OUR NEW HOUSE....FINALLY!!

I know it has been awhile since I updated you on our house but I haven't had much to update you about. We had to switch lenders in the middle of the deal because we were getting the run around and very poor customer service from our first mortgage broker. After switching to another lender, everything happened so fast. We are closing on our house October 2nd and moving in the second weekend in October. I did the walk through at the house today and took several pictures. Ignore all of the tools laying around and extra wood in the pictures. The house isn't totally finished yet but you can get the general idea.

This is the front of our house. I LOVE the new deck. It is huge and has lots of room for Lexie to run around.
This is half of the kitchen......

This is the other half. All of the kitchen cabinets, flooring, and counter tops are brand new. We will also be getting a new fridge and stove after we move in.

This is the picture I took of the living room from the hallway. As you can see the seller hasn't quite got all of his junk out yet. Just alot of tools and machinery left laying around.

This is the Shed that is out in the backyard. I am sure Kevin will be spending most of him time out there.

This is one half of the backyard.....

This is the other half. We are going to put the railing up on the back deck ourselves, and next spring we will out up a privacy fence. Tyler wants to get a trampoline and pool but I don't know if we will get both. Definitely will be putting a wooden swing set out here for Lexie to swing. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. We will put more up as soon as we get moved and settled in.

UPDATE:

Yesterday we put in an offer on the house we have been looking at. The seller was asking for $122,500 and we offered him $120k and stated that he pays $5000 toward closing cost. We also asked for the following...$1000 refrigerator allowance, new carpet in the dining room/bedroom, rock to be placed under the shed, a railing all the way around the front deck, we asked to be able to pick out the stain for the kitchen cabinets as well as the window frames, repair the chain link fence in the backyard in the spot where it was droopy, run a waterline to the fridge, and we asked to have some input on how the back deck would be built so we could add a ramp to it in the future for Kevin's mom. I thought the offer was more than fair and I was happy with it. We waited till noon today and of course, the seller came back with a bogus counter offer today. I mean it was ridiculous. He raised the price by $3000 and asked us to pay $125k and declined to put a railing on the front deck for Alexis' safety, refused new carpet in what will be Tyler's room, said he would put dirt under the shed but not rock, said no to us having any input on the back deck, said we BOTH have to agree on the stain color for the windows and stuff, and dropped the refrigerator allowance to $600. Of course that wasn't good enough for me so I countered back with and offer of $122,500, yes he would replace the carpet in Ty's room and add the railing on front deck, I was OK with the dirt under the shed, said yes he will give us input on the back deck, and asked for $800 for a refrigerator allowance. We waited for about 5 hours and then we got the phone call that said we had a deal and he accepted our offer!! Can you believe it?!?!? We are going to own our OWN home. I am going to sign the paperwork tomorrow and then we have to have the inspector come in and check things out. We are supposed to close the deal on September 24th and gets the keys on the same day! I am going to try to go get a picture of at least the outside and post it sometime. Gotta go to bed...have a long, busy day tomorrow!

"The HOUSE"

So after looking at like 20 or more houses, we finally found the perfect house for us. It has been completely remodeled on the inside and the owner has added on a front and back deck. It is 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, has a 1 car attached garage, and a huge shed in the backyard. He has put all new kitchen cabinets in it along with new tile on both the kitchen floor and counter tops. The owner has completely finished the basement as well. It has a bedroom down there for Sam, a family room for the kids, a laundry room (with front load washer and dryer that stays), a bathroom with a shower, and a computer room. It is in Indianola so we will have to move out of Norwalk but that's OK because Norwalk is only about 15 minutes away when you take the back highway. It will be really simple for me to bring the kids here to mom while I am working and then go on to work and still make it on time. We are going to put in an offer of $120k and ask that he pay $5k towards closing cost and purchase a refrigerator since there isn't one there. I am nervous to see what he comes back with but excited at the same time. The kids LOVE the house too. They were both excited to hear that was the one we picked. I guess I will let you know what I find out tomorrow!!

Traci's Wedding

Saturday was Traci and Chad's wedding. We all had a good time and she was a beautiful bride. I was nervous to give my maid of honor speech but hit it out of the ballpark because everyone loved it. I even made Trace cry. LOL. I think the day went smoothly for the most part. It was a serious scorcher outside and we were out taking pictures for over an hour and a half!! We were all soaked in sweat and needed to re-shower. :) It was bad. We had just enough time to come in and cool off before going into the pool area of the hotel for the ceremony. I think it was hotter in there than it was outside!! The only other issue that we had was Traci having an allergic reaction to her dyed shoes 15-20 minutes before the ceremony and her feet swelled up and she was having an awful lot of pain in them. I rubbed ice on her feet and washed off all of the dye (I think) and rubbed hydrocortizone cream on them to relieve the pain. Everything worked out just in time for her to walk down the isle and no one else was the wiser. I have TONS of pictures but I will only post a few...you can get the big picture from them.

Traci in our room before pictures and the ceremony

Traci and I after my speech. You can tell that her eyes are red from crying. LOL

Tyler and Traci dancing at the reception.

