Good News!!!

Woohoo!!! Appraisal of the new house is in and it came in for a little more than we needed it to! We did not expect this at all. God is GOOD! So now, things are officially a go! The sellers are even pretty sure that they can close a few days earlier than planned! We've been packing up stuff and thanks to my dad and brothers help, already got a few things in storage. We're getting a U Haul Saturday and hope to get everything out then.

 Crazy to think that Friday night will be our last night in this house. I really do love this house, it's where I brought both my babies home and the only house they've known. Wyatt is starting to have a hard time understanding the whole moving process. He keeps asking why I'm putting everything in boxes and if we're taking certain things (like his toys!) with us. We're really trying to play up the whole "new" house idea to him to get him excited. Plus, he'll be super happy when he realizes we get to stay at Nana's house for 2 weeks!

We are beyond excited to get into the new house and make it our own! Thanks for all the prayers for us these past few weeks. God has continued to show us that we need to quit trying so hard to figure things out on our own. He is ultimately in control and HIS plan will always work out :)

Oh and I'll eventually have an entire post dedicated to Mr. Grayson's 1st Birthday (and the fun weekend we had with family) but here's a cute pic of him enjoying his cake.

Just An Update

As of now, we are kind of just playing the waiting game... As for our current house. Everything seems to be good to go. We did get some bad news last week that our house appraised quite a bit under what we sold it for (go figure... ugh!). We negotiated with our buyers that we would lower the cost if they would pay more closing. Thankfully, they agreed. We are set to close on July 16th.

For the new house, we are waiting on the appraisal. It is scheduled for this Friday and we should know the results by mid next week. Our realtor is worried that it is going to also appraise low. Normally, that is good for a buyer because usually the seller will end up lowering the cost, but not in our case. We're afraid our sellers will back out (which I'm not sure what they would do because not very many people would buy a house for more than it appraises. For those that don't know, banks won't lend a mortage for much over what a house is worth and most insurance companies won't insure for more than it's "appraised" value. See how much I'm learning about Real Estate?!) So, our biggest prayer right now is that the house appraises for as close as possible to what we offered. We've seen what appraisals can do, so we are worried but the house also has a lot of nice features and "upgrades" that we hoping will add value. It's all so confusing and stressful!

In the meantime, I have started cleaning out like crazy and packing boxes for storage. I have 13 days!!! Packing is a bit tricky since there still is a small chance we will end up in an apartment for a couple of months. Right now, I am packing things that regardless of where we end up, we could live without. Crazy how much extra stuff we have!!! We are trying to go ahead and get a storage unit so we can move some stuff in this weekend, so that next weekend isn't too overwhelming.

 

In other news, tomorrow is a BIG day!!!!

 

This little cutie pie will be ONE!!! How in the world is it already that time?!?



Change of Plans

Because we like to keep things interesting, our plans of moving have TOTALLY changed! This past week, has literally been the most stressful time of my life. It started with the continuing challenge of finding somewhere to rent. There just isn't much available right now due to all of the displaced people from the tornados. I mentioned before we had one rent house that fell through, well this week we had two different places that people had us come look at and thought would be available, only to afterwards find out that they weren't going to be opening up after all. So, not once, but 3 times we thought we found something only to be disappointed! After many phone calls and emails, I finally found a nice 3 bedroom apartment, but it wouldn't be available until July 16th. We were set to close on our house on July 8. It just seemed like everything was going wrong! I called our realtor to see if there was any way our buyers could push back closing. He called their realtor and we waited for a response.

On top of all of this, we were still waiting to get the appraisal on the new house so they could FINALLY get going with the building process. We have been so frustrated with how long everything had taken and tired of our builders bank changing the numbers. On Thursday evening, they called and to our surprise the appraisal came in much lower than they thought it would and it completely changed all of the numbers we had worked out before. If it's been this frustrating even getting started, what would the actual building process be like?? We decided at that point that we were done and completely backed out from building... Needless to say, many tears were shed on Thursday night and I literally made myself sick. I was ready to back out from selling our house, too.  I had no clue what we were going to do! Thankfully, Aaron is much more calm than me and kept it together while I was a mess. We immediately started looking online for houses and that day a new one had popped up online in Blanchard. We loved how it looked, but didn't want to get our hopes up too much. We decided Friday morning that I would go look at the house with our realtor and then head straight to the apartments to fill out the app and make a deposit. The boys and I headed to Blanchard, looked at the house and loved it! We also went to the apartment complex to get that taken care of, only to find out that the one available on the 16th had been leased that morning and now it would be the 18th. We decided it would still have to do and went ahead and put a deposit down. Shortly after, I got a call and our buyers agreed to push closing back to the 16th. Thank.the.Lord. Even though it's 2 days before the apartment is available, it still buys us some time. Things were FINALLY starting to fall into place! Even better, we found out that the owner of the home I looked at that morning would be able to show us the house again Friday evening so Aaron could see it. We went and Aaron loved it as much as I did! (We have gone to look at close to 15 houses over the last couple of months and this is the first one we were excited about) The owners were great and we spent a long time talking with them about the house and the area. We left feeling very optimistic!

So... we went for it! I called our realtor and within an hour of leaving the house, we had made an offer. We knew that they would counter offer, so we patiently impatiently waited. Saturday morning we finally got the call that they had countered, but it was still right where we wanted and we of course accepted!!! As long as all goes well ,with appraisal, inspection and so forth we are set to clnose on July 29th. Yes, that does leave us temporarily homeless :) Our plan, although we are learning to not rely on our own plans, is that we will not end up moving into the apartment because it would only be for alittle bit and we would have to pay for 2 months rent. This way, we will only lose our deposit. So, we will be moving all of our stuff into storage for about 2 weeks and staying somewhere (anyone want some house guests?! Ha!) until we can move in.

