Happy Palm Sunday! If you are anywhere in the state of Missouri then you get to enjoy the Sunday before Easter with about 9 inches of snow... I think this may be the latest snow storm I can remember. It is hard to believe only a week ago it was 80 degrees out. I'm really sick of having to ask Curt to shovel our driveway :). Anyway, I hope you enjoy the post. A lot of craziness has happened since our last meeting. Enjoy!
The last time we chatted Curt and I had finally found a house. We were going through the closing procedures to become first time homeowners. Everything was going pretty smoothly and we didn't have any real reason to worry. Let's take a step back into time to a week prior to last Friday. I'm sitting at work getting excited about the Happy Hour gathering a bunch of my friends were attending that evening along with us. I'm basically reading the menu in my head trying to figure out what to order. At about 3:30 PM I get a call from Curt saying our realtor, Karen, needs to see us immediately after work and it could not wait. Uh Oh............. So I'm going through all of the of the scenarios in my head as to why we need to have an emergency meeting with her. Everything has been going so well! We had our inspection and everything was already repaired, all of which were minor. I mean the seller lady even gave us a new garage door when all we asked for was a new wheel and bracket. She is the perfect seller! She is so easy to work with. How did we get so lucky? We cancel our plans and head over to our realtor's office right after work to find out the emergency. We go and sit in a conference room with our realtor who begins the conversation with informing us that something has come up with the house and she has not seen this in her 12 years of selling houses (and she sells a looot of houses) and it she was unable to sleep the night before over the discovery.. Great...... This is exactly how I want to start any meeting. When we signed our contract our realtor took the time to explain every single paragraph of the contract because she said we need to know exactly what we are signing. I remember her going over the section regarding title insurance/liens and her advising this is necessary but she has never had anything crazy come up.. Until now...... Apparently our lovely, fantastic seller avoided foreclosure two years back by restructuring her mortgage by including an approximately $16,000 lien on top of her mortgage to the house. Curt and I just sat there and really had no idea what this meant.. This means the seller legally can't sell this house with this lien secured to the house unless she pays it off. Well I can assure you that Curt nor I will be adding $16,000 to our mortgage due to this situation. Basically the seller had two weeks until the closing date to come up with $16,000, find a bank to make this loan an unsecured loan or she has to walk away because she can't close on the home.. Uh what? I asked our realtor how can the seller think she could sell a house with this extra lien/loan. The seller informed our realtor that she had "forgot" about the extra loan. Do people really forgot about an extra $16,000 they owe someone? I am not buying it.. Really? I wish I could "forget" about some of my student loans but the federal government will not ever let me forget them.. Ever..Here we are sitting here with a house secured and now we learn that we won't be able to get it?! I already had the place decorated! Uggggggh! In hindsight, when you ask someone to replace a wheel and bracket but instead they replace a whole garage door, a red flag should pop up about money management procedures..
We technically today are still under contract with the house until 03/29/2013. Our realtor is working tirelessly to somehow salvage the sale but she also is realistic in the changes of the sale happening. We are sadly back to square one in house hunting barring some bank/loan miracle which will have to be completed by Friday. When Curt and I walked out of the office two Fridays ago we tried to find a silver lining with this whole ordeal. We had to because everything was completely out of our control. This may be the most helpless feeling for me. The feeling that everything is spinning out of control and I can honestly do nothing. Anyway back to the silver lining. I had to come up with something positive to avoid a crazy Hannah epic meltdown. We decided three things about this ordeal. First, we decided that we would much rather know now about all of the problems while we still have an apartment until the end of May and haven't loaded up a U-Haul with all of our items. Second, we aren't in the seller's position and have to pay an extra $16,000 before you can do anything. Finally, we will find something better and it just wasn't meant to be. Divine intervention or something I suppose. I must pat Curt and I on our backs because we have really held it together better than I expected. It is now a story we tell and laugh. We figured if we can laugh at the situation then really it will get better. I'm a little stressed about not finding a place before our lease runs out (they already have our apartment rented) but people thus far as been so generous. So many people have offered us a place. It is really awesome to know we have some great family and friends. We will figure it out and everything will come together eventually. Our realtor assures us that we will never have this bad of a house buying experience again. I can only hope that is true. Plus now we have a story that can top anyone else's house buying experience. :)
Thanks for reading my post today. I'm hoping the next post will be bring happier/positive news on the house front. I hope everyone has a nice Easter holiday. If my Mom is reading this post, I can't wait for my Easter basket full of candy :)
