Still hunting

This last weekend we headed down to Bakersfield for a family reunion at Josh's Uncle Pete's lakehouse. Noah had a blast. He got to play with a 3 month old golden retriever puppy, a full grown golden retriever, play in the lake, and even got to go on seadu with Josh. He also managed to fall on a bee and get stung right on the belly. Stupid bee if you ask me....doesn't know to move when a 25lb object comes flying at it, but whatever. He handled it really well and hardly cried at all. No allergic reactions or anything, so we're all good.

Let's see here....house hunting. Our offer that I mentioned on my last post was rejected. They tried, but couldn't get the price down low enough for us. I found a house yesterday that we were considering making an offer on, but after seeing it again we decided not to. There were enough things that we didn't like about it that I couldn't justify paying as much, or really anywhere near what the asking price was. So, back to the drawing board. Again.

Houses and Silverware

We've gone out several more times since my last post and looked at many many more houses. I think they're all starting to blend in together. I think Josh is burnt out, and I'm starting to get there too. I hate shopping in general, and this can be especially frustrating. Noah and I went out today with our Realtor, since at this point I know what Josh wants in a house, and for some reason he trusts me enough to find something for us to live in. We found something that we're considering making an offer on. I doubt it'll be accepted since we're really kinda low-balling, but it really comes down to the "how badly do they want to sell it?" question. So, we'll see.

Our Realtor is going out of town next week, so I think that'll give me a needed break before it's back to the daily grind of looking for a house.

Noah's so funny...when we get inside of a house, provided it's vacant, I let him go exploring around the house, as long as I can see him. He's so obsessive compulsive. He can't handle having doors open. I think it's because we keep the doors closed to the bathrooms and our bedroom in our apartment so that he's kind of contained in our living room/kitchen area, and his bedroom. This way it's not a huge deal if I'm not watching him every second 'cause there's really nothing he can get into. Because of this, I think he thinks that this is how it's supposed to be in all houses, and it's his nature to always do what needs to be done. He'll walk down the hallway shutting all the doors. If I go open one to look at a bedroom or something, he'll come up behind me to make sure it's closed again when I leave. He found a pantry door in one of the houses that wouldn't close right and he stayed there for several minutes trying to get it shut the whole way. He's definitely persistent. :)

He even unloads the dishwasher for me. Well, as much as he can. I take all the sharp knives out of it, and then he'll go back and forth from the dishwasher to the silverware drawers putting everything away while I'm doing something else in the kitchen. He's too short to see in the drawer, so he can't sort them out in the little organizer doo-hickey, so they end up in a big pile, but it still makes it easier for me. He even separates out the baking things like measuring spoons and measuring cups and puts them in the right drawer. Yesterday after he was all done with the silverware, he started handing me the dishes. So, we went with it- he got the dishes out, handed them to me, and I put them up in the cupboard. Makes it easier for me, and he loves to help. It's a win win. Win.

It's time for me to go do something else now. I'm not sure what, but I'm sure I'll find something. Maybe it's iced-coffee time....yes, that sounds good.

Adios!

No house for us...

Our offer was rejected. Oh well...back to square one. I think at least I will be going out with our Realtor to look at a couple houses tomorrow, so who knows, maybe we'll have better luck then.

We found one....now will we get it?

This has been all over my facebook the last few days, but just in case....

We looked at houses this last weekend and found one we both really like. It even has a yard for Noah to play in- a small one, but there's not exactly a large supply of big yards around here. Noah had the biggest grin on his face when he got to run around back there for a little bit. Anyways, we made an offer on it yesterday, and now we're just waiting to hear if the seller accepted it or not. They have three days from yesterday, so now we just have to wait. This is the longest three days ever. I'm trying not to think too much about it so that maybe the time will go by sooner. Or maybe they'll decide to be nice to us and let us know before 3 days. That's what I'm hoping for!

Another quick update

Everything about our house buying seems to be going better than I could have hoped for. Our Realtor called me back yesterday and we're going out this Saturday, unless we find something online we really love and want to see it sooner, to look at houses, and we're in the position to make an offer if there's something we really like. Also, our Realtor happens to know our mortgage lender guy and says that he'll be particularly easy to work with. Oh, and several of the houses we really want to see this weekend are well below our budget. Yay!

Some actual updates this time

We've got quite a few updates this time around. At least I don't feel like I'm writing about nothing. :)

Update #1- We found out we're expecting another little boy. Provided we don't change our minds when he decides to be born, we're planning on naming him William David Brahm. Hopefully next time we have a baby, it'll be a girl, 'cause I don't know if we can agree on another boys name. *grin* So, Noah will have a little brother to harass. Although, he's so easy-going that it might be the other way around depending on William's personality.

Update #2- We've found a church that it looks like we're going to stay at. Since we've been married (4 1/2 years) we haven't really been very involved in a church. It's pretty pathetic... We started out going to a church after we got married and moved to Gwinnett, GA, but then a bunch of stuff happened there and we ended up planting a new church with some of the people from the messed up one. Josh was pretty involved in that, but I wasn't really. We were there for a year before we moved to Fresno. After moving to CA, Josh's job requires him to be speaking at Catholic churches for the first three months of so of the year, and we're not Catholic, so that limited our church hunting. Then after that, I got pregnant with Noah and was pretty sick for about 4 months. Then.....we hunted for a little while and found New Covenant. We've been there for about a year and a half, but we never really got involved in anything except for Josh is on the band sometimes. We just decided recently that neither one of us are really growing there, so it's time to find somewhere else. So, now it looks looks like we're joining a small church plant, called Free Grace Church. After visiting there one week we already "know" more people there than we ever did at New Cov after being there for well over a year. I think it's something we'll both be able to get involved in pretty quickly. So, it's gonna be a little strange being involved in a church again, but it'll be good.

Update #3- We plan on starting to look for our first house in the next couple weeks. Our apartment lease is up November 30th, so until today I thought that our goal would be to close on a house around mid-November so we could have a couple weeks to get things painted and move in. I also knew that we might end up finding the perfect house a couple months early and need to break our lease, or possibly not find anything until January or so and have to go month-to-month on our rent. Today when I took our rent check over to the office I asked them what would happen in each of those situations. Turns out, because of when we originally signed our lease, we wouldn't get any penalties at all for breaking our lease early, we just have to give a written 30 day notice, and if we have to go month-to-month on our rent, it stays the same amount as it is now. It couldn't have worked out any better! So, it looks like whenever we find a house we like, we can go ahead and make an offer and not have to wait until November. That will especially be nice because it would be a lot easier to move before I'm 8 months pregnant. I've done that once and I don't really want to have to do that again. I know I can do it, it just makes the whole moving process more miserable than it already is. We've already been approved for the loan we want, and we contacted a Realtor today. I'm expecting a call this afternoon to talk to her about what we're looking for. That worked out really well too....turns out we know a Realtor, and didn't even know that's what she did until recently. Then today I get online and find out that she specializes in being a Buyers Agent, and in doing short sales, both of which are a plus. It all seems a little more real now that it's not necessarily months away from happening.

So, that's all of our updates. Adios!