Home sweet home

So we are now in our new home, YEAH!!! I had every intention of spending the night of the 23rd in the house, since we closed that morning. But the weather did no cooperate, and i hardly had anything in the house that day. I managed to get most of the PODS unit unloaded on Christmas Eve, and even went back to the house to sleep in my own bed for the first time in 3 months. Then Gina called and sounded upset that I wasn't at her parents house to spend X-mas Eve with her, so I drove sleepy, which was probably worse than if I had been drunk. But eventually we finally slept in our own bed and got everything moved in to the house. It is still a work in progress, but livable and awesome. At some point we will have a get together for everyone to check it out.

On the pregnancy side of things, Gina wasn't allowed to lift a finger during the move and is now just about 8 weeks away from her due date. We think we have a name picked out, but I am wavering and lobbying for a different name. Since she is carrying our child, Gina gets final say. With the craziness of the holidays and the move, I haven't had a chance to upload the latest belly pics, or even take any the past week, so i will prioritize that this weekend and have another post.

Almost there ...

So 11 weeks to go as of yesterday. I took a baby bump picture last week and then never posted it. It was the same day as the latest ultrasound too. At that point she was about 2lbs, according to the weekly e-mail updates we receive from a baby website. Anyway, here they are:



We are also now 16 days away from closing on our new house. And we can't wait, even though we will be moving in on Christmas Eve. The seller is re-locating to Seattle and her company is paying for the move, and that is the earliest the corporate movers could do it. It will be nice to open that present early!

25 Weeks

Here is Gina at 25 weeks. I didn't note that she was at 19 weeks in the previous photo. I am going to try and do better to take these more often.


Yes, we are trying to get the animals used to having the baby around.

A house?

I have been putting off updating the blog because the house hunt has been so stressful. I took new baby bump pictures last week and have yet to even load them on the computer, but I do plan on taking care of that tonight.

So here is what has happened in the last 6 weeks:
We made an offer on a house, it was countered, and ridiculously so, we just walked away. Come to find out it was a good thing b/c we know one of the neighbors and after the fact they told us about flooding issues.
We made an offer on another house, they waited until the deadline and then stalled, then countered our offer. We find out the next day that they were waiting on a second bidder to make an offer, which they took, and angered me to no end. Then last week, the house I first posted about back in September that was our old house on steroids, we finally put an offer in on it. The family was afraid of being in our current position and asked if they could have an extra day to review and look at houses for themself. We gladly agreed b/c we loved the house. Well Saturday they called and said they wouldn't be forced to make a decision and were going to take as much time as they liked to review our offer. At this point, we just said sure, but warned them that we were going to start looking at other houses.
The next day we met with our agent at noon and at 1:30 found the perfect home. The couple that stalled planned to meet with their agent at 2pm to make a counter offer. We called and told them that wouldn't be necessary. And today offer #5 was accepted. The steroid house shouldn't have stalled b/c now they lost a sale, but in the end it seems to have worked out for us. I just hope I haven't jinxed us with this post.
This should be our new house, once we complete an inspection and all that other good stuff.

As promised ...

One baby bump picture, with more to come.

GIRL!!!!

So we went on Friday morning and had the ultra-sound and luckily the baby was cooperative and we could tell almost immediately that she is a girl. Now we really have to start thinking about names and we are already struggling and having nightmares about not being able to choose a name.

I did take a picture of the baby bump too, but unfortunately I can not find the cable to upload the images to the computer. And it didn't even dawn on me to take the memory card out and just put that into the laptop and upload the images. So I will try that tonight and hopefully have that up for everyone to see.

Baby bump

So I am in danger of failing in my first duty as a father, I have yet to take any pictures of the baby bump. But that is going to change this week. Our appointment to find out the gender is Friday morning, so I will promise to post an ultrasound picture and a baby bump picture this weekend.

