Gratuitous baby pics can be found here! So click it!
Title from Wolf Parade)
So these last few months have been crazy. We figured in our infinite wisdom that we'd like to sell our place in one of the crappiest markets. Part of our reasons are we're kind of running out of room in the town home, the mortgage rates are really low and quite frankly, I think we can afford something bigger.
We put the house up for sale some time in March thinking that it would sell really fast. I mean, we had the only place with our floor plan for sale, the location is great and we chose a decent price to sell for. This is when we discovered that the market wasn't as good as our agent said it could be. I think a lot of what killed us was the state money available for people who bought new houses (still angry about that since it's another one of those wonderful bailouts).
After the state money ran out and we lowered our price $10k, we finally started getting some people looking as well as some offers. I found it both funny and infuriating with the kind of offers coming through. One was for like $15k less than we paid for our place brand new! I now know why it's good to have an agent because if someone called me with an offer like that, I think I would just start laughing on the phone, call them some dirty names and to call back when they want to be serious. In the end though, we found someone that gave us a decent offer (this after like 3 months of being on the market).
Once we got our offer, it was time to start looking for a place of our own. I don't know which is worse, selling a home or trying to buy one. I was hoping that it would be like kids in a candy store but after you take into account all the things we both want/need, your choices are really limited. We finally decided on a place that's funny enough, only like 2 1/2 blocks away from our place. I still have to deal with slow and crappy internet but I just couldn't quite bring myself to live in Spanish Fork and Leslie still isn't ready to move to the north valley or Salt Lake.
We have a lot of things signed and so far things look good. Our buyers seem to have their stuff in order and we don't anticipate any problems on our end so keep your fingers crossed. If all goes well, we'll close on the 3rd of August and we can move into a bigger house.
In some ways I'll miss this place but I kind of feel like we're not leaving at all. I mean, we're talking only a few blocks away, we still have access to the club house and pool, same TV and slow internet. I guess my need for adventure will have to wait another few years when I either get sick of my job or they go under for whatever reason. I'll tell you what I won't miss though, the stupid parking situation (still think we got the screw on that).
So kids are doing well. I hope you clicked on the link above as I included comments on all the pics for the occasional lawl. Parker has been growing... and growing and growing. Kid is getting big. Not necessarily chunky, just big. He has kind of an ornery disposition but when he's happy he's REALLY happy and has a really big silly smile. He's starting to get ticklish so I've really enjoyed that. Oh, and the best part is he's finally starting to sleep the whole night which has slowly brought sanity back to our house.
Gavin has been going to summer school partially so he can interact with other kids and partially so Leslie can have a break from him for a few hours of the week. He seems to really enjoy going so I feel it was money well spent. Gavin and Parker seem to get along OK for now. Parker is actually kind of enamored with Gavin since he's unpredictable and has way more energy than me and Leslie combined. I hope this lasts until Parker can actually defend himself since I know how big brothers can get.
Well, I'm going to stop writing this long post. Watch this blog for more pics of the kids as well as the exciting conclusion to the big move!