H
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
A House Complete With Snow
This is where I normally start about how I suck big time at blogging on timely manner.. I know blogger world, I must do better. I can't let down the four readers who take time to read the blog.. Yeah, Yeah.. Moving on.. :)
First the big news from the Byrd household is that we finally BOUGHT A HOUSE!! Woot Woot! We looked and looked and looked at houses. I thought we would never find a house and our realtor (who is amazing) kept saying is all you need is one. I felt like I was playing the house lottery. Every week we would go and look at houses and womp, womp, wooomp, we wouldn't find a thing. Either the location or the house in general was not ideal. Our realtor emailed us and told us she found a house that was just listed and we should come and see it because she had a good feeling about it. We went and looked on a Friday night and bought it by Saturday night. The location is ideal for us. It is in a nice little subdivision, which backs up to a park, and is so close to both of our works (roughly 5 minutes for me and 2 for my husband. Growing up in a small town which was 30+ from everything I made it my goal to not spend my life in a vehicle going to and from work. We are dangerously close to Wal-Mart, which is not a plus because I can see my money leaving swiftly due to this. The house is a newer bi-level with a great kitchen, 3 bathrooms, storage and a really nice fenced in yard. Curt is so stoked about this because he wants a dog. I'm pretty sure we will move our stuff and then going immediately to the pound. I'm pretty excited about the whole transition. Yay for being a big kid now.. Does this mean I have to pay a mortgage? I withdraw my yay.. :)
Speaking of mortgages, holy smokes does stress come with buying a house. You see on TV that people buy a house and then take a photo in front of their "it sold" sign and then move on in their happy ways. They do not show you the details behind getting a mortgage and how can they be so happy to pay a down payment. Ahh!! I worked so hard to save that money and then I am going to hand it to an institution who literally is made up of money. It almost doesn't seem fair but I know it is how life works. Don't forget about insurance, inspections, appraisals, closing costs, walk through, property taxes and the dreaded moving. Curt and I did an excellent job of collecting a whole bunch of crap over the past few years. I'm pretty sure I have things that I haven't touched since my last move. Probably time to throw it out so I don't end up on hoarders. I know it will all be worth it in a month but it is getting there that may take a few years off of my life. I'm sure I won't need those years anyway. :)
So we know mortgages may take a few years off of my life but I'm pretty sure snow may take a few more years off of my life. Here in Missouri we were going along pretty smoothly in our winter with the happy Mother Nature. She was on our side and was glad to keep us without the headache of snow. We were forming a lifelong bond. She broke that bond on 02/21/2013. She decided that people in Missouri were horrible and had to make them pay for being centrally located citizens. She decided the only way to punish us was to drop 11 inches of snow on us in a matter of hours.. To make it worse, she decided to do it in the middle of the morning when we were at all work. Noooo, not when we were at home relaxing, watching Wheel of Fortune while Kristin and I root against Curt's contestant, drinking hot coco. We were all forced to drive home in the blizzard of 2013. If you have read my previous posts then you know how I am a safety freak. Insurance is a good fit for me because I know every possible way for someone to get injured. I'm pretty sure Curt hates this game we play.. For instance, take the idea of saving money. I'm a dedicated saver and want to stick with our budget every single month and Curt sometimes thinks it is okay to stray a bit. His reasoning is that you can't take it to the grave with you and money is made of trees.. I on the other hand inform him of all that could go wrong.. Our house could burn down, I could develop a rare kidney disease and have to stop work and we have medical bills, we would get pregnant with octuplets, a meteor could hit our car and I could become in a coma state due to his driving in the snow.. All reasonable expectations, right? Okay back to the snow.. As Curt picked me up from work while there was a blizzard outside he made a decision he will regret the rest of his life.. You see our new home was getting inspected this day and our realtor suggested he go and tag along during this process for a learning experience. This suggestion contemplated a nice sunny day, no a blizzard. Curt was headstrong on going to this inspection even though I was insistent we go immediately home before it got too bad. We went to the inspection for over an hour and watched the snow get worse and worse. Finally after so much grouching, we finally left. We got stuck so, so many times and had to get help and help other people. It took us about an hour to go maybe 2 miles. We got about a mile from our house and realized we couldn't make it up our hill to our apartment. We found a safe place to park and decided to walk up the hill. I will remind you that I am in dress clothes and at the last minute decided to bring my snow boots, which was the best move of the day. Curt and I proceeded to walk up this never ending hill with ice and snow nailing us in the face. We had a conversation that went something like me telling Curt that if we make it to our house then he will die from me strangling him and him advising me he regretted his decision and he made a bad decision. It is humorous now.....
