pm-1am. On Sunday I work 12:30-6:00pm. Working everyday isn't really fun, but knowing we are buying a house and we can use any extra money to fix it up sounds awesome.

Next week will be great because it's a short week because we are going to Las Vegas!! Yay!! We will be there for 4 nights, 3 1/2 days. We arrive Thursday around 4pm and then leave Monday at 7am. I imagine it will be very busy there since it's Memorial Day weekend - one of the few 3 day weekends for working folk. Friday we have a Grand Canyon Tour and Saturday we have a Hoover Dam Tour. My grandparents down there own a comedy tour to those 2 places and this trip is my graduation present. I am finally using it 2 1/2 years later. I wish we could stay a little longer, but we are already having to take 2 days off from work. I will be posting pictures of our trip so stay tuned! :) We leave in 8 days! :)

Offer Accepted (Verbally)!!!!

Holy guacamole!!!! We found out today that they verbally accepted our offer. We hadn't heard from them at all since Tuesday and now it's Friday. The other broker went out of town on Thursday and Jeanne found out today around noon that our offer had been accepted. We are so excited!! It still has to get approved by the bank. We are confidential it will get approved because we are paying more than they had approved on a previous offer. When the broker gets back on town she is meeting with the sellers and getting us the written acceptance - paperwork and getting it to the seller's lender for approval.

The house is a 3 bedroom 1 bath (for now - wanting to make it a 1.75 bath) It's got a 2 car garage detached and it's about 1300 sq ft! :) The kitchen is a great size. It's a fixer upper definitely, but we are excited to make to work on it and make it nice. 

I will update later when there is more information.

Another Offer In - Waiting

We started the weekend off on Saturday going on another house tour. We actually found quite a bit of houses that met our requirements. We put an offer on the first house we looked at on Monday. It is a short sale, and according to the broker, the bank has approved the listing price (previous offers - financing fell through & decided not to move) and we were told the bank is very cooperative. It would be a 90 day close if our offer is accepted and everything works out.

On Tuesday we found out there was another offer on the house. Jeanne said the broker would give everyone until 5pm on Wednesday to submit their best offer, and the highest one gets picked. We revised our offer and submitted a higher one, and we are waiting to hear back on if ours was selected or not. If someone was higher, then we will just keep looking. I am not too worried because the market is giving us a better selection with the warmer weather. Although, we would be very happy not to have to keep putting offers on houses and doing bidding wars. It's an awesome house for a starter home, and we are just crossing our fingers. We will find out tomorrow what happened with our offer and then we can move forward one way or another. I'll post an update once we get an answer. 

Easter Weekend

Jeanne and Paul got married on Friday! It was nice to be apart of the whole event. Saturday we helped pack up the house and then I worked a few hours. We spent the evening at Darren & Doreen's and Lacy was there. Lacy and Darren will start omni drops next weekend and that got Jesse wanting to do it too. So we ordered him drops so he could get on the program. I started on Saturday! :)

The next day was Easter. We went to my mom's for brunch. Which was delicious as you can see. After that we went to see my sister at DSW since she had to work. We met Daniel over at the grandparents house and visited then ate dinner. James and Josh weren't there because they went to Colorado, but Amanda came with Madison. We found out that Amanda and James are having their second child! She is 6 weeks pregnant - due in December! How exciting for them! Madison is very excited to have a little brother/sister. We all went to Jeanne & Paul's new house for dessert and champagne to congratulate them on their new house and their marriage!

Busy Weekends, Weight loss, and S'more

I can't believe it's already mid-April! Tax day is today, but luckily we filed ours early February! :) Last weekend we were going to go to the Tulip Festival, but it's a drive, and we didn't want to be rushed since I worked Saturday evening. I also worked Sunday too! Busy busy! 11.5 hours worked on the weekend! I'm kind of glad that I only work 3 hours next weekend! :) 

We will be going to an Easter service on Saturday night with the VanderVort's. We have a huge day for Easter: brunch w/my mom, dinner with Jesse's grandparents, finished with a dessert celebration for Jeanne & Paul's wedding! They are getting married this Friday! 

