Painting Pictures

It's not very often that I will post a bad picture of myself on my blog, so feel special. Not very many of the pictures turned out. I got a lot of pictures a blue wall or a bathtub and you can't really tell what color the walls are. So here are the 3 best. They are good progression pictures. All 3 are taken in the Babe's new room.

This first is a terrible picture of me so try to focus on the wall.

The next is the 2nd coat where the Babe is "helping" for the 2 seconds it took to take the picture. Don't worry, there isn't any actual paint on his roller. And me in the same clothes I wore for the entire week. We'll get there in the 3rd picture.

Now the 3rd picture is the Babe acurately describing what me, the hubby, my 2 children and my mother (who graciously watched my children all week) felt like at the end of the painting week.

Tomorrow perhaps I'll have my house in shape enough to take some moved in pictures which will show the colors of the walls also. But no promises this time.

Internet!!

Yeaaaaaaa! We are back online. Today I finally got my internet connected. It wasn't lack of trying. It is just very hard to find an internet provider here. I had to finally ask the ladies at church who they used. And I promise (for real this time) that I will have painting pictures up tonight.....

It's Offical!!!!!

The house is ours! We went in yesterday and today and started painting. So it's really offical. More painting pictures to come. Today I went outside to take the beloved picture of us in front of our new house with the sold sign and guess what? They had taken the sold sign away! Without even asking the homeowners. So here is the beloved picture minus us and minus the real sold sign plus the dummy sold sign.

House Closing

Today was the big day! We signed our lives away in a million places. We are offically homeowners*. The actual signing process wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. Today I got all the paperwork and read it all which was exhausting. They clarified all my questions, explained how everything was "unimportant" except like 3 pieces of paper, and we signed away. It was fun. They lady brought us in drinks, cookies, crayons and a coloring page (of course for our son) and our children still had major meltdowns. Afterward, we went to Target and let the Babe detox for a while.

Here is a picture of the blessed event:

This may be an actual picture of the real signing or just a dramatization.


This may be an actual picture of the real amount of paperwork or just a dramatization.

* Well not offically because the sellers have to sign and the transaction has to fund and record. So not quite yet but close enough.

Ahhhhhh!

Look....

Ok so these aren't the keys to our new house but they are! We bought a new lock to go on the front door of our new house! So they will be the keys to our new house! Soon.

Another Exciting Post About Our Soon To Be House

Ok the stress is pretty much over except the part where we sign our lives away in 500 places just in case they the first 499 times weren't enough. We are in the fun stage now. I went back to the house last week to show my dad and auntie. Combining trips, I also measured windows for curtains (not because the current owners are awful but because they are completely awful). I am also picking colors for paint. I have neglected to post pictures because I am waiting for the dramatic picture of us in front of the house with the sold sign up! But to let you in on a little surprise, the current owners have their sitting room (aka home teaching room...piano room....study?) painted Christmas Red with Christmas green couches and Christmas green blinds. And of course, I just brought in a few paint samples to try to match the bold blue carpet in the family room.

I am now one of those people who walk around Home Depot for hours just ooooing and ahhhing over all the fun stuff that I could do to my house! But because we will now be living below the poverty level we can in no way afford to do any home improvements save the much needed paint. Every time we leave that store with nothing the Babe says where are the groceries? As if we can't go to a store and not buy anything. Besides any project that I want to do costs upwards of $500 and that's a lot of money.

But the hubby wanted to mention that we are debt free for probably the last time in our lives. We have 0 debt! No credit cards, car loans, student loans....nothing! But it's a short-lived accomplishment. So congratulate me while you can.

My Mother's Day Present

I bought myself my mother's day present a few days before Mother's Day. I bought myself (via the hubby's money) a flat panel monitor! I love it! It frees up so much space on our computer desk! So I thought I was all lucky and special but today the hubby bought me a super duper special Mother's Day Present.

We signed an agreement on our first house! Happy Mother's Day to me! Isn't that the ultimate Mother's Day Gift? What better gift for a mother than a brand new home! Yes, I'm super scared and yall probably need to pray that we'll be able to eat now. But there's no turning back now (well actually we could get out by such and such date). But we're not going to turn back. We're going to buy our first house! It's so exciting! And scary.

The Stress Begins

After successfully moving, the hubby went to work Monday leaving me with an apartment full of boxes. I, being the rebellious person I am, have just simply skirted around them almost pretending they don't exist instead of actually unpacking them. Then when one of them gets in my way I simply take everything out of it and set the stuff randomly around the house in order to make our hallway walkable. It would probably be easier to just unpack the boxes and put the stuff away but where's the fun in that?

Anyway, I'm rambling. Today we started shopping for houses again. Have I said, I hate buying a house. I. hate. it. So the next 30 years few months of our lives will be stressful. We looked at 5 houses today. Add that to the 5 we looked at when we were looking before we moved which makes a grand total of 10 houses. (I realized 10 isn't a lot) I'm not sure how many more I can look at!

It's impossible to compare the houses because they are so different. One's nicely priced but too far from work, the other is overpriced but has a jungle they call the front yard, another is great on the inside but sitting on the side of a hill with our back door looking at a huge rock wall 3 feet from the door. It's impossible. The house we LOVE is a little bit too expensive for us but do-able. It also has 8 people living in it right now, which means it has more than the usual wear and tear.

So we think perhaps we'll put an offer on the house we love. That is the moment house shopping is no longer a game of dreaming about us living in this or that house/neighborhood. That's when it becomes scary and non-fun. The financing is frightening to even semi-educated people like us. The risk of buying an overpriced house is real. The thought of having an astronomical mortgage payment become a reality.

The American Dream of owning land and calling your house yours is no longer appealing to me. I think I will go stake out a nice spot for our cardboard box house in order to get that feeling of ownership.

I now understand why people have such pride in the ownership of their house. It's because it about killed them to buy the house.