Time to breathe

We officially moved out of our first home on Sunday and in with the in-laws. I can't tell you how nice it was to sleep in an actual bed for the first time in a week. I rented a PODS container and had most of the furniture out of the house last weekend, including the beds, so I was sleeping on a matress pad. I was staying at the house alone, so I didn't need too much in the way of furniture. I kept out one chair, my tv, and a desk I used as the tv stand. I am glad it is all over for now. I may change my mind, depending on how long it takes us to find a new home, but I think I will be paying someone to unload the PODS.

We are taking our time with the home search now and being extremely picky about what houses we even look at. Last Friday we found a great house, one I describe as our old house on steroids. The owners blew out the back wall of the house and added a breakfast room and great room. Of course, as nice as it is, the price is steep and the square footage is way too much. Yet we still really want it. If the market keeps going this way, we may just make a ridiculous offer to see if they would take it. Until then, we will keep looking.

Housing update

Wow, what a crazy 2 weeks it has been since the last post. The appraisal on our current house did not go as well as we had hoped, so we ended up having to re-work the contract. That was no easy task and at one point I called the sale off, at which point the buyers made some concessions and the deal was re-written and finalized. So on Friday we close on the sale of our house. As for our home search, we had a house, but the inspection was a nightmare. The amount of things wrong with the house was staggering, and many of them were major items. At that point we just voided the contract, not even bothering to submit a repair list. Now we are without a new house, so everything is being packed into a POD and we are moving in with the in-laws.

Hurdles

So we have a contract on our current house, scheduled to close on the 26th. And as of Saturday morning, we have a contract on a new house, also scheduled to close on the 26th. Now, all we have to do is clear a few hurdles. The first of which we should know about today. An appraiser came out to our house on Friday and we are supposed to find out the number today. Not only were we able to sell our house rather quickly, about 6 weeks, but we also sold it for a higher price than many of the comps in teh area, thus the concern about the appraisal value. If it doesn't meet the sales price, we could lose the sale. Once we get that number, and hopefully it meets or exceeds, we can then start the inspection and appraisal process on our new home. I am so ready for this to be over.

Poof ...

The offer we put in on the house was rejected and countered. The people actually countered back at $12K over their list price. Read that sentence again because I promise you it is correct. We are extremely disappointed, as we really thought we would be able to work something out on that house. Last night was very difficult to sleep after hearing the news from our agent. We are trying to figure out what to do next now. We had a list of favorites but aren't quite sure which one is right for us.

Like lightning

Alright, so immediately after my last posting I received a call from our realtor telling us that we had received an offer on our house. Now this was Friday morning, which is important. After work, he came over and we met with him to discuss the offer, and at 8pm we decided to accept the offer. It is important to note that the offer had a deadline of ...8pm. So if everything goes according to plan, we will close on the sale of our first home Sept. 26th, almost exactly 4 years to the date that we moved in to that house. More importantly, that is not too far away and we had yet to even look at houses for us.

Now this is where you will laugh at us, or just drop your jaw. Our agent picked us up at 1 on Saturday and we proceeded to look at almost 40 homes. Yes, as in physically walk in 40 homes in one day. Some were pretty obvious they wouldn't make the cut and we turned around and walked right back out. But that is all this was, a weeding out process to narrow the search down. And let me tell you, a lot of the houses we looked at, the owners don't want to really sell, they were just nasty. Also, very awkward is when the owners decide to stay in the house while you are looking.

Don't think that is the last of it though. On Sunday, our agent picked us up at 11 and we repeated the process for a different section of Germantown, this time only going through about 30 homes. By the end of Sunday we had a list of 10 homes, and went back through all of them on Monday to get it down to a list of 3 to 5. The funny thing is, the one house on our list that we couldn't get inside to see over the weekend b/c the owners were sick was at the top of our list. Ater being in almost 70 homes, our choice was a house we couldn't see.

If you made it this far in my rambling post you now get the good news. Last night we saw the inside of our number one house in person for the first time. And last night we made an offer on what we hope is our next home. So wish us luck!!! B/c after 70 homes, we are tired and want this over.