It has been a crazy, stressful, overwhelming week, BUT there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel. We pray everything with buying goes smoothly so that we are able to get in on time without any issues like we've been having. We LOVE the house and feel like it was God's plan all along for us to find it. While I was super excited to build, I am just as equally excited to have found a house that is already what we want and where we want. The owners have done so much to it that would have taken us years to do with a new house. I just wish I had been able to be a little more understanding in the midst of things and never doubted that it would all work out.

Aaron and I are in agreement that we will live in this house forever!! Or atleast until the kids are grown and we can retire off somewhere :)

Eleven Months!

 



Grayson is 11 months old and on the move! He started taking steps just after he hit the 11 month mark and now he is a full blown walker! I can't believe how fast he is growing up. 

 

His personality is really shining through too and he seems so much different than Wyatt did at this stage. He is a handful and we think he's going to be our rowdy one ;) Ha! He gives the best smiles and laughs and is trying so hard to say words. I swear he can say "dog" and "no no"!

A Little Perspective

Yesterday morning, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. I've been beyond stressed out with those whole moving process. We've had several things go wrong at our house (mostly courtesy of mother nature), getting the building process going has been SLOW and then to top it all off, we found out we can't get the rent house we thought we were moving into. My mission for the week is to find somewhere to live! I spent all of Monday online and making calls to find out about places. After not gaining much ground, I decided my best bet was to just head to Norman and look around. (and thanks to an awesome friend/neighbor, I got to do so kid free!) Thank the good Lord that in order for me to get to Norman, I have to drive down I-35 right through Moore. Honest to goodness truth is that right as I got into Moore where I could see the tornado destruction, "This is the Stuff" by Francesca Battistelli came on the radio. WOW- talk about a wake up a call!!! My "stuff" that has me so frustrated is so LITTLE in comparison to what these people have gone through. Yes, we're probably going to have to live in an apartment about half the size of our house and cram some stuff into storage, but you know what?? Who cares?! At least we still have all of our belongings and I'm pretty sure that we can survive 6 months anywhere. Thanks to some good advice from my wise brother, we're just going to look at it like a little "break" from reality. Six months with no yard to mow, nothing to fix if it breaks and probably a pool and workout room. It will practically be like vacation ;)

"This is the stuff that drives me crazy
This is the stuff that's getting to me lately
In the middle of my little mess
I forget how big I'm blessed
This is the stuff that gets under my skin
But I gotta trust You know exactly what You're doing
It might not be what I would choose
But this is the stuff You use"

 

 

We have it narrowed down to a couple of different apartment complexes and are still waiting to hear about a house (most houses want a 1 yr lease and we only need 6 months), but we feel certain that we'll find the right place.

 

Some have wondered why we want Norman. Our biggest reason is that we want to be close to Blanchard so that we can go ahead and get involved in the community. Wyatt is going to miss out on going to Pre-K at a school, but I am hoping to get him into the pre-school at FBC Blanchard so that he can get to know some kids. We also want to be close so we can stay up on the progress of the house. 

Wyatt is 4!

So hard for me to believe that this cutie is FOUR years old!!!

 

Wyatt turned 4 on May 17th. For his birthday we let him choose our meals, so we celebrated with donuts for breakfast, "old McDonald's" for lunch and to our surprise and delight, "the good bread and dip place" (aka Zio's) for dinner. We had a fun day celebrating HIM! After dinner, we took him to Target because he was very antsy to spend his birthday money he had gotten in the mail. He was too cute at the store. He choose an Angry Birds game and he took it took the cashier and paid all by himself. He was very proud that he got a receipt and his own bag :)

For his party, he chose a Ninja Turtle theme. Anyone who knows about the TMNT knows they love pizza, so of course it was a pizza party! It was originally planned for the day after his birthday, but due to weather and a lot of other conflicts for people, we moved it to the next weekend. We had a great turn out and so enjoyed the afternoon with family and friends.

 

Some of Mr. Wyatt's favorite things at age 4:

Ninja turtles, spiderman, batman, playing soccer and baseball, chewing gum, angry birds, all fruit, chips and salsa, fruit snacks, the color orange, going to Nana & Papa Joe's, play dates with his friends



O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A

May 20, 2013 is a day that Oklahomans will remember forever. I know that I'll always be able to look back and remember just where I was and the feeling afterwards when we got out and saw on the news the total devastation that had occurred in Moore. Gut wrenching, unbelievable, heart breaking....

We were safe in our cellar with some of close friends who had come to get in with us. I am thankful for the fact that the tornado lifted and didn't stay on course, or it could have easily headed this way. But at the same time, it almost gives a feeling of guilt that I got to tuck both my kids safely in their beds in our home that night.

What I do know is that I have  never been more proud to be an "okie"! This state has come together like no other to support not only those effected by the Moore tornado, but also the storms that came through other towns the day before. So much so, that at one point they  had to turn away volunteers and ask that people stop bringing donations for the time being!!! Literally millions of dollars have been donated and will continue to come in.

 

I read this somewhere on facebook and I absolutely love it!

 

"Oklahoma isn't a place. It's something in your blood. It's something that you do. It's the shirt off your back, the tear in your eye, and the giddy up in your soul"