Mother Nature decided to seek revenge again on us poor people of Missouri on 02/26/2013 with another 10 inches of snow.. Come on, like the first 10 inches wasn't enough! Luckily it decided to strike overnight so I didn't have to drive in it during the worst of it. The state of Missouri issued a no travel ban so most people stayed off of the roads and the plows were actually able to plow the snow quickly. My work let me off the whole day (a modern day miracle!) so I got an extra day off. I'm sure I will pay for this later but I'll take what I get for now. I thought Curt and I may end up in divorce during this day off though. About 8am the night before our satellite decided it would freeze up and stop working. Uhhh a day of us not being able to go anywhere and we don't have cable. This is a disaster waiting to happen. Luckily it came back on and we are still married. Ugh first world people's problems. We got up to go to work today and wouldn't you know, it was snowing. Not a light snow but a heavy, fast snow. Ahh!!! So I got ready to go to work the whole time stressed about the drive to work. Curt assured me we wouldn't die and we would be fine. He was somewhat right. The roads were very slick and we even did a 360 turn in the middle of our side road. Luckily, no one was coming and the person behind us gave us lots of room. After about a million heartbeats and Hail Mary's, we finally made it to work. Whew.. May as well call me a snow master.
As always, thanks for reading!
H
First the big news from the Byrd household is that we finally BOUGHT A HOUSE!! Woot Woot! We looked and looked and looked at houses. I thought we would never find a house and our realtor (who is amazing) kept saying is all you need is one. I felt like I was playing the house lottery. Every week we would go and look at houses and womp, womp, wooomp, we wouldn't find a thing. Either the location or the house in general was not ideal. Our realtor emailed us and told us she found a house that was just listed and we should come and see it because she had a good feeling about it. We went and looked on a Friday night and bought it by Saturday night. The location is ideal for us. It is in a nice little subdivision, which backs up to a park, and is so close to both of our works (roughly 5 minutes for me and 2 for my husband. Growing up in a small town which was 30+ from everything I made it my goal to not spend my life in a vehicle going to and from work. We are dangerously close to Wal-Mart, which is not a plus because I can see my money leaving swiftly due to this. The house is a newer bi-level with a great kitchen, 3 bathrooms, storage and a really nice fenced in yard. Curt is so stoked about this because he wants a dog. I'm pretty sure we will move our stuff and then going immediately to the pound. I'm pretty excited about the whole transition. Yay for being a big kid now.. Does this mean I have to pay a mortgage? I withdraw my yay.. :)
Speaking of mortgages, holy smokes does stress come with buying a house. You see on TV that people buy a house and then take a photo in front of their "it sold" sign and then move on in their happy ways. They do not show you the details behind getting a mortgage and how can they be so happy to pay a down payment. Ahh!! I worked so hard to save that money and then I am going to hand it to an institution who literally is made up of money. It almost doesn't seem fair but I know it is how life works. Don't forget about insurance, inspections, appraisals, closing costs, walk through, property taxes and the dreaded moving. Curt and I did an excellent job of collecting a whole bunch of crap over the past few years. I'm pretty sure I have things that I haven't touched since my last move. Probably time to throw it out so I don't end up on hoarders. I know it will all be worth it in a month but it is getting there that may take a few years off of my life. I'm sure I won't need those years anyway. :)
So we know mortgages may take a few years off of my life but I'm pretty sure snow may take a few more years off of my life. Here in Missouri we were going along pretty smoothly in our winter with the happy Mother Nature. She was on our side and was glad to keep us without the headache of snow. We were forming a lifelong bond. She broke that bond on 02/21/2013. She decided that people in Missouri were horrible and had to make them pay for being centrally located citizens. She decided the only way to punish us was to drop 11 inches of snow on us in a matter of hours.. To make it worse, she decided to do it in the middle of the morning when we were at all work. Noooo, not when we were at home relaxing, watching Wheel of Fortune while Kristin and I root against Curt's contestant, drinking hot coco. We were all forced to drive home in the blizzard of 2013. If you have read my previous posts then you know how I am a safety freak. Insurance is a good fit for me because I know every possible way for someone to get injured. I'm pretty sure Curt hates this game we play.. For instance, take the idea of saving money. I'm a dedicated saver and want to stick with our budget every single month and Curt sometimes thinks it is okay to stray a bit. His reasoning is that you can't take it to the grave with you and money is made of trees.. I on the other hand inform him of all that could go wrong.. Our house could burn down, I could develop a rare kidney disease and have to stop work and we have medical bills, we would get pregnant with octuplets, a meteor could hit our car and I could become in a coma state due to his driving in the snow.. All reasonable expectations, right? Okay back to the snow.. As Curt picked me up from work while there was a blizzard outside he made a decision he will regret the rest of his life.. You see our new home was getting inspected this day and our realtor suggested he go and tag along during this process for a learning experience. This suggestion contemplated a nice sunny day, no a blizzard. Curt was headstrong on going to this inspection even though I was insistent we go immediately home before it got too bad. We went to the inspection for over an hour and watched the snow get worse and worse. Finally after so much grouching, we finally left. We got stuck so, so many times and had to get help and help other people. It took us about an hour to go maybe 2 miles. We got about a mile from our house and realized we couldn't make it up our hill to our apartment. We found a safe place to park and decided to walk up the hill. I will remind you that I am in dress clothes and at the last minute decided to bring my snow boots, which was the best move of the day. Curt and I proceeded to walk up this never ending hill with ice and snow nailing us in the face. We had a conversation that went something like me telling Curt that if we make it to our house then he will die from me strangling him and him advising me he regretted his decision and he made a bad decision. It is humorous now.....
