Freakin' Short Sales

For those of you not in the know, Tom and I made an offer on a house about a month ago. It was a pretty good deal for the house. There were a few issues on the house, but things we were willing to overlook because overall the house was a good buy. Tom might have a different perspective on these things, but for me....here are my issues.

The look of the front of the house is not your normal look I would choose, plus the driveway is really short and the plot is a very strange shape. It's also built kind of on a slope, so the backyard is sloped down on part of it. The backyard is also not landscaped at all, so it will take a lot of work and sweat equity to make it into a workable space. Because the house is built on a slope, the back of the house is a long way from the yard. It has 3 different balconies, but no back entrance into the backyard. What this means is when Jake needs to go outside, at this moment, we would have to go out the front of the house and walk around to the backyard.

However, there are a lot of really good aspects to the house that I love. It is a split entry house, that is fairly new (built in 1995). The inside of the house is in really good condition. The kitchen (which has become kind of important to me) is pretty large and the kitchen, dining room, living room, and upper hall ways have wood floors. Plus there are a lot of open windows and good lighting & a gas fireplace. It has 3 bedrooms and an additional living room downstairs.

So, I like the inside of the house not so much the outside. However, with a lot of work it has potential. Here's the problem we're running into though, it's a short sale. For those of you that don't understand what I'm talking about, a short sale is a house that the owners can't pay the mortgage on and hasn't had any luck selling the house for the amount they owe the bank. So, the bank has agreed to accept less (or short) of what they owe. The problem with this for buyers is that your offer has to be approved by the owners (who get nothing from the sale so probably could care less) and any bank or banks that are owed money for the house.

When we were considering weather to make an offer we were told that the seller's agent said she had spoken to the bank and had a verbal agreement for the sale price. However, we knew from other stories we had heard that it was iffy. Turns out we were right. We put 30 days as the expected time to hear back from the bank. Our 30 days are up on Monday so we have little hope that we'll hear back on anything in that time. Last we heard it would be probably the beginning of Sept. Than another month or so to close. However, we have friends that are in the same boat and are still waiting to hear on their house that they were suppose to know about a month ago. I personally don't have a lot of faith in this process. The most annoying part is not having any idea when we'll know. It seems their process is to say we'll be getting an answer any day and then say the next thing the next day to string us along. ANNOYING!!!

So now we're thinking maybe we'll spend more money than we were originally thinking. This has been kind of difficult for us. Going from real estate prices in Utah and Idaho to here in Washington has been a bit of an eye opener. It takes some mind warping to not freak out at the higher prices. And now to go even higher than we were originally anticipated is even funner. The reason for this is the quality of the house. You go from a house you're so so about to houses that are actually in pretty good neighborhoods and are in good condition. It does bump up our monthly price by about $150 per month, but there is a part of me that thinks it might be worth it.

What do you think? Not that it will change my mind, but I'd like to know what you think!

The Weekend

This weekend was kind of fun! Although this may all be very boring for all of you folks, I have decided I should blog more. My main problem with blogging very much is I just don't see why people would possibly be interested in all my movements. However, I know that I'd rather know what my sisters are doing regardless how interesting they thought it might now be.

Friday: Just as I was getting ready to exercise Tom gave me a call to invite me to lunch. There is a little place down there that serves pancit and lumpia (this is Filipino food for those not in the know....where I served my mission). I had told Tom that I wanted to come to lunch with him so we could go back there again. It was delicious of course. I had chicken adobo with rice and pancit. Tom had Teriyaki chicken with fried rice and pancit. Teriyaki is not really Filipino but it goes well with the rest of the food and is widely liked. We both enjoyed it and had enough left over to eat it for dinner that night. That night after "dinner" we got to finally go see Harry Potter at the movie theatre. Loved it. It had been long enough since I had read the book that I didn't remember every single step of the movie, but still remembered enough to understand what was happening in the grand scheme. (As a side note, Tom had just recently started reading this book). I thought they did a really good job with the movie!

Saturday: We spent the morning cleaning our church. We only have 2 wards that share our church so we have cleaning assignments every other month. They have a pretty effective method here than I've ever seen. They have a peg board with about 10 jobs hanging from them with laminated paper. You grab a job and move it to the "done" pegs when you're done. When all the slips of paper have been moved to the done spots you are finished. It only took about an hour. That afternoon Tom's office had a picnic at a local lake & park area. We brought sugar cookies that I of course bought at the store not made by hand. Sugar cookies are impossible. Especially the frosting. If anybody has an easy frosting recipe I'd love it! I ruin it every time I attempt it. Anyway, I got a little off topic. So, we went to the picnic. Tom of course had volunteered to take pictures at the picnic. It turned out to be pretty fun. It was kind of a chilly day, but I know myself well and dressed for it so I stayed pretty warm. Tom had a few guys that he originally started at the shipyard that work in the same "department???" as him that I had met before that were there. Very nice guys. One of them brought his fiance that I had previously met as well. Overall (including the food) it was an enjoyable evening.

Sunday: Sunday evening we had the enjoyable experience of having Tom's cousin Jared and his wife Nicole over for dinner. Luckily for me Tom decided he wanted to make dutch oven for them. Than means very little prep for me...yeah!!! I had made some bannana bread earlier that week and made a green salad. Tom did most of the work by making BBQ ribs. They were very good, but a little spicy. Plus we both agreed that the next time we make these we will buy a better cut of meat. These were a little fatty and lean on meat. The dinner was very good, but the company was even better. We had a lot of fun and even got to walk around the dock area when we dropped them off. Jake was pretty good with them too, so everyone had a great night I think. Plus they brought cheesecake!!! I love cheesecake and it was delicious!

Awesome weekend!

New Challenge

Yesterday in church a young man, who recently graduated from High School, bore his testimony. In his testimony he told about how he had read the entire Book of Mormon in one month. He figured out that if he read around 18 pages a day he could do it. It was a very interesting testimony and idea. To just read the book consecutively without doing research along the way. It's something I've heard before occasionally, but never really considered doing personally.

After the talk, Tom decided this was something he wanted to try. It had been a while since either of us had read straight through the Book of Mormon. I tend of jump around a lot and go really slowly. I also usually do a lot of research as I'm reading as well. I decided this was probably a good idea for me as well. We decided not to do it together (too difficult) but we are reading approximately the same passages on the same day....just separately.

I've done it two days so far and have really enjoyed it. Of course I am very familiar with the stories I am reading, but to reading it as a story instead of looking deeply for lessons that I should learn from it has opened up new emotions. It's going to take a lot of dedication and focus to make sure I complete this goal. I hope I'm able to complete it. It helps that Tom is there to encourage me along the way!! I love you babe!