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December 18th - Dad's Birthday
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December 18th - New Year's Eve

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Long Weekend

We have a 3-day weekend for Memorial day. Wheeee! :) It's already been fun so far. My boss was gone yesterday (Friday). Today (Saturday) was Joey's first birthday party! I had such a great time watching his cute little self walk around, open presents, and eat his cute cake! I'm sure Nae will be posting pictures soon. He is suuuuch a sweetie. He stared at Daddy the whole time that we sang Happy Birthday, and he just looked like a little angel. I gave him about 100 kisses before we left. He had little sugary "buttons" on his cake, and I stuck one to his nose with frosting. He looked sooooo adorable. He didn't even know it was there. :) I love that little guy. James was happy to help him open his presents (I think he thought it was his birthday again a couple of times!) :) I can't believe Joey is already ONE! It seems like only about 3 months ago or so that we were at the hospital watching him come into this world. Stop growing up so fast, Joey-pie!

Today after the party Ryan and I went to the batting cages at the mini-golf place. I've only done it one time. This time I did 4 coins-worth which was like 60 pitches. eek! My first round (15 pitches) I did pretty good, but by the 4th round I was SO tired. I probably only hit like 3 of them. *SIGH* It was still fun though! Ryan did the fast pitches, too and he is good! I would probably scream every time because they are REALLY fast. When they hit the back board it sounds like a gun going off.

We're still waiting on the bank to do the underwriting for our loan and everything. I'm guessing we'll close probably mid-week on the week of the 6th - 12th. But that's just a guess. Hopefully for sure by that weekend. We have an extension in until the 18th but they don't expect it to take that long... that was just a safety net. I went to World Market to look for a present for a friend, and also to check out the wine selection because I want to get our realtor a little gift for when we close. Since I know basically NOTHING about wine, I was kinda just going by the picture on the front. I found one with a good picture and picked it up to put in my basket. I then realized that the name of it was Menage a Trois. Uhhhh. Yeah. I decided to put it back. I don't want to send the wrong message! YIKES! That would be an awkward gift.

Ya gotta check out this blog someday. http://audreycaroline.blogspot.com/2010/05/sweet-charlotte-girl.html (Start from the beginning to see her whole story. This is her latest post though.
She also wrote this book: http://www.amazon.com/Will-Carry-You-Sacred-Dance/dp/080546428X

Monday, May 24, 2010

What I've been up to

PACKING!

We found out that we most likely will NOT be closing this Friday like we had hoped, so I'm now counting on the close date on our contract which is June 3rd. Hopefully we can get painting done and then move in asap! I want a little bit of overlap time so that we can get this place cleaned up and the new place prepped. I can't wait! In the mean time, I've been packing up stuff we don't use every day. I still have a TON more to pack though.


LOST!

The LOST series finale was on last night. I've been a devoted viewer since Episode 1. All of our friends love it too, so we had a get-together last night to watch it. It was fun! There were a lot of parts of the finale that I liked, but knowing that was the END... the LAST episode, and seeing how many of the mysteries went unanswered, made me over-all NOT like the episode. I was disappointed! I was hoping for the last scene to make me go "Oh my gosssshhhh!!!!!". It did not. I had fun preparing for it, and watching it (up until I realized it was THE END). The episode itself will probably slowly grow on me, but I don't think I'll ever be totally satisfied. *sigh*. That was my favorite show. My new favorite is Modern Family. That show is soooooooooo funny. I also think that it could be entertaining to a lot of different types of people; many age groups, girls, guys, parents, teens, grandparents... I LOVE IT. If that show gets cancelled I'm be so pissed! I'm bummed that Flash Forward is getting cancelled. It is not in my top favs but it's still one that we've watched consistently and I was hoping to keep watching it. Guess not. :(
I made LOST cookies. It's supposed to be a beach. I used crumbled cookie for the "sand". I really wanted to put little crashed airplanes on them but I didn't know where to find that sort of thing.

CRAFTS

I've been getting back into craftsy things lately. My latest thing is covering soaps. It'd probably be cooler if I actually MADE the soap myself, and then covered it, but I'm not that devoted. Without having to make the soap, it's actually a pretty quick craft which equals instant gratification. They sell 3 packs of soap for 5 bucks at Ross, so it's pretty cheap too. Here are some that I made for my mom and mother-in-law for mother's day:



I also recently got together with my craft-night-girls, Robin and Rachel, and we made jewelry. I made a necklace. It turned out cute! (sorry, no pic right now). Robin's earrings turned out great. They look store-bought. Rachel made some spiffy necklace which required crocheting that she's been working on for a while now. It looks really good! I wish I had more talent! But it's fun no matter what.

VACATION
We want to do something special for our 5th anniversary. Unfortunately, February is pretty much THE busiest time for Ryan at work. It's likely that he wouldn't be able to get the time off. So we probably need to plan our vacation either at the end of this year, or not until next year in May-ish. I've been wanting to take a big vacation before we decide to have kids because we might not be able to do something like that for several years once we have a baby. No, we don't have an official PLAN of when we're going to have kids, but we just know that we are probably getting a bit closer to that time now that our 5 year is coming up (plenty of time as "just" a married couple), we're buying a house (stability? Not that we couldn't have stability without a house. In fact, we'll probably be MORE poor. But somehow in our minds a house = stability. Still haven't figured out the logic behind that) :) So, perhaps we'll start trying in about a year. NO PROMISES PEOPLE! :) It's just a thought! Might still be a few more years. Who knows. No official plans yet.

