Settling In, Having a Party

We are getting pretty well settled in now, all there is left to do is hang pictures and get decorations up, and clean the house. We are loving the house a ton and I'm having a great time organizing, as you all know how much I love to do that. We are having a little sump pump problem but we should have that resolved soon. Eventually we will need to get some paint on the very white walls but we will get to that whenever we get to it.
Having a party next Saturday, August 16th, as a housewarming. I hate the term housewarming because it implies that we need gifts (which we really don't) so we'll call it the "Check out our new digs". Details are: bring a side dish, dessert, or drink to share and bring your own meat. I will provide buns and burger toppings (tomatoes, onions, lettuce, etc). Starting around 6pm. We'll have some yard games and feel free to bring kids. Hope to see you there!

Reflections

As hard as it is, I'd like to step back for a moment and reevaluate the last couple of weeks now that we are in our new house. First of all, we love it. I personally love it more than I thought that I would. It is quiet and dark and in a great neighborhood and the house is huge! We haven't found the location to be very inconvenient at all. A quick 10 minute drive to almