I started listening to Manheim Steamroller last night - always my indicator that the Christmas spirit is upon me :)

Since the stress of the house purchase has passed, and Scott assures me that he'll handle the move and that we will have a Christmas tree for our first Christmas in our new home, I decided to jump back on the Nutrisystem band wagon starting yesterday. I've had two 100% days in a row, and was down 1.4 lbs this morning...woohoo!

Our dog, Jonah, has been with us 31 days now, and he's gained 10 lbs! He was thin when we got him and needed filling out, so this is a good thing. He's such a good dog, although he freaked me out tonight by barking very loudly at his reflection in the sliding glass door tonight...lol. Makes me think he'll be a good watchdog though :)

I haven't started Christmas shopping yet - thank God I don't have too many people to buy for! I should be able to start this coming weekend, and we'll have Shannon, so I'll get her to help me. Having her around every other weekend sure has been nice...and well worth the hassles we went through to get this thing with her mother straightened out!

Three websites for you to check out, in light of the holidays. They're coupon sites...hope you find one you can use!

http://www.currentcodes.com/

http://www.couponcabin.com/

http://www.dealhunting.com/

Well, in 22 days, we'll be able to start moving into our house!

The bitter taste left over from the closing has started to subside as our excitement begins to build. We went furniture shopping on Friday - I've wanted new furniture for quite awhile and since we aren't going to be smoking in the new house, I didn't want to take smoke-smelling furniture into it. We found a set at Rooms to Go, consisting of a sofa and what they call a "chair and a half". Both pieces are recliners, which Scott and I both wanted. They will be delivered to the house on the 20th. Of course, we paid more than I wanted to, but that's fine - hopefully, it'll be the last set of furniture we buy for 10 years or so.

Our conversations are now peppered with ideas and plans. Since our ultimate goal is to build a new house on that land, we've been looking at floor plans and we've decided to go with a log cabin look - and this is the design we really want. This is 2-3 years away though.

I think I'll spend today packing some more stuff. Most of it's already in storage, but there's quite a bit more that could be packed up now as we're getting closer!

Sue, just for you and anyone else who may want to look :)

http://photobucket.com/albums/b127/honey4evr/Our%20House/

For password, use helen

The closing was painful, very stressful, broke us completely financially (I'll be bouncing checks until Thursday), but it's over. We'll move in starting the evening of December 18.

The lender kept putting off getting the loan docs to the title company - they were supposed to be there Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday, and still were not there until noon on Friday.

The seller tried to put off signing until Monday, which meant they would occupy our house until 12/21...and I just lost it. I called my father in law, who has been dealing with the seller, and raged at him. My mom is supposed to be here from California on 12/20...where the hell was I going to put her? My daughter and grandchildren are coming in from Ohio on 12/14....they'll have to stay at a hotel or with her father. It's going to cost $31 a day to board the dog and cat, while we're staying with the birds at the home of my ex-mother in law, or a friend, since we have to be out of this house on 12/10. Father in law finally called the seller and lit into him...so they showed up at closing and signed.

When we got in there to sign, the title company informed us that they needed another $2100 by certified check - and there was no branch of our bank in that town - no way to get the money. I lost it again. The title company finally, after 30 minutes of us trying to find a bank who would let us cash a check (HA!) decided that we could wire them the money on Monday morning.

I truly don't think I could have taken another delay or another problem...I'd have been fitted for a straight jacket if there had been.

Thank God it's all over....and I swear, I will never go through this again. Next house we buy will be EMPTY.

*sigh*

We didn't close. Our landlady must have decided she didn't want us to move or something, because she intentionally sat on the paperwork she needed to fill out and send back to the lender...hence, loan documents didn't issue today.

We took our certified check for the anticipated closing costs to the title company and signed another extension to "on or before November 18th", terrified all the while that the seller wouldn't agree to it.

We found out a little while ago that he did agree to it, but that he now wants a firm 30 days to move, but he will absolutely be out on that 30th day. Fine...not a problem. We had gone up just last night and gave the landlady a check that paid us to up 12/10. Everyone now believes we'll sign loan docs on Tuesday morning, so we'll have to give them another 3 days of rent, and not have a week to clean the way we had planned.

What I'd really like to do is choke the life out of my landlady, but of course, I can't do that. She told our loan broker that she didn't have the lease in front of her and couldn't verify how long we lived here...we moved in in September of 2003....2.2 years ago, and she only needed to verify 12 months. If she hates us, it would have made more sense to fill that paper out as fast as possible and send it to the lender by fax right away so we'd be gone. If she likes us and wants us to stay, she has a strange way of showing it. And, btw, she's a residential real estate agent for Coldwell Banker, so it's not like she didn't know how badly we needed this....and I had called her twice about it anyway....once while she apparently had the document sitting on her desk and she told me she hadn't heard from the lender. Purely evil.

We're going to go rent a storage unit in the town we're moving to, and we're going to start loading up Scott's work van with the boxes we've had packed for 2 months, and move them out there. I figure if we've done without it this long, it can stay in storage until we settle in and I'll bring a few boxes home at a time. That'll thin out the clutter around here (2/3rds of the house is in boxes scattered around my house) and we can start cleaning. Benefit: Things that were a priority to keep 2 months ago, may not be as important to keep in another 2 months.

Other than the landlady thing, I'm calmer and it's going to be ok. The landlady thing hurts to the quick...this is not some corporation...this is a woman that lives 500 yards from me and waves to me every day. We feel utterly and totally betrayed.

I haven't been posting and probably needed to, if for no other reason than the therapy benefits.

Last Friday, we bought a dog from the SPCA! His name is Jonah and he's a Labrador mix, probably with Weimaraner. He is without a doubt the best dog I've ever owned. He's 7 months old, weighs 40 lbs, and is calm and gentle.

We were supposed to close on our house on October 31, but we received word that our appraiser had been unable to get out to the house - couldn't hook up with the sellers, so the closing got extended until November 10. I called the sellers yesterday to let them know that our insurance agent needed to come and inspect the house and, in the course of that conversation, discovered that while they have every intention of closing on 11/10, they have NO intention of being out of the house by then, nor do they intend to pay rent to us for staying there. Contractually, of course, they can't do that; however, they let it be known that if we intended to force the issue, they would simply walk away...with our $5,000 escrow.

Needless to say, this has Scott and I completely and totally stressed out. I lost 3 lbs overnight simply because I couldn't eat and from crying (I cry when I'm stressed - and when we fight, which is occurring because of the stress). We reminded each other this morning that we love each other and this is just a house and there are more houses out there, and even if we have to wait a year to find one, we'll be just fine. It still sucks.

I'm picking Shannon up tonight after work and taking her to our house for our very first entire weekend visit! Scott and I are very excited about this, so it is a bright spot in an otherwise miserable week.