Update

Ah, the joys of home inspections.

The good news is that we are proceeding with the sale of Bonanza and the purchase of our new home in Cooper Mountain. We will close on the 13th and move on the 15th. Oma and Opa will travel south to help corral the Bumblekinder while we point and direct the movers that will be saving our sanity on moving day.

The not so good news is that we will be writing a not small, but admittedly could be a lot larger check for repairs on this house that were unforeseen (roof, leak in a bathroom, some electrical miswiring, etc.) to us. Good thing their awesome (can you hear that biting sarcasm over the internets?) inspector pointed out every possible fault in the house.

But we gotta say "oh well" (actually we said a lot of naughty words but we'll refrain here). We know that in this market, selling so quickly far outweighs paying for some repairs.

Luckily the Rigert house has only one small fix that should have been fixed when the house was built, and they will be cleaning the roof for us. They offered to sell us their furniture, but if you recall from the pictures - not so much our style. But it was nice of them to offer!

That's all for now. We've transformed into packing central and slowly but surely our seven years of livin', lovin', laughin' and lots of other l words are coming to a close.

Pulling out the pity card

Ugh, I'm so frustrated.

I guess the inspection on the Bonanza house didn't go great. Not so much in what they found, but the buyer's daughter was there (the buyers are in CA) and freaked the freak out about who knows what and the inspector was a jerk, so now the agent needs to make sure the daughter doesn't freak out the parents. The good news is that the agent (theirs, and ours actually) doesn't feel that anything they found is tragic - just stuff that comes with an older house.

It's a 30 year old house - of course there will be some things to fix. But we had just cleared the one potential hurdle that the buyers had (too long to explain) and now we have to hope that whatever is on the inspection isn't going to make them ancy.

Now we have to endure more days of up in the air-ness and with three weeks left until closing my stomach is one big knot o acidy fun.

Would you like to see...

our NEW FREAKIN HOUSE!!! Click here for pics.

Just got the news that we got the house. We were sweatin there for a bit.

Oh my god. (Rob danced a jig, I kid you not.) Barring anything nasty on the inspection, we will have three weeks to get packed and moved.

Homebuying Haiku

Accept our offer
We want it, you want to sell.
Quit being a jerk.

Don't mess with the Feng

Over the past few years, I’ve become more comfortable in introducing Feng Shui into our home. For those that know what it is, you probably know why I’m into it. For those that think Feng Shui sounds like it belongs next to Chop Suey on a Chinese food menu, let me give you a little background.

In very basic terms, Feng Shui is the ancient eastern practice of arranging your home with intention in a way that maximizes positive energy (chi, rhymes with wheee!) and creates harmony in one’s environment.

Even more basic? Where you allow your crap to land has an impact on how you feel in your home and in life.

There are all kinds of rules and guidelines that use color, the elements (water, earth, metal and fire) and “cures” to help you and the universe see eye to eye on things important to you. Every part of your home corresponds with a different aspect of your life (prosperity, career, health, wisdom, reputation, relationships, family, helpful people/travel and creativity/children).

It can get overwhelming, so I feng where I can, shui when I can't. Sometimes I feel silly introducing feng shui elements in the house (recent conversation in our home: Laura? Yes Rob, dearest husband of my heart? Why is their a red string tied around my toilet? Um, because you’re flushing away our Chi. Really…? Yep. Huh.)

Othertimes I’m blown away by the effectiveness of it. Case in point – our bumble boy is the result of a specific request to the universe activated by a feng shui cure. Hey, you don’t have to believe, but wipe that look off your face.

Another recent example. Our house went on the market on February 12 (Happy Birthday Luke!). I added a cure to our “helpful people” area with a few specific requests and whamo, we had a full price offer in hand by the 17th.

Yep. Less than a week in a crappy market. And now we have less than a month to purchase and move into our new home. We’ve made an offer on a lovely Cooper Mountain home (even though mom hates it.), and hopefully we’ll have good news soon. Stay tuned!

I’m just kidding by the way, mom doesn’t hate it. So she says. You never know with her. She's tricky like that.

A different kind of itch.

I joked earlier this year (you know, since it's all February and everything) that Rob and I made it to our seven year wedding anniversary without an itch. Turns out there is another 7-year anniversary and corresponding itch making itself known in our lives.

Almost seven years to the day when we moved into our first lil home in Bonanza Court, we are going to be putting out the For Sale sign.

Holy Crap.

It’s time. As much as we love our home, the fact is that we’ve updated nearly everything there is to update and we still want…more. More space, newer everything, less projects, nicer ‘hood. I feel disloyal and a little greedy, since we’ve had a great time here, and we certainly aren’t lacking anything. We just want…more. And it’s certainly a buyer’s market, enabling us to make a move up that we might not be able to otherwise. As a seller, well, our realtor gave us some positive news about what we could get for the house, and if we don’t, no biggie. We don’t move. But we need to try.

I feel like our little house is saying, “what did I do?” And I want to reassure the casa that it’s not you, it’s us. We’ve grown, we’ve matured, we’ve added a little monchichi who needs more space to roam, and we’ve acquired multiple motorcycles that are feeling a bit cramped in the garage.

Having grown up in the same house my whole life (heck, the house is still in the family, bigger and better than ever under Angela’s care), I’m not into moving for the sake of moving. Neither is Rob. We agree we want to make a move that will suit us for twenty years, giving us all room to spread out a bit in the years to come.

But I’m sad. And start to choke up when the memory reel starts playing. Our first home, our first mortgage, our first grown up furniture, our first home projects, bringing our baby home, welcoming guests and family from far and wide.

I’m also excited. New house! New projects! (you don’t really think I’m going to be able to give up my project addiction, do you?) New planning and organizing! New kitchen! Playroom for Colin! A guest room!

And I’m scared. How will we find as good of a situation? Giving up daycare two doors down? Losing my huge yard just as my garden is taking off? Can we really afford what we think we can afford? Our quiet court where my biggest problem is the neighbor parking his junky van in front of the house? Are we on crack?

But we’re hopeful. The good thing is that we aren’t in a position where we have to sell, which gives us a strong footing to stick to our guns and wait for the right buyer and the right new home to appear. Oh, and in case you are wondering about the farm, well, it's not in the cards (but, oh, those views...) since it needs more work that we really want to do, and we've kind of been there done that with updating.

So, send us your good home selling/buying vibes. I’ve got to go call PODS and start the process of packing. PACKING! AAACCKKK!