Showings

Since the horrible offer on our house a couple of weeks ago, not much has been happening with the house. We dropped the price a little and thought that would increase the activity but nothing. Until Wednesday that is, when we had a mid-day showing. Then yesterday I was called and someone wanted to see the house around 4, so Gina and I both hustled home to get everything cleaned up and Shelby out of the house. Well, as soon as I walked in the door after they left, I was on the phone with the appointment desk again. The people that had been out of our house less than 15 minutes wanted to come back, at 8pm last night. I am pretty sure that it is a good sign when someone wants to see your house twice in a 4 hour time frame.

The name game

So I kept thinking about this post and just haven't gotten around to actually writing it. Then I see this morning that Steph has posted something about it , so now I have to respond. Gina and I had agreed that the name discussion would not occur until we knew the gender. However, that changed after we went over to her sister's for dinner and they started discussing baby names. And you want to know my opinion on the first real true test of parenthood, it has to be coming up with baby names. You don't want to give your child a name that will incite ridicule the rest of their lives, or something so common that they have to go by first name and last initial. So what is the happy medium in between? On top of that you have Gina's list, which has a lot of last names as first and gender ambiguous names, both of which I am against. And I don't really have a list, b/c I don't want to think about boys names if it is going to be a girl, then be upset when I fall in love with a name that we can't use. But the list I did come up with to appease Gina was no good, and of course had Cameron on it (see Steph's post if you haven't already), so nothing. I think it would be easy if we had a great family name that we knew we could use, but nothing has jumped out at this point. Pretty soon, I am just going to go buy a baby name book, put a blindfold on, and use the first name I put my finger on when I open the book. At least then when our child gets asked why we gave him/her that name, (s)he will have a good story.

Happy Gilmore

So this is one of my favorite Adam Sandler movies, especially because it involves both hockey and golf. But the real reason I am thinking about it this weekend is because of one line. Early in the movie, Happy is playing golf with Bob Barker and they get into a fight. Well, just before Happy punches Bob, he says, "The Price is WRONG %^*&". It gets me everytime. And it is apropos today because yesterday the couple that put in the first offer on the house rejected our final counter offer. And after each of theirs, that is exactly what I wanted to say.

The good news is that today we had someone come back for their second showing of hte house, so we hope to have another offer soon. And I hope their offer doesn't cause me to need "Anger Management" because you "Don't Mess with the Zohan".

Negotiations begin ...

We received an offer on our house on Monday that was ridiculously low, plus they wanted us to pay their closing costs, plus they wanted our washer, dryer and refrigerator and all the window treatments. In other words, they were trying to buy the house and all its contents for about $20K under our asking price. I wanted to just flat out say no and move on, but we decided to counter. Well they countered our counter today, and are still trying to get the house for cheap. I feel like we are in a good position because we aren't desperate to sell and our house is getting a lot of activity on the market. Unfortunately, if we don't come to an agreement, there is always the possibility of not getting another offer. So we have some deciding to do and hope that the outcome ends up in our favor, either in the immediate future or down the line.

the ultrasound update ...

So i was wrong, the baby is now the size of a plum and the due date is still February 25th. Next ultrasound is either the 5th or 8th of September.

1st ultrasound

So Gina had her first ultrasound today, and it was really exciting. The baby yawned and got the hiccup's while we were watching, which was just amazing. And to think (s)he is barely bigger than a grape, according to one of the baby books that Gina is reading. We have to wait another 8 weeks to find out if it is a boy or a girl, according to the doctor, but the expected date has been moved up a couple of days to 2-22-09 now.

