Under Contract!

We are under contract for a new house! I have had my eye on a particular house for months now. It was on the market last spring for two months and then taken off without selling. I have been hoping it would come back on the market. It's in a really family friendly sub-division with two parks, a city park near, another huge city park being built even closer, and walking distance to schools K-12th grade. It also significantly shortens Bernie's commute (by about 7 minutes each way. Add that up over a year). The problem is that all the houses have little tiny yards. There are a handful-maybe 5 out of 200+ that would satisfy our desire for a large yard. And with the tiny yards comes being backed right up to your neighbor.

Anyway, this house sits on the back corner of the subdivision with no one backing to the south and west. So it has awesome mountain views and privacy. The lot is twice the size of our current lot and the largest one in the subdivision. I had been wanting to see it so bad, but it hadn't come back on the market. Then, about two weeks ago, I drove by it (total house stalker) and it had a "for rent" sign. And I am very nosey. So we had our realtor call and ask if they were willing to sell it. They said a serious buyer could look at it and we went last Monday. We really loved it. There is 3,000 finished square feet and an unfinished basement. It has 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and a three stall garage. It really meets almost all of our criteria, falls in our price range, and we could actually agree on it. After A LOT of back and forth and the owner claiming they didn't want to sell it because they loved it, and they wanted to move back from the east coast, we have finally agreed on a price and close May 1st. There was lots of drama and I didn't think it was going to get under contract. Now we just have to hope everything goes smoothly until then. Oh, and that we can sell our house soon. We hope to have it on the market in about 10 more days. We are currently spending all of our time getting it ready.

I will try to get a few photos of the new house up on Flickr. There aren't too many available since it wasn't actually on the market.

To add to all the busy fun, I am helping get the Promise Walk up and running. The person who took it over has been unable to fulfill the obligation, so I am trying to help out as much as I can. It would break my heart to see the walk go under after all the work and success we had last year. If you have a moment and an extra dollar, please consider a donation to Team Bennett:

http://www.promisewalk.org/pfpw/participantpage.asp?fundid=1896&uid=5114&fkroledescid=3&nnaffundid=28

Did I mention we are going to Phoenix April 13-20th?? For Noel Gallagher????? I don't think I could take much more excitement at this moment in my life.

Long time between updates

I have not been in the mood for blogging recently for some reason. March is acting like May at the moment. We have had many days now of 70+ degree weather and we have been out enjoying it as much as possible. We have gone fishing twice in the past week and actually caught four little trout today. Bennett was very proud but kept saying he wanted to catch five fish. We have also been catching up on some sorely missed park time and messing around in the back yard time.

We also had a nasty respiratory virus go through the house. The pediatrician thought it was RSV. Bennett was the only one who required antibiotics for an ear infection and we all seem to be on the mend now. Sick season always seems so long, I hope we can avoid any other nastiness for awhile.

We are having a garage sale this weekend. It will feel good to get rid of more of the stuff that is cluttering up the basement. I think I will feel a little closer to having the house market-ready after I take what remains post-garage sale to the thrift store. Not that there are any houses to buy even if ours was ready to sell. We saw one last week that we were close to making an offer on, but the yard was just a bit too small. Maybe things will pick up as spring approaches.

When we were fishing this morning, the lines from two of the poles got tangled in each other. As Bernie was attempting to reel them in, he said "shit!" Sure enough, Bennett repeated it a few times right away. It was the highlight of my week because Bernie gives me crap about my frequent swearing. And then Bennett went and learned his very first swear word from Daddy. Ha!

The kids are doing well. Vivian is calling me "mama" all the time and Bennett is now counting to twenty and saying the ABC's. He is talking constantly. I can understand most of what he says, but other people have trouble. They are both enjoying the increased outdoor activity and taking longer naps because of it.