Mother Nature decided to seek revenge again on us poor people of Missouri on 02/26/2013 with another 10 inches of snow.. Come on, like the first 10 inches wasn't enough! Luckily it decided to strike overnight so I didn't have to drive in it during the worst of it. The state of Missouri issued a no travel ban so most people stayed off of the roads and the plows were actually able to plow the snow quickly. My work let me off the whole day (a modern day miracle!) so I got an extra day off. I'm sure I will pay for this later but I'll take what I get for now. I thought Curt and I may end up in divorce during this day off though. About 8am the night before our satellite decided it would freeze up and stop working. Uhhh a day of us not being able to go anywhere and we don't have cable. This is a disaster waiting to happen. Luckily it came back on and we are still married. Ugh first world people's problems. We got up to go to work today and wouldn't you know, it was snowing. Not a light snow but a heavy, fast snow. Ahh!!! So I got ready to go to work the whole time stressed about the drive to work. Curt assured me we wouldn't die and we would be fine. He was somewhat right. The roads were very slick and we even did a 360 turn in the middle of our side road. Luckily, no one was coming and the person behind us gave us lots of room. After about a million heartbeats and Hail Mary's, we finally made it to work. Whew.. May as well call me a snow master.
As always, thanks for reading!
H
Sunday, January 13, 2013
2013
Hello 2013. I hope everyone had a nice holiday season. It seems like they take forever to get here and then zip by as fast as a mongoose. Curt and I finally took our Christmas Tree down so the holiday season is officially over for us. I hope you enjoy this blog post. Happy Sunday!
For the first time in my working career I was going to get 12 days off from work. Thank you Christmas for landing on a Tuesday. Curt also was going to have the same days off as me. We weren't going to make any plans and just go with the flow. I was pretty excited for this vacation. Curt kept calling it our break but I had to remind him we weren't getting a Christmas break from school but a vacation. I'm pretty sure if my work gave me a Christmas vacation then I would be a much more productive worker. Anyway, Christmas came and throughout the day I noticed that I had a small sore throat but didn't think much about it. I woke up the next day without it so I thought I was magically cured. This was just a small joke my immune system was playing on me. It is like when you have the stomach flu and you empty your stomach once and think you just ate too much and you are fine because you feel so amazing and then about five minutes later you figure out that you are definitely NOT okay. I was feeling better until that evening when my sickness hit me like a tsunami wave. The amount of sneezes that came out of my body was unbelievable. I spent the rest of my vacation laying in bed trying to figure out how I could possibly manufacture so much snot in my head and why my body hated me so much. I had no idea people everywhere were sick so I guess the one good thing is that I got the sickness out of the way and I watched about 3 seasons of Gossip Girl... I told Curt that if I ever feel like that again then he should take me out back and end it.. He laughed and thought I was joking..... I was... kind of...
