New House Scrapbook Page

Knock on Wood

Wow! What a roller coaster. After bump after bump, we finally signed all the paperwork on what will be our new home (knock on wood). The contracts had the right address on them this time. That was very nice to see. ;) I guess there's always the chance that tomorrow I could be posting yet another retraction, but I'm feeling good.

We had a rough patch this week when, after our inspection, our furnace was condemned. (That's right... condemned!) And of course after our furnace was condemned, we received an addendum from our buyers requesting a new furnace before they will purchase the home. I guess I can't really blame them there.

After our make-up session with Lorraine at Woodside, she convinced the builder to give us any one of their 17 spec homes at their 'bottom line'. I am guessing bottom line is kind of like their cost. I don't really know... I could just be making that up. Oh ... and a quick side note to any of you out there who are thinking about building a brand new home. The 'bottom line' prices were on average between $60K and $80K less than the listed purchase prices. I was shocked that there was so much mark-up! I guess that's the nature of the business though. We were able to get a much better house (than the one Lorraine thought she was selling us) for the same cost. I am feeling really good about this house.

I am still singing praises to Craig Collette, because I honestly believe that this guy worked harder than any other agent would have to get us such a screamin' deal. We are walking into this deal for quite a tidy sum under asking price. I can't really get too upset about that.

Here are some pictures of our house-to-be. Ryan and I took the girls out to see it last night. It was the first time they had a chance to see it. It was so fun watching them run around all excited staking claim on their new bedrooms. Khursten tried to claim the master. I had to put the kibosh on that one. Sorry Khursi.

Here's the front of the home. What color will it be? It's kind of a mystery. We got to see an 8x10 picture of all of the color swatches laid out next to each other, but it was definately pretty hard to get a really great idea. What a fun little surprise we'll have when we open our door for the first time!

Here's looking in at the kitchen from the family room. They upgraded to some gorgeous knotty alder cabinets. I absolutely love the color. It's probably not something I would have chosen myself because I would have thought they were too dark, but once I see them all set up I love them!

Here's the backyard. We'll be on a corner lot so the whole yard will be fenced in before we move in. That's a huge bonus! The girls were super bummed when they found out the huge mountains of dirt weren't included with the price of the house. Allie's exact quote was, "Ohhhh! That was the best part of the whole backyard!" (I wish I knew how to type the voice inflections. Picture the whiny tone that all girls master by the age of 3)

Here's looking down our street. I'm so excited to meet all of our new neighbors. We had a chance to meet one neighbor last night. I asked him if there are a lot of kids in the neighborhood and he told me that was a huge understatement. Yay! Friends for my girls!

So there you have it. Our new house. I'm just crossing my fingers this time. We were thinking maybe we'd go up and sneak into the sacrament meeting on Sunday. We could maybe get a sneak preview of our new ward. I'll have to let you know what we find out.

p.s. It has suddenly occurred to me that I probably want to think about packing. So... if any of you have recently moved and find yourself with a whole trundle of boxes you need to give away...

The Great Fruit Draw-Off

Here's what happens when you're forced to wait outside for an hour while someone appraises your house. In an attempt to entertain the kids we began a drawing contest. It was Allie versus Mom with Khursten as the judge. Khursten called out a piece of fruit and we both gave it our best attempt.

Mom's Contest Entries

Khursten and Allie told me I was the best artist in the whole, wide world. Ahhhh... kids are so easy to impress. Maybe I should take them to a museum and show them what good art really is. Nah! I like that they think I'm great. (Audrey helped me with the apple) When we were all through, the girls decided it looked like a delicious picnic so Allie drew an ant to eat it all up)

Allie's Contest Entries

You may note a few additional pieces of fruit that weren't even in the contest. She said she was earning extra credit. My favorite are the cherries on the vine. (third item in)

And here we have the Jordan River Temple. (Thrown in for good measure)