Date night

So Gina and I had big plans last night to go see "Dark Knight". I had been looking forward to seeing it all week. Then our plans got scrapped because our realtor called and someone wanted to view our house at 715. I wanted to say no so bad, but this would be their second visit to the house, and we were told it was between our house and one other. Now I am just dying to see "Dark Knight", and to hear back about the showing. The worst part was not scrapping the movie, it was that I had to rush to cut the grass while Gina cleaned the house, a radical departure from enjoying an ice cold movie theater and a huge bucket of popcorn. At lunch I still had not heard back, so I called our agent. The other house is in East Memphis, so I don't know what to think. Location is probably the biggest competition, as I assume our house is probably newer and more modern, for the price range. But we have never felt that our location was bad, so I am hoping we get an offer this week. Until then, Gina and I are going to make plans every night in the hopes that we have to cancel for a showing.

Facebook

Ok, so I just got started on Facebook recently and it is the wildest thing. I was messing around last night with it and found people that I haven't talked to since elementary school. And because I switched schools 5 times, from Ridgeway Elementary, to White Station Middle to WSHS to MUS, to the University of Colorado and finishing at the U of M, I had a lot of different searches to try. I haven't been able to find any of the people I know from CU yet, so that is disappointing. I am still figuring it all out, but I think it is going to be great catching up with so many people.

Long weekend

So I took a vacation last week for 4 days of golf in Alabama on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail. I took my camera and left it in my suitcase every day, so no pictures, but the courses we played were some of the prettiest you will ever see. My golf game ... not so pretty. Actually, it was quite ugly. I have lost my swing. I was lucky to hit the ball 100 yards on most shots, and some of these holes were playing ridiculously long. I still had a great time, and look forward to next years trip, as this has become an annual outing, usually coinciding with the British Open.

The really big news that got me all excited is that we have already had 2 showings of the house. It probably doesn't mean much, but to have 2 the first week on the market has me excited at the possibilities. I am interested in the feedback from the potential buyers to our listing agent.

In other news

Our house goes on the market today. We spent all weekend getting it cleaned up, boxing up extra things, removing furniture, and I even painted. The agent comes back out today to take all the pictures and whatever else it is they are going to do so that our house can sell in the next 3 months. Yeah, good luck with that, right! We don't have to move, but this was being thought about before we found out we were having a baby, so that prompted us to move a little quicker. If the house doesn't sell in the next couple of months we will pull it off the market and wait a couple of years. So if you know anyone looking for a great home in Cordova, that is spacious and perfect for entertaining, you know where to point them. And Shannon, I am sorry, but this is not so that we can move to A2, as awesome as that would be.

Countdown ...

So I ended up not going with Gina to the doctor yesterday. It wasn't going to be a long appointment, and all they did was confirm that she is pregnant again. But I will be going in August for the first ultra-sound. Gina told me August and I reacted with a gasp, like it was so far away. And then I realized it is less than 4 weeks away. So I am already counting down the days to that appointment. Between now and then I don't know what I will post about. Probably the random dreams I started having last night.


I normally can not remember my dreams, but last night I had 2 or 3 that were very vivid. I blame this on Shannon & Carrie and the post about "wait-mares". Luckily, none of mine last night involved a restaurant. I haven't had a "wait-mare" in over a year and it is wonderful. I hope I didn't just jinx myself.


Anyway, first ultra-sound in August, find out if it's a boy or girl in October, and delivery is tentatively scheduled for February 25th, 2009 ... let the waiting games begin.

Random thoughts

So Gina has her first real doctor's appointment since finding out she is pregnant tomorrow and I am going with her. I am pretty sure it won't be as exciting as I hope. My guess is we will go in and they will confirm she is pregnant and then tell her to come back in a month. I am ready to find out if it is a boy or a girl, so we can start thinking about names, b/c we won't discuss it until we know. And I am dying to know if the family is right and we will be having twins. Update tomorrow on what actually transpires.

Gina is pregnant!!!!!!

Welcome to the new blog. Gina went to the doctor and confirmed on Thursday that she is pregnant and we are so excited. We plan on updating often to keep up with the pregnancy and the new addition(s) to the family.