Since it is a new year I should join the millions of other people who make resolutions. Of course I should I should eat healthier, go the gym more and of course lose weight. I did go to the gym four days in the last week, which is better than my two months gym attendance combined.. Oops. Curt Byrd refuses to eat healthy at home. I really have no idea why he is 100% against having a somewhat healthy diet but he is. Pick your battles I guess. I'm trying to eat a healthy two meals before I come home to eat fried animals with Curt. My new idea is to eat cereal for breakfast with fruit. Thus far it is working well but who knows how long it will last. My only other resolution was to help more in the kitchen. I am not a fan at all of cooking. If I had to cook for myself everyday then I would live in PB&J and hot dogs and I wouldn't complain. Unfortunately Curt hates both. I'm hoping this year I will be a little better than a helpless duck in the kitchen. Who knows, we may come to your house and show up with a plate full of baked pizza rolls. :)
Curt and I have been having an ongoing debate over online dating. No, no we are not divorcing or in an open relationship. We have been debating whether or not we would get matched together randomly by a website. I keep joking that we would sign up for the free trail the website are advertising now for Valentine's Day. I think we would get matched together but Curt does not think we would get matched together. He would probably hope to get a nicer girl. I think it would be interesting to be a single girl on a website for dating. It would be like window shopping for men. Hello that would be fun! Fun until you actually have to go on a date. There would be no way I would want to go back to the dating world. Hello I am well past my prime. Besides, I usually like my husband. For all of the irritations we have with each other, we still have a special connection. I realized a couple of weeks ago that we really did have a special connection when I made a smart butt comment and he laughed really hard and no one else got it. This means we have to stay together because no one else thinks I am funny. :)
Thanks for reading my post today. Hopefully it wasn't too boring. Enjoy the rest of your day and stay away from germs.
H
For the first time in my working career I was going to get 12 days off from work. Thank you Christmas for landing on a Tuesday. Curt also was going to have the same days off as me. We weren't going to make any plans and just go with the flow. I was pretty excited for this vacation. Curt kept calling it our break but I had to remind him we weren't getting a Christmas break from school but a vacation. I'm pretty sure if my work gave me a Christmas vacation then I would be a much more productive worker. Anyway, Christmas came and throughout the day I noticed that I had a small sore throat but didn't think much about it. I woke up the next day without it so I thought I was magically cured. This was just a small joke my immune system was playing on me. It is like when you have the stomach flu and you empty your stomach once and think you just ate too much and you are fine because you feel so amazing and then about five minutes later you figure out that you are definitely NOT okay. I was feeling better until that evening when my sickness hit me like a tsunami wave. The amount of sneezes that came out of my body was unbelievable. I spent the rest of my vacation laying in bed trying to figure out how I could possibly manufacture so much snot in my head and why my body hated me so much. I had no idea people everywhere were sick so I guess the one good thing is that I got the sickness out of the way and I watched about 3 seasons of Gossip Girl... I told Curt that if I ever feel like that again then he should take me out back and end it.. He laughed and thought I was joking..... I was... kind of...
Since it is a new year I should join the millions of other people who make resolutions. Of course I should I should eat healthier, go the gym more and of course lose weight. I did go to the gym four days in the last week, which is better than my two months gym attendance combined.. Oops. Curt Byrd refuses to eat healthy at home. I really have no idea why he is 100% against having a somewhat healthy diet but he is. Pick your battles I guess. I'm trying to eat a healthy two meals before I come home to eat fried animals with Curt. My new idea is to eat cereal for breakfast with fruit. Thus far it is working well but who knows how long it will last. My only other resolution was to help more in the kitchen. I am not a fan at all of cooking. If I had to cook for myself everyday then I would live in PB&J and hot dogs and I wouldn't complain. Unfortunately Curt hates both. I'm hoping this year I will be a little better than a helpless duck in the kitchen. Who knows, we may come to your house and show up with a plate full of baked pizza rolls. :)
Curt and I have been having an ongoing debate over online dating. No, no we are not divorcing or in an open relationship. We have been debating whether or not we would get matched together randomly by a website. I keep joking that we would sign up for the free trail the website are advertising now for Valentine's Day. I think we would get matched together but Curt does not think we would get matched together. He would probably hope to get a nicer girl. I think it would be interesting to be a single girl on a website for dating. It would be like window shopping for men. Hello that would be fun! Fun until you actually have to go on a date. There would be no way I would want to go back to the dating world. Hello I am well past my prime. Besides, I usually like my husband. For all of the irritations we have with each other, we still have a special connection. I realized a couple of weeks ago that we really did have a special connection when I made a smart butt comment and he laughed really hard and no one else got it. This means we have to stay together because no one else thinks I am funny. :)
Thanks for reading my post today. Hopefully it wasn't too boring. Enjoy the rest of your day and stay away from germs.
H
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