I am also excited for tonight because I am meeting up with this lady I met last summer on a camping trip who did this weight loss program and now she is a consultant for them. She lost 81 pounds or so, so I know it works. So we will see what she says tonight! :) 

Also, some sad news. One of my mom's dogs, S'more, that she has had for 11 years died this morning around 1am. Apparently he went downhill fast the last few days and my mom told my sisters and I last night that he wasn't doing well. We didn't realize he would go so fast. I hope the best for my mom.

March 29-30th, 2014

Last week I said we got pre-approved. That was a wonderful weight lifted off of our shoulders. However, we looked at 16 houses on our house tour yesterday, and didn't really find anything we liked. The one house we liked from last week has now been foreclosed, so we just have to wait and see what is happening with that. We are assuming an investor bought it and plans to fix it enough to pass an inspection for someone else to buy. This is all speculation... so we will see what happens with that. Everything else we didn't really like. Most of the houses are 1.5 stories. The ceilings are way too short on the second floor, and that is where 1-2 of the bedrooms were. Jesse had to keep his head bent down to be up there. So for now, we will be patient and keep saving up our money. 

We found a Harry Potter closet/room!!

Jeanne and Paul are getting married in a few weeks! Their house closes on April 15th and they are getting married on April 18th. So congratulations to them!! 

Jesse is working at a different job site for the next 3 weeks. It's great for our savings because it's the swing shift, but his schedule is 4pm-12:30am. We won't actually be awake together (at home) except for the weekends. I plan to take this time to check things off my to-do list. Last week I started organizing my things. It's spring time, we might be moving soon, and I just want it organized! 

I start my new part time job this Thursday! I am excited and relieved that the first few shifts are only a few hours. 

I also got two cool cookbooks for cooking with cast iron. I tried the banana bread recipe this weekend! Yum!!

That's all there is for now.

Pre-Approved

That word, "pre-approved," is such a beautiful word. It just sounds so nice. 

Today.... we got pre-approved! We are so excited! We can now really be serious about buying a house since we have the go ahead by the lender!! I seriously can't sit still now that we got that wonderful e-mail. Tonight I know I will be on Pinterest pinning ideas for our future new house!

That is all for today. Just big and wonderful news! :)

More House Hunting

We did more house hunting. It really is exhausting, but we had a good time.

The previous owner of this house bought it for a rental and did not make a mortgage payment. Also had mold, house add-on's without a permit, and sewer problems in the yard (gas spewing through).

We went to this house and did not enter. We don't want it, but would love to know it's story!

Our niece Madison had lots of fun going with us to houses!

This house was our favorite! Hoping to put an offer on it!

We also had a wonderful time at Demara's 3 year old pajama breakfast birthday party!

Such a happy Demara!

We are still waiting to hear back on the pre-approval. It's already been three weeks, so we are hoping this process is almost done. 

March 21-23rd, 2014

I am looking forward to this weekend coming up. Tomorrow I start my weekend with a PTO day. I will do some cleaning and probably some shopping at Costco. We definitely need to buy Costco sized coffee with our household. 

Saturday morning we are going to Demara's 3 year old birthday party. Her parents are throwing her a pajama breakfast birthday party! :) How fun! After we go to the party we are going to meet up with Jeanne. Jeanne and Paul have an inspection because they found a house! It closes mid-April!! Jeanne is going to show us some houses. Some houses in Federal Way, some in the surrounding areas, and then some in Tacoma (have a different criteria). We are thinking we may just buy a house in Tacoma if it's decent and cheap. There are so many possibilities! So we are going to look at all kinds of houses to see what we would like to do.

Sunday we are going to church and having a relaxing day. Hopefully I will remember to take photos of houses we see and of Demara's party! :)

Housing Market

I was hoping to write some good news in the next few days, but there is none as of now. Tomorrow we hear back on the pre-approval so we are crossing our fingers for that. We also looked at a house on Thursday because it just came on the market. It was the only house in the area we qualify for and meet our 3-4 requirements. Our offer (full price + seller pay closing) was rejected because they accepted an offer that was significantly higher than asking price. That was frustrating for us. Why are people offering higher than the asking price as their first offer?! Now there is nothing for us on the market. :(