WOW mom & dad this thing is cool!!

i’ll whack this thing and see what it does!

Ok, we’ve run out of houses pretty much to look at it and it’s slightly depressing. We’ve honestly looked at pretty much every house in our price range on the MLS list which includes both new construction and older houses in McMinnville. There has only been 1 new listing in the past week for the area. Patrick is upset upset about the offer not going through and i’m pretty much right there with him. We have looked at Beaverton, Hillsboro, Forest Grove, Aloha, Sheridan & Lafayette also. The market sucks in our price range, if only we had $20k -30k more to put down. The sad thing is - we dropped our house price in Nevada by close to $50k just to sell it. That’s a ton of money less to put towards a new house and made a big difference in our searches now. Not to mention, the housing market up here is extremely hot compared to Nevada now. A year ago when we were signing the contract to build the other house (that we lost!!) the house prices were very good and we were getting quite the house up here for our $$. That is NOT the case now at all.

I hate living in an apartment after owning a house. Our neighbors above us last week were stomping on the floor when Braysen was crying while Patrick was out of town. It was so just frustrating to deal with. Then this week our weather has been insanely hot like 102 etc. and we have no ac here. I can’t even decorate Braysen’s room yet and get him all set up. It’s kind of depressing to be honest. I want a backyard to go out in and a place to put a little pool for him to splash in!! All our stuff from our house in Nevada is now located in storage except for what we have in our apartment of course. The house does close today and we will have cash in hand to buy a house when we find one instead of a contigent offer but we have to find one first!!

Cooling off techniques:
Monday: escaped to Patrick’s parents after signing and getting our closing documents notarized. Then escaped after Patrick got home to Rose’s for dinner and Cold Stone for ice cream.
Tuesday: escaped in the evening to the mall to cool down and get food with Patrick.
Today- MUCH cooler and no need to escape!

The one good news thing of the week is - we are heading to a beach house in Pacific City for 4th of July weekend. I’m heading out tomorrow to find myself a new swimsuit. (need something that my post prego body can not scare away my husband or other beach goers in)

I need to get kiddo & us to get our 3 month family pictures done. I want to do pics at 3,6,9 and 12 months but we’ve had so much going on that I haven’t gotten us set up yet. Maybe next weekend!

*grumbles* house hunting used to be sooo much fun but it’s really turning into this depressing chore and i’m afraid we’ll never find a house. Take in mind that we’ve also had our cats & dogs staying with friends since last November. That right there is depressing enough to be away from them!!!

Back playing with kiddo, think he’s about to wake up!

~sigh
heather

we didn’t get the house*sigh* i really fucking hate house hunting and the whole past year moving to Oregon has been nothing but a nightmare honestly. I have said this whole time I don’t know why we moved up here and spent / lost all this money we had saved up. We’ve flushed so much down the drain and i’m starting to get sick of this house hunting thing where we “thought” last year that we were going to end up in a nice bigger house to raise a family in and I keep having to go backwards. At this rate, we’ll end up with a house not even as nice as the one we built in NV that is only 2 years old!!!
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRr

Our trip to McMinnville was productive on Tuesday afternoon and we saw some really nice houses. The last house we saw, which we almost didn’t see due to the driveways and walkways just poured, was the winner. Patrick was looking through the windows while we were waiting on the real estate agent to let us in and telling me “heather you’ll like this house”. As soon as we walked in, we knew. It felt right and the rest of the house didn’t let us down. It is exactly the space we need!

This is the description from MLS - it had no pictures due to being new construction but if all works out we’ll walk it again soon and i’ll take some then.
“Davies Homes does it again! Classy, upscale, new construction with a view! Extensive Brazilian Walnut floors, gorgeous alder cabinets, tile, stainless steel appliances, massive great room, upgraded trim package & more! Estimated completion: Mid-Summer.”

It’s a great house with a nice open floor plan on the bottom level, great for entertaining and had exactly the bedrooms + the den for Patrick’s office. It’s very close to the newest elementary school in McMinnville. The street/neighborhood is all new construction houses and isn’t a one builder cookie cutter area. They are all custom home builders and a wide variety of styles so not every house looks the same! It’s on a corner lot with green space behind us, a farm to be exact, and then trees lining the area off in the distance also. It has plenty of space for kiddos play structure someday, Neeva’s dog run, raised flower beds and garden space for me and of course the patio that i’d like to do more in the future with like have a deck built or something. Patrick is in love with the Brazilian Walnut hardwood floors and i’m in love with the kitchen that has a nice decent sized island, will have stainless appliances and nice touches like tiled back splash, nice design behind where the stove will be and the corner windows by the sink. It’s hard to make me happy with a kitchen after having such a huge one in our house in NV but this one will definitely work. The bedroom has my separate soaking tub and shower, which surprisingly wasn’t in a bunch of the houses we looked at. The laundry room has a nice counter with cabinets below and then above with a hanging rod. The closets have wood shelve systems so I won’t have to do to much work to organize ours and kiddos. The fixtures / knobs etc. are all brushed nickel which I love. Let’s see…there’s crown molding in our master bedroom, french doors to the office downstairs, vaulted ceilings in lots of the rooms.