Anyway, my "big vacation" plan is to go to HAWAII! I think a 5 night, 6 day trip will be best for us. I also want to go this year so that we don't have to wait like a year to go. I'm thinking November is best. Then it can count for my birthday, too! :) I first started researching Oahu because that is where Lost was filmed and you can go on a Lost Tour and see all of the places, swim at "kate and sawyers waterfall", and take pics in front of the yellow dharma barrack houses. It just sounded FUN! That is, until I watched the finale. haha. Just kiddinnnnng! But seriously, it might not be AS fun now that it's over and they'll probably tear down a lot of stuff. Plus, before we would've had a chance to meet or at least SEE the actors, but now that they're done that wouldn't happen. I still think it'd be fun. BUT, I found out after talking to a few people and researching online that Oahu is probably not the best of the islands. Parts of it (honolulu) are kinda big-city-ish, crowded, touristy, etc.

I took a "which island fits you best" quiz, and I think Maui or Kauai are going to be better choices for us. I've read that you should try to visit at least 2 islands when you visit hawaii, but that seems to be easier said than done. Right now I'm leaning toward Maui. It seems like it might have the best of all things. Some privacy, some touristy stuff to do, some nature-y stuff to do, etc. Hawaii is all I've been thinking about! I think I've been driving Ryan CRAZY talking about it. "Which island do you want to go to, what do you want to do, do you want to learn to surf, do you want to parasail with me, do you want to go on a dinner cruise, do you, do youuuu?" Yeahhhh. I see how that can get annoying. Especially when all of that stuff goes through my mind at bed time. I just want to make sure that we both have lots of fun. We don't always have the same interests, so it's something we need to plan ahead.

I haven't booked anything yet because we kind of need to see how our finances go after we move in to our house. We have some money saved for a vacation but you never know if we'll have to use it another way, or how much we'll be able to save in addition to our travel fund. So we'll see! I liked the reviews of Maui Coast Hotel on travelocity ( http://hotels.travelocity.com/hotel/hoteldetail.do?propertyID=34894 ), so we might stay there. Who knows! If anyone has been there before let me know what you think! Ashley also sent us a link to a condo from her boss which seems to have good prices and a great location. I believe it's in Kauai if I'm remembering right, so maybe we'll stay there if we go to Kauai! I can't wait to be sitting on the beach with a Mai Tai in my hand and my boyfriend (aka Husband, aka Ryan) by my side!

Friday, May 14, 2010

in escrow!

We've been in escrow for about 2 weeks now. We're SO excited! We're supposed to close June 3, but our bank lady told us it might end up being a little bit sooner, like the very end of this month. I've been packing up boxes of stuff we don't use everyday and going through all of our crap and organizing stuff. It was nice to have the Mexico rummage sale right around the time I wanted to get rid of some stuff!

We are SOOO excited about our house. Everything worked out really, really perfectly. We've been looking for houses since early this year. We started out pretty slow, but then got more serious about it in the last couple of months. We looked at a lot of houses in Chico, and also considered a few houses in Paradise because they were significantly cheaper. (Although, you do pay for that in gas and inconvenience). We made an offer on a house that was really cute. It was a little bit small but it had a beautiful back yard, and it still had 3 bedrooms like we wanted. It was a great house over all. I didn't love the size of the kitchen or some of the flooring, but the rest of the house was great. We had to put a really low-ball offer in since it was listed for more than we could afford. We didn't get it. I wasn't totally bummed, but I also wasn't sure if we'd find what we wanted before the deadline for the $8,000 tax credit.


We looked at this house on Ceanothus that was listed for basically exactly what we set as our "max" in our minds. We went to see it and it seemed SO nice and big!!! We had looked at 2 other houses that day and they were horriblllllle. This one seemed perfect. It was an REO and we knew that it was under market because we could see what other houses on the same street were listed for and selling for. We figured someone might just make a higher offer than us, above the asking price, and we'd lose out. But we though "hey, let's give it a try!". When we went to write the offer, our realtor called to see if there were any offers. It sounded like there was one other one being submitted but he didn't know how much it was for. We figured they were probably offering the asking price like us, so he suggested we offer $500 more. I guess it did the trick! They counter-offered us for the same price, just with a few stipulations like a shorter escrow time (works for us!) and a shorter amount of time for inspections and things like that. So, even though it was technically a "counter offer", they essentially accepted our offer! Woo hoo! We signed agreement papers like 2 or 3 days before the cutoff for the $8000 tax credit, AND we also signed in a small window of time to where we not only qualifed for the $8000, but we will also get $10,000 from the state. YAYYY! The 10 thou will be payed in increments over 3 years. so we'll get a little over $3000 around tax time for the next 3 years. YESSS!

I just feel so blessed. The timing was PERFECT. We qualified for both tax credits. We got a great house (built in 2007) for UNDER market and still in our price range. It's bigger and newer than the houses we had looked at. It's in Chico in the 95973 area which we like. We'll be moving when it's not rainy outside. It's just perfect for us. We feel kind of poor now since our payments will be a lot more than what we're used to paying in rent, but I'm thinking our taxes the next few years will make that a lot easier! We just never thought we could get a house like this in our price range. A few little downsides - we needed to buy a new stove, and we'll need bathroom mirrors since there aren't any. Also, the backyard is tiny and pathetic but that doesn't really bother us. Almost no yard work!

Here are a few pics of the house from the real estate sites. We'll take more pics when we move in! :) :) :)
(Garage is in the back)


Here's our charming (read: small and pathetic) back yard! :)