Yikes.

The BID. IS. IN. Holy master baths and ceiling fans. We had our inspection yesterday and everything turned out as we expected. The house is a VA foreclosure, so there are a few cosmetic things to fix, but overall a great house in a stellar neighborhood for the money. AND everything we want. We already came up with an offer we thought was fair (and hopefully above the others) last week, and after our inspection we were ready to roll with that amount. All we had to do was call our realtor to send that baby on its way. Now... we wait. All offers are due by the fourth and a decision will be made by the eighth. THAT'S LIKE AN ETERNITY.

Cross your fingers and toes, send your prayers, use your magical powers, or do whatever it is you do. We love having your good thoughts - thanks.

Today - is Sheri's birthday. Missus just-got-back-from-a-cruise hasn't posted to her blog yet and I'm waiting to find out how her trip was... especially her excursion to Dunn's River Falls, Jamaica. Hopefully IRIE (pronounced eye-ree - meaning all good).

Today is also the last day of the month, in a year that's going by too quickly already. This weekend is the Superbowl service at church and Dan and I are stoked. I laugh so hard every year - I leave with aching cheeks. If you want to come to Cincinnati Saturday night to get in on the action, let me know. It'll be good times.

I found out the other day that I won't have to do early Wednesdays at work anymore, which I'm pretty excited for. For the 1.5+ years that I've worked at this job, I've had to drag my booty into work at SIX AM. Now I don't know about you, but I didn't know that 5:00 existed twice in one day before I had this job. I was shocked. But really, I think this will help me get on with the morning routine I want. So far it's failed miserably, but I have hope. At least now I can get up at the same time during the week instead of having one day all helter-skelter throwing off the rest of the week.

Other things right now:

• enjoying American Idol and The A Daily Show
• waiting for LOST and Big Brother
• addicted to Terra chips
• finally sent in my laptop to get its sound wire repaired
  (who knew how much I would miss working speakers)
• hoping I get my laptop returned after the "you can't even ship me an EMPTY box correctly... hopefully you can send me a FILLED box correctly" issue
• Dan just got our desktop wireless keyboard working again
  (good thing the man has enough keyboards and peripherals laying around to sink a boat)
  
• laughing at my crazy cats who exhaust themselves running after a laser light
• trying to stay up past nine lately
  

That's all I've got tonight. I've added some new songs to the playlist. I might get ready for bed and read a bit.

Goodnight.

The flowers were hung on the shelving with care...

Apparently, "I might be back later..." meant a week later. The last week just up and left, and I'm sitting here at the end of January already. Wowsers.

Home front: after my last post, Dan and I went and saw several houses. I said three, but it was more like four or five. None of them really matter except for ONE that we really like(d). By the next morning (Thursday) both of our stomachs were in knots because we couldn't decide between the top choice (house1) in our first grouping of 11+ homes, and this new one (house2). If you remember, house1 had the master bath issue (because it's sans jacuzzi tub and that's a no-no on my list), and house2 has everything we want in it. The more we thought about it, the more we really wanted house2. Buuuuut, since it was just reduced in price, the seller decided to wait 10 days to accept more bids. DRATS. The special contract on this house also requires any inspections to be done before you bid, so we're taking in inspectors tomorrow morning. If all turns out hunky dory, then we'll make an offer by Friday. The cut-off for offers is Monday the fourth, and the seller will make their decision then.

Oh, and let's not forget to mention that there are already TWO OFFERS standing on this house. So if you're so inclined, we would love some prayers sent our way that we put in the best offer. Muchas gracias.


Wedding front: all is done with Mandy's wedding and the happy couple are down at Disney for the week. Whew! A year's worth of planning over and gone, and a beautiful wedding to show for it. I carried the flowers above and now they're hanging happily to dry. I'll let the bride share her details when she returns. Now I plan to get my hair trimmed up and in some sort of style, even though the pulled back look has been my style of choice for a while now.

Tomorrow: hump day means working early. Dan and I will meet our inspectors (aka family members with varying super powers) around 10a and take them to lunch before returning to work. After that, who knows where the day will go. I still haven't figured out the scheduling-my-everyday thing or the routine thing. I've just been going with the flow of our home search and whatever else pops up. It's sure been nice to let go of things, but I think too much is flying in the air now. Time to bring it all back down to some level of predictable-ness and focus.

Goodnight Tuesday.

Pondering + anticipating...

Out of the 11 houses we've looked at so far, we're down to two favorites.  Actually, you could say we're down to one favorite, but we wish we could take the master bath from the one and stick it in the other.  IF ONLY.  Last night we went and looked at the final two again to get pictures and another run-through - the looks, the feelings, the similarities, the differences.  One seems to come out on top, except for that darn bathroom issue.  While we have those houses fresh in our minds, Dan and I are going to look a little farther down the road tonight.  THREE more houses (I think) are on the agenda to compare with our top two.  I'm excited to see new places and compare.

Tonight - looking at houses, thinking about my Matron of Honor speech (yikes), maybe finishing up some "best me" stuff since there's a new prompt, and I might be back later with some pictures and house bits. 

Let's do the humpty-hump and get this Wednesday afternoon moving!