So, I (patrick is in NV) went today to put in an offer after we found out yesterday afternoon that there is an offer already on the table for it but they offered lower then the asking and the builder countered that they wouldn’t accept less then “x” amount (we don’t know the amount). The people then wanted an extension on the counter. (we assume it’s to see if they can get financing/can afford that). Our offer that went in today to them was for the full asking price with one addendum - we are asking to get our landscaping / fencing wrapped into the loan so we don’t have to worry about that later.

We are crossing our fingers and hoping that our offer is accepted. We should know on Saturday though and i’m hoping this is it. Our house hunt hasn’t been all that I thought it would be. Definitely not that much fun and kind of a let down after losing the house we had built due to our NV house not selling fast enough. Not to mention the $$ in earnest money we lost on that first house we built. This time around our earnest won’t be lost if things go bad either as we are a contingent sale based on the closing of our house in NV. If things work out, we’d close on July 28th. The house is still being finished so that gives them time and our lease at our apartment runs out at the end of July so the timing is great. We don’t have to pay our July house payment either so that freed up that cash to cover our last month rent here and then if we do end up with this house we’d have one month apartment rent free & house payment free!!!

i’m having a heck of a time with kiddo the past few nights. we aren’t sure if he’s starting to teethe early or not but it sure is looking that way. *sighs* it only took me half an afternoon and evening to type up this lil bit in here!

*fingers crossed!!!!!*

~hugs
heather

Here’s guppyman in the coolest invention ever - the Bumbo Seat We have looked around for them a bit but they are always backordered but finally I found a blue one at target Saturday instead of having to order it online. The pic is of him at my in-laws on the little playmat my mother in-law got to keep at her house.

We have been house hunting like mad lately..went out with a realtor last week in Newberg, almost made an offer on a house and i’m glad we didn’t as the kitchen was lacking majorly. The house is brand new and beautiful in almost every room but the kitchen is tiny and tucked wierd into a corner. It had nice appliances and counters but um lacking MAJOR cabinet space etc. Needless to say, my big requirement is having at least a semi-decent size kitchen to entertain from. We like to have friends and family over to cook for so that to me is pretty important. It’s even more important to have a good kitchen / living / great room open feel as we’ll be having lots more family get togethers now that have guppyman.

Sooo, we went out to McMinnville on Saturday (town Patrick’s parents live in…not sure if we really want to live there yet but the housing prices are much more affordable there and we could get a nice size lot but living that close to his parents could drive me insane..we’ll see) and anyhow we looked at a new development there. They have a house floorplan we like that they could put on a .25 acre culdesac lot that backs to a creek with no one behind us but we’d have to wait until November for it to get done. This is a problem since we need to rescue our dog from Nevada before the end of the summer as we have asked a bit much from the people watching her already. It’s fun to build but we really want a move in ready home. There are some on the market out there that we’ve seen on MLS so we’ll be going out tomorrow with a realtor to check some of them out and see if we can finally find something that is ready closer to our time frame or ready asap and in a good price range.

We celebrated Father’s Day (patricks first!!) Saturday after our house looking efforts with his parents. His brother in-law + girlfriend flew out also. It was his dad’s bday and their wedding anniversary this weekend also so we had a nice dinner at a local swanky french place with some of their family friends. It was yummy food, good company and all in all a good day.

Patrick leaves this Wed. to pack up our house and move the rest of the stuff up here to storage. I’m going to miss him badly and more so because i’ll be home alone with guppyman for the first time. No hubby coming home at night to help out and give me a break..just me! I only have Wed. night, Thursday all day / night and Friday during the day though because my mom will be here Friday evening.

I’m going to get my mom, the photographer in the family, to take pics of guppyman this weekend as he’ll be 3 months old!! She has a nice nice Canon EOS 1d that she takes pics with and told me she’d bring it up to get some shots so if they turn out ok I’ll use them as 3 month shots. Buttttt i’m thinking I still want to go get pro pics done to send out to family. I have his outfit picked out already for it so hopefully some turn out cute. I want to get family shots done anyhow so i’m thinking we’ll end up going next weekend maybe to get our 3 month shots done. I don’t know yet though as I need a haircut, eyebrow wax and would love to get my highlights done b4 that but we’ll see how much of that gets done!!!

Well here’s to hoping tomorrow’s house hunting is better then our past trips out! We have yet to find ‘the one”!!!!!!

~heather