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