Traci and Chad got married on Kevin and I's anniversary so she had a special dance lined up for us to dance to for our anniversary. My friend Jen grabbed my camera and took this picture of Kevin and I dancing during that song.

Chad and his son Dominic

Mr. and Mrs. Chad Thompson!!!

Visiting Andrew in KC

Last week while I was on vacation I took Sam, Tyler, and Lexie to Kansas City to see Andrew. We left on Wednesday and stayed the night in the hotel so we could pick him up early Thursday morning. He was happy to see us and the kids were just has happy to see him. They went swimming in the hotel pool and wore themselves out fast. It had been a awhile since Andrew had been in a pool and he made the most of the time he had. The 3 of them were running and jumping in, doing flips in the air, and belly flops. :)

After they were done swimming we took Andrew around to look for a job. We went to several places and there definantly were some opportunities out there for him. We decided to go to lunch at Cici's Pizza because it had been quite a long time since he had pizza. He really enjoyed himself and all in all we had a really nice visit.

Andrew, Tyler, Samantha, and Lexie at the hotel before swimming.

They wanted me to catch all 3 of them in mid air while jumping. LOL

Sam, Tyler, Andrew and Lexie eating lunch at Cici's Pizza

Traci's last fling before the RING!!

Last night was Traci's bachelorette party....OMG, I am still trying to recover. :) I took tons of pictures but I will try to only post the best ones.

We all met up at OHANA's for dinner and tried to kick the night off right. Traci started the night off with a shot called a "blow job", then got a drink called "the volcano." The drink was fruity and in the middle of the bowl was a shot of 151 lit on fire. Your supposed to mix it all together and then drink the whole drink but Traci decided to take a few drinks (with her penis straw) out of the middle. She was saying that her lips were numb halfway through dinner. LOL

(L-R) Heidi, Liz, Laurie, Laura, Me, Jen, Traci, and Paula

Our Chef, Tommy cooking our food!! It was so good and he did a great job!

Traci got lots of "treats" for Chad later!! LOL

We left the restaurant and went to Caberet, a bar in West Des Moines.....The drinks were plentiful and the shots kept coming....

See what I mean. There are 17 shots on that tray and they were all gone in less than 3 minutes.

Since we we were all out with a bunch of nurses, Liz brought a breathalyzer to make sure everyone was safe to drive.....

You can't see it in the picture but she blew a .26!! That is 3x the legal limit!!

All in all we had a good time but we all are definitely feeling it today!! I am way to old to go out like that anymore. Less than a week before the wedding.

Free at last....

It has been a busy week here. On Thursday I took the day off of work and went to Kansas City with my mom, Vickie, and Lexie to pick up Andrew from the bus station. Man there are some scary people down there. I made sure to keep a tight grip on Lexie so she didn't wonder off and get lost in all of the commotion. We got there about 15 minutes before his bus arrived so we had to wait. FINALLY....his bus pulled up and out he comes. He looked so skinny and tall. It had been 5 years since I had seen him. He found us quickly and came over and gave mom the biggest hug. I thought he was going to squeeze the air right out of her. He gave us all hugs and kisses and cried. It was a happy reunion. We had until midnight to get him to the halfway house there so we decided to go out to lunch. Andrew really wanted to go to Ryan's and after 5 years of prison food, I wasn't going to tell him "no." LOL. I seriously have never seen someone eat as much food as he did. He ate and ate until he was literally sick, but all he kept saying was "oh REAL food. This is so good!!" He left the restaurant holding his stomach and so full he couldn't move. Of course later he had serious digestion problems from the grease that he wasn't used to eating.

He needed clothes to wear and since he was so thin we decided to go to K-Mart and pick him up a few things. We actually went at a good time because they were having a pretty good sale. He got 5 shorts, 2 pairs of jeans, 4 shirts, a pkg of undershirts, a pkg of underwear, a belt, a wallet, an alarm clock, 2 pajamas, and a MP3 player all for $200. Not to bad. Funny thing...when he was trying on all of his clothes he walked out of the dressing room in the middle of the store in his underwear!! I yelled "ANDREW!!" and he quickly ran in the dressing room and said; "sorry, I forgot where I was!!" HAHA. I told him we were going to go to jail for indecent exposure!! I guess it will take some time to get used to following "normal" rules.

Of course my camera was out of batteries so I didn't get any pictures of him but I will the next time I see him and post them. We finally took him to the halfway house to get checked in. They went through all of his stuff and we had to write down EVERYTHING that he had. Of course he couldn't have the alarm clock I just bought him because it had a radio in it and he could only have one without a radio. They wouldn't let us take any pictures there since it would be a HIPPA issue so I still was unable to get any pics of him. So after he was settled in for the most part, I drove back into town to Wal-Mart and bought him a different clock and hangers since i forgot them before. We went back and dropped the stuff off and said good-bye and was back on the road around 5:30p. Lexie was cranky on the way home but we made it OK. It was good to see him and I hope he will be OK. I am thinking about going back down there next week since I am on vacation but I have so much stuff going on with Traci's wedding, buying a house, and Tyler's birthday party that I don't know if I will be able to afford it. I am certainly going to try though. If I do, I will make sure to get pics and post them.