silly woe's

So we have lived in this home for about 3 months now, and I wanted to paint the living room. It is currently brown and cream with a lot of brown thrown in for good measure. You see we wanted to have hardwood floors, that added brown in a big way. Then we have the shrunk....which is brown. Of course we bought out sectional which is 3 shades of brown. And there is the issue of the brown wall from the previous owners. I HATE BROWN!! So I have decided to go with a light Wedgwood blue for the walls. Hoping that it will look tasteful and not too "fad-ish". So I guess while Jay is gone with work, I shall try it out.....maybe. If I can get other things done, then I might just go ahead with the painting....maybe....

I've been around for 30 years....

Ok so I turned the BIG 30 on April 29th....yeah me! I just figured that I was going to get 30 of something from Jay and call it a day. Boy was I wrong! On the 28th Jay was returning from the field and told me to have a bag for Emily and I packed for an overnight trip. He wouldn't tell me where we were going.....drove me nuts not to know what was going on. So when he got home we finished up a couple of things and headed down the road. All I was told was that we were going somewhere in Nebraska. (I figured since Emily and I just got home from visiting Cherith and Morgan that there was no real good reason for us to drive 7 hours just to get up the next morning to return home, so I had no clue where we were going.) We drove about 2 hours to...well...I forget the name of the town at the moment, but after about an hour into the trip he told me that was where we were going. We stopped for gas and some coffee, and once he got back in the car he confessed. We were not stopping in at_______(still forgetting the name of the town), but we were going on to Omaha. SURPRISE!! Ok so you would think that I would be happy to make the trip again in less than a week, but I was tired. I was not prepared for such a long trip. It was late and all I wanted to do was lay down in a comfey bed. BUT no. I couldn't do that. We still had about 6 hours worth of travel ahead of us. So we carried on. At that point we had no cell phone reception, so we wern't able to contact Cherith and let her know how far we had to go. We finally stopped at a truck stop and called her. A few hours later we arrived in Papillion. Around 2am...in the morning people. Emily had a nap...well she fell asleep and after about 4 hours she woke up ready to play with Morgan. SO finally around 4am we all fell asleep hoping that Emily would sleep past 7am. Well she did, she slept until 8am.....woo-freakin-who. 4 hours of sleep....not good!! I woke up on my birthday with a headache and I was tired as crap! I still had no idea what was going on that day. I wanted to take a nap, and Jay sad that I would have the opportunity. What was the opportunity you ask? Well it was another 4 hour car ride from Omaha to Harrisonville Missouri. So for the 4 hours I tried to get out of him what was going on. NOTHING!! He wouldn't tell me anything. We arrived in Harrisonville after picking up Cisco (our brother in law) tired, hungry and a little cranky, but we arrived. Jay had managed to rent the B&B next to his parents house, and our families were waiting there to celebrate my birth. HOW freakin cool was that? I had NO clue, his family knew...even Britt his sister, who can not keep a secret to save her life. We ate and talked until late in the evening and then headed off to bed. The next day Cherith and Morgan headed down and stayed with us for a couple of days. On Thursday we had a photo shoot with Cherith, which was FUN! Other than the not knowing what was going on (I like the idea of being surprised, but I don't like it when I can't figure it out before hand), being a built in baby sitter, and having my mother in law do something really STUPID, we had a great time. So that's what I did on my 30th birthday. Jay finally pulled of a surprise, and it only took him 9 years...lol. I would love to hear what you did on your 30th!

randomness

So we got new livingroom furniture....well a sectional to be exact. Here is a picture of Emily being silly on the sectional. I think she may have a little model in her....lol.

Easter Sunday came a little quickly for us this year. We wern't ready with the eggs or baskets. (yes, yes I know we are bad parents) Luckily realtor Liz brought over an Easter basket for Emily a couple days prior to Easter. She got a hat, a purse, a basket, and some candy out of the deal. We truly are blessed to have Liz in our lives!

Our new home

So, as you can tell we have a new home. We finally took the plunge, and it feels good to say this one belongs to us! I tell you that buying a home is not that hard, just a little nerve racking....but what isn't. Below you will find the beginning of our home-ownership story....

We arrived here in Cheyenne at the end of January 2008. We wanted to see what kind of housing was available, and once we were told that there was at least a years wait for base housing, we solidified out decesion to buy. We contacted USAA and they hooked us up with a realtor (Liz Burgen, in case you were wondering) and we began our home search. The first day we saw 17 homes and the next day we saw 13....I think it was 13 anyway. We say homes ranging from really nice to eeeeewwweeee, why would anyone want to live here. Liz took us all around town, and even as far as 10 miles out of the city....not that far, but factor in the snow and ice that falls here and the commute could be way too long. Then we found it....the one (or so we thought). We put an offer on a home that we really liked! We started taking measurements and pictures to decide how we would do things throughout the house. Within a few hours we heard back from the sellers with a counter-offer. So we in turn countered. It seemed like things were going smoothly, and then within the last hour they had to respond, we heard that they pulled out of the deal because they got another offer......that was better than ours......poopie!

So we were a little upset. But then Liz said she had a few houses she wanted us to take a look at. So we loaded up the car and met her. The first house was....well....really lived in. The second, was too small. The third was perfect. Liz said she didn't know why she hadn't taken us to see this house before, but here we were. The rooms were good sized, the kitchen was a little small, but had potential. There's a play set and a dog run. Ok this could work. We could put in a few cabinets and make the kitchen a little more liveable. The garage is HUGE! We could park both cars inside and still have room for manville. Ok off to the basement. We were looking at the laundry room and we heard Emily from another room saying "Look, Veggie tales". We said no we can't watch the movie at the moment, but maybe later. But she kept saying "Look, Veggie tales". So as we moved on to look at more rooms, we realized what Emily was talking about. There was a room decorated with Veggie Tales wallpaper. That was it. The house was sold as far as Emily was concerned. Once we finished looking at all of the rooms, we felt the same way. There were enough rooms for each of us to have our own space, as well as room for LOTS of visitors. So we went back to Liz's office and filled out paperwork for an offer. A couple of days later we heard that our offer was accepted. Yippie! We scheduled our inspections and waited for things to happen.....you know normal things that happen when you buy a home. There is a lot of waiting and wondering....and more waiting! But then came closing day. February 28th 2008. The BIG day. We arrive at 8 am to sign papers. It takes about 45 minutes, then we are done. We closed! We own a home! So we headed out to the house with our bread basket in hand (from Liz). We got there and the son in law was still taking things out of the house. So we wondered why. Once we walked around the house we realized they had not cleaned. We headed to TLF to gather our stuff and gave Liz a call to let her know what shape the house was in. Then the phone call came. We were about 15 minutes from checking out of TLF, and Liz said there was a problem and the previous owners didn't close. That was all the info she had for us at that time, and told us she would call back. A couple hours of waiting and we finally heard from her. Aparently the sellers were not aware of the amount of money it was going to take to close their deal (they had crappy agents!!). So we were worried. We had 2 days left before TLF kicked us out and no other place to turn. Liz told us that things would work out, and that we just needed to give it some time. About 4pm, Liz called us to tell us that the finally closed! What a relief! We couldn't wait to get to the house! But then Liz reminded us that part of our contract was that we would close on Thursday, but couldn't move in until Friday....giving the sellers a chance to clean once their things were out of the house....it all made sense! Friday morning came and we were so excited...again! It was ours. We finally had a place to knock down walls and paint...or whatever we wanted to do! Horray!

Thus far in homeownership, things have gone well. We have had a couple of issues, but we are in the middle of correcting them. So until next time, have a great day!

Off we go

So here it is, time for me to create a blog. I guess that by doing this I will be able to keep family and friends updated on how things are going and add some of our thoughts as well. Come along with us as we go through highs and lows of homeownership, laugh out loud by some of the things we say and just enjoy watching us grow. Until next time......toodles.