Wednesday: (as in last Wednesday) We got our first offer on our house and made a counter-offer. I didn't want to mention it in last week's post 'cause I wasn't sure if it was going to go through or what.
Thursday: More showings of the house, so more cleaning. More packing.
Friday: Packing. And good times with a little stomach bug for me. Perfect timing. Dinner with friends and family one last time.
Saturday: They accepted our counter-offer! In under a month's time on the market, our house is under contract. Yea!!! Many props to St. Joseph for his intercession! Packing, cleaning, and a little Asmussen family going away party. Oh, and my last trip to Bahama Bucks. Red Raider with cream.
Sunday: Mass at St. E's. Lunch with friends and family at Spanky's. Brief nap for the boys and then time with G-ma and Papa Jeep for the evening. And yummy dinner at Orlandos for our "last supper." Very emotional farewell to end the evening.
Monday: Off to The Woodlands! Nine hours later we managed to survive the trip. I spent from west of Abilene all the way to Houston in the throw-up car with the two boys. Kolbe barfed twice. Once in a bag, once not so much. Such a lovely scent. The car has been airing out ever since. But thank God for leather seats!
Tuesday: Mark and I met with a mortgage lender first thing in the morning and got approved for our new mortgage at an awesome rate. (Yea!) Then the house hunt began. We saw nine houses and fell in love with one that we later discovered was totally out of our price range...especially considering the insane taxes here in The Woodlands. (Boo.) Had a pow-wow with the realtor and asked her just to focus on the ones in our realistic price range so we wouldn't needlessly fall in love anymore.
Wednesday: Looked at ten more houses. Exhausted. Overwhelmed. So much to look at and consider. Found another one we really like that is in our realistic price range. Thinking...thinking...thinking... On the way home from house hunting got our inspection report from the casa back in Lubbock. Tried to jump back to seller mode from buyer mode and process the whole thing. Ugh! There's so much to deal with!
And here we are. About to go look at a few more houses before our realtor has to go out of town this afternoon. I need a nap. And really, a margarita. But I'll hold back for a few more months.
2. Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
Pinkie and Pa have been getting to spend
3. I debated writing about two things for my third thought. Either the emotions of saying goodbye or the drama of house hunting. I think I'm ready to stop being sad about leaving and focus on the here-and-now for a bit. Besides, I'm sure I'll be writing about how much I miss everyone here in a week or two when all has settled down and I'm not as overwhelmingly busy and have time to miss the normalness of our world back in Lubbock.
So back to the house hunt.
Do you know that feeling when you're in the store and see something you love that's just a little more than you were wanting to pay??? Or say if you're looking for a new car. You decided you're on a minivan budget, but man, that extended Tahoe sure looks awesome...and would make me look like such a cool mom! It's only a difference in monthly payment of like, oh, two hundred dollars or so...
We're having a little bit of that problemo with the ol' house hunt. When we told our realtor our original price range, she (like I'm sure all realtors do...) extended the range of homes we looked at to include home that were over our price range. Like $25,000 over our price range. She went into the whole dog and pony show of how you don't have to offer them the full price and a lot of them have been on the market for a long time and are anxious to sell and they'd be willing to really negotiate with you and...
So of course almost every house we saw on the first day fit in to this category. At least $20,000 over our goal price range. And I have to give her this...almost all the houses in this area are priced like that. Hello! Have you ever been to The Woodlands!?! Let's just say that we are on the very low end of the totem pole.
Four or five houses in, we went to see a house that we just totally fell in love with. Ahhhhh...heaven. It had literally everything we would want or need in a house and needed absolutely no help what so ever. That dream house feeling. So surely since it's probably been on the market a long time and they're anxious to sell, and, and, and...we'd be able to get a great price on it. Just to find out it's only been on the market for six days. Six. If someone offered me twenty thousand dollars less than my asking price on day six, I'd laugh. Trying to remain hopeful, we went home to crunch numbers only to discover that really, it was completely unrealstic, just as we had predicted. Frustrated, we insisted that the following day, we only be shown houses that were realistic for our budget. But of course, with the images of our dream house forever burned in our minds. If only she hadn't shown it to us....
The homes the following day were rocky at best. Issues ranged from absolutely no backyard what so ever, to completely junked out foreclosure nightmare, to way-too-far-from-work-and-my-parents-to-be-worth-the-better-price, to Uh, I'm pretty sure there's no way our kitchen table would even fit in the space. So frustrating to find that the only things in your price range in a very elite part of Texas are things that would require thousands to fix or worse, couldn't be fixed at all. But alas, the very last house of the day was one where we finally saw a little light at the end of the tunnel. It's adorable. And aside from one of the bedrooms featuring cotton candy pink walls, really had absolutely nothing we would just have to change.
But, admittedly, that little let-down of It's just not the dream house was in the back of our minds. It's impossible not to compare! The biggest, most obvious element being a huge gameroom area in the dream house. It was set up perfectly to be a gameroom/school room/ office/ sewing room. Even having a little niche completely shelved out for my sewing business and big enough to fit a table where I could leave my machine set up and ready to go. I'm telling you. It was the perfect house in a dream world.
But the truth is, Mark and I are twenty-seven and twenty-eight years old. A lot of people aren't buying their first house at that age, and we're on our second! And certainly, very, very few are buying their "dream home." Of course, we see it and there's that human desire to think Oh, I want it so bad! Why can't we have it now? It was made for our family!!! But in reality, we want it now. We don't need it now. The other house we like meets every need our family has and then some. Sure, I'll still have to drag out and store away my little business every day. And that dream playroom will have to continue to dwell in bedrooms and cleverly stored in the family room. That, or the "formal dining room" that we have no formal dining room furniture to fill it with anyway could be that room...and be the first thing you see when you enter our home. Hi! Welcome to The Asmussens! Want to step on a handful of legos on your way to the kitchen??? But hello! That's where we are at in life! Really, who is coming to our home that we're trying to impress so much that this would be a problem? We are a young, married couple with two, soon to be three small children.
And besides, we certainly don't have to live in this house forever. In fact, the only thing that is holding us back from truly being able to afford a dream house at such a young age is the exorbitant student loan payment that we are making every month on Mark's student loans. (under-grad and grad adds up to be a lot, lemme tell ya...like student loan payment larger than mortgage payment) But guess what- ten years from now all of those loans will be paid off. And we'll be left with a huge increase in expendable income. And heck, if we decide we want a different house, we can go get a different house! And you know what, we'll then be the old, old age of thirty-seven and thirty-eight.
Kind of puts things in perspective. Sure, it's easy to want the Escalade when everyone around you is driving one. But I'm pretty sure Mark and I are cool enough to roll in the swagger-wagon for a while and be completely fine with it. Hey, it's not so bad being exactly where God wants you to be at each stage in life. We're just starting out. We're just beginning. And we have a long, long way to go. But when the right time comes along to change from the "young couple with a handful of little bitty ones" to the "relatively young couple with a pack of tweens and teens," the real "dream house" will be ready for our little family. (ok, I think we're probably already classified as a big family...)
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