What a Difference A Few Days Make

I think the day of my last "real" post was Thursday. ( I'm not counting the comment on the hot weather - the way things are heating up around here, that could just be a daily insert to every post I write. I could just make "Wow, it's hot here today. In other blog news.." the default introductory sentence to every post from now until - October, most likely.)

But I digress. My last real post was Thursday, and now it's Wednesday, and wow, have big things happened between then and now. On last Thursday, I was thinking that we were about 10 days away from real house shopping here. The plan was for us to start looking at everything available in the area we wanted to move into after Memorial Day, and hopefully find something to make an offer on as soon as our house closes in WV (around June 1).

I knew we really couldn't do much before then because there are so few conventional sales out there (mainly foreclosures and short sales), and we have learned that banks don't really accept offers with any kind of contingencies. However, that didn't stop me from daily perusing through every online real estate listing site I could find just to see what was out there.

It was on one of these online forays on Saturday morning I ran across a house that had been listed just the day before. It was right around the corner from Jacob's school, had four bedrooms, two living areas, a large backyard, and a pool - all in (but at the top of) our price range. Even better, it was not a short sale or foreclosure.

I emailed our realtor, and his response was that yes, he agreed that it seemed like an great value for the location, and we looked at it after church on Sunday. We mulled it over that night, Jason made some calls, and we made an offer on it Monday afternoon. Carl (our realtor) told us that we certainly didn't want to wait longer than that. Actually, what he said was that we could take a few days to think about it, but we would be thinking about a house that wouldn't be there anymore.

After we made the offer, we waited. I was feeling like there was a good chance we would be outbid, because we offered lower than the asking price. Plus, we knew that other people were already looking at it - when we were in the house on Sunday, there were about 9 realtor cards of people that had already shown it in the first 24 hours that it was listed.

However, about 5:30 we learned that they accepted our offer! A son and daughter are selling this house that belonged to their father, and she already signed her acceptance of the offer last night - he is supposed to do it today. Apparently the daughter is happy that it will be bought by a young family - and a minister, as well.

So, wow! All our big plans for days filled with scouting out everything next week were condensed into about forty eight hours.

So now we wait for the Morgantown house to finish up, and then we will hopefully be in the new house by the end of June! Everything so far looks really promising.

Thanks again for all of you who have continually prayed for this long process - we are really, really blessed that things are going so well.

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Morgantown House News

We've got some more good news concerning our Morgantown house. (I started the post this way for my mom, who understandably gets nervous at "mystery" news announcements when we have such a big thing going on in our lives).

Anyway. The house was inspected Sunday, and we got the report of things that need to be changed yesterday (instead of at the end of this week, which is when we were expecting it). There are only a few minor things on the list that they have requested that we fix up, and then we can move on to the next step of closing!

We did go and talk to our Fresno realtor last week to start feeling out the house-buying process here. As you might imagine with the current economy, the Fresno housing market right now is primarily foreclosures and short sales, with a sprinkling of conventional sales in between. The conventional sales in the area we are looking at are priced largely above our budget, so we will most likely want to go with a bank-owned home. This means that we will need to wait until the Morgantown house closes to really do any serious looking, since we will have to have all our financial ducks in a row to even talk to the banks.

But this is fine with me. I am just still so happy that our house is in escrow to begin with, and that everything looks good back east!

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An Offer Was Made...And Accepted

After officially signing and initialing lots of papers today, we are officially under contract with a buyer for our house in Morgantown [pause for sounds of great celebration here].

We actually received two offers on the house on Saturday. The first was really low. But it was an offer, so we were wondering how high we might counter bid without losing any possibility of this very valuable chance to sell. (Yes, our house, the albatross.) While we were wondering this, we got a second offer that was $20,000 higher than the first.

Hmmm....let's see...which one should we take?

So today we signed the papers and are hoping and praying that everything goes smoothly for this transaction. If all goes at its best, we might close as soon as the end of May.

Thanks to all who were praying for this to get started, and we would appreciate your continued prayers for this to work out and as we look for a house here.

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The God Filter

It's early still here on the West Coast, but I have to admit that today already has the workings of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It's actually been percolating in the big coffee pot of my life for several days now, but I'm afraid someone left the top off of the pot this morning, and it's all threatening to spurt out everywhere.

I hesitate to write about this because I don't want to be one of those negative, gripey people who are complaining all the time. I don't want to be a "glass-half-full" person, and I certainly don't want to make others feel bad or unsettled by my mulling over these things out loud. I want my blog to be a positive place, filled with goodness and light, with a fair sprinkling of wit and dry humor on top. However, I think we all would be amiss to think or act like there are no annoying or stinky things in life. I think that a greater good can come from facing adversities big and small and seeing them through the God filter that we've been given. In this was can hopefully shun these minor things that don't matter, and set our minds on greater things, as it were.

Plus, I learned long ago that I personally can get through yucky things better by getting them out in the open, talking (and usually writing) through them, and then going on. I think that my God filter is harder for me to apply when I keep things inside, and almost impossible to use when I try to pretend that everything is just fine. Perhaps it says this on the God Filter instruction sheet somewhere. Something like fine print that says, "for external use only".

It probably also talks somewhere on the God Filter instruction sheet that talking to others constantly about our troubles is not such a good thing, either. Negativity breeds negativity, you know. So, I suppose there is that fine line somewhere, as there is in most things.

Anyway. That being said, here are the things that are on my "Terrible, Horrible, No Good List" for this morning.

1. For some reason, I was convinced that the Open House on our Morgantown house would be very well attended this past weekend, and that it would be the thing that would bring us a buyer. We haven't heard any news about the Open House at all, and I'm assuming that no news is bad news in this situation. We also haven't had any calls about offers from it, either.

2. I think I might need to start job hunting. Today. (See #1).

3. I think I might need to go back to West Virginia to check on the house now. (See #1).

4. All I'm going to say about our current sports situation is that from now on, I'm going to refer to the boys' sporting events as our "Perseverance and Persistence in the Face of Challenging Times" lessons. See, that's putting a positive spin on it, isn't it? (Please notice that I said that they were "our" lessons.) I guess I could also call these events our "Realizing That Our Value Comes from So Much More Than What Happens in a Ball Park or Gym" Lessons.

5. My Ipod touch is no longer charging. Most of you know that this is a piece of technology that I love and depend on for entertainment value, especially during gym workouts. Unfortunately, it costs about $80 to replace an iTouch battery (see #1).

6. Little bugs are eating my beautiful perennial seedlings that I was planning to nurture with love and eventually plant at our new house. It's a bug all-you-can-eat salad bar out there for them. Some of these are seeds that I brought with me from my flowers in Morgantown, so they kind of have a sentimental value.

Now, let me place the God Filter over that...and of course I can see that none of that really matters at all. In fact, with the God Filter over it, I can't really see any of those things at all anymore. For some reason I just see a mental pictures of a spring of water... here is Jeremiah 2 again:

My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that can not hold water.

Today I think I will just pray that God will set my mind on that spring of water - and I'll keep that God filter handy, just in case.

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