For Those of You Dying To Know

Here's a quick update on the house situation. My realtor Craig tried to go around this Lorraine lady (mistake gal). Come to find out, if you want a deal to be made, Lorraine's the gal you need to talk to. We decided to go back up there last night and have a little chat. When we walked through the door, Lorraine started out very defensively saying that she knew we were trying to go over her head and how it wasn't her fault and blah blah blah. I swallowed my pride and rehearsed verbatim a speech that Craig had prepared for me. I told Lorraine that as far as I was concerned it didn't matter who made the mistake, one had been made, but we were still interested in making something work with her, no hard feelings, we'd like to move on. After I said this she started crying and told us that she had had the most terrible weekend and she just felt sick about what happened. The she came over and hugged me. If any of you know me... I'm not really a hugger, but we hugged it out and now everything's fine. (I think. Ryan remained very silent during this portion of the meeting)

We asked Lorraine if there was anything with a similar floor plan that she could show us that we could get down to the price we had arranged before on the WRONG house. She showed us a different home that was very similar, but it only had 4 bedrooms upstairs instead of the 5. It still had all of the fancy upgrades. It was in a different phase and wouldn't have access to all the amenities (or an HOA which I was actually not stoked about to begin with) She told us that we could put an offer in on it, but she was expecting another one this morning and she knew the builder would accept the highest offer. She kind of kept reiterating to us that she's offering a price she wouldn't offer to anyone else because she's trying to work with us after what happened. We went ahead and put an offer in just for the heck of it. Who knows, right? There was also another house with the same floor plan (the 4 bedroom house) that wasn't quite done being built that we may try to keep as our back-up plan.

The sad truth is that we're not going to get quite as big of a steal of a deal as we originally thought, but if we're going to keep looking in that neighborhood for at least a little while to see if we can find a good fit for us. We may have to give up the 3-car garage that I was uber stoked about, but I'm feeling good that something will work out. I know that after this whole rollercoaster of emotion is finally over, we will end up happy. I keep telling myself that maybe the ward in that other phase would have been a terrible fit for me and this whole thing was meant to be. It could happen, right?

If It Sounds Too Good To Be True...

Well, OK. This is the world's biggest retraction post. I guess I jumped the gun on my post yesterday. I was so excited, but I should have waited another day. We went down today to sign a little bit more paperwork and the building agent pulled a ginormous juky. She somehow swapped houses on us. The whole deal that we worked out was for the wrong house. I don't know how she did that! I am really very angry, but I guess I can't do anything about it. We faxed her over an offer with a specific address on it, but somehow she got it in her mind that it was for a completely different home. When she went to the builder to work our deal she gave him all the information for this other house. It's not a house we really want. It's actually a few hundred sq. ft. bigger, but the floor plan is funky. Plus, it doesn't have all the fabulous upgrades like the tile, granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, 3rd car garage. To me it feels like a classic bait and switch. She gets us in with the home of our dreams, and then she pulls a switcheroo and tries to sell us on something we don't even want. Our realtor believes it to be an honest mistake. Even if that's the case, it's a pretty big mistake to make. The thing that makes me the maddest is that we went down there on Thursday and gave her a deposit. She probably could have done a better job communicating with us then! I was pretty much livid when we left. I didn't want to blow up at her so all I said was, "This makes me really frustrated. When we faxed over our offer it had the address of the house we wanted. I don't see how a mistake like this could be made." Her response only made me feel worse, "Well... I wasn't working the day the offer came through." Say WHAT?!?! I guess if you're looking for an excuse, anything will do.
What we're looking at now is that she's going to go back to the builder and try to correct her mistake and work out a deal on the right house. I'm not holding my breath though. They weren't really willing to budge one penny lower than what they were offering us on the WRONG house. I can't imagine they'd make the same deal for the right house that is a little bit better. Woe is me. I'm going to take a day to mourn and then I'll try my best to get over it. :(

Audrey's 1st Hair Cut

It was way overdue. Audrey desperately needed a hair cut. I was clinging on to the hope that her hair would keep growing in all cute and curly, but the longer her hair got, the more apparent it became that the curls just weren't happening anymore. The half straight / half curly look wasn't doing much for her. Here's the new look. I tried to get some pictures, but she saw the camera and said, "No mom. Put it back." ( I didn't even know she knew how to say that.) So these pictures are me following her around trying to get a good shot.

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House Hunting is Hard

Here's my quick gripe about this week. House hunting! Arghh.... We were out for almost 12 hours on Monday and we're going out again tonight. We're seeing lots of stuff we like, we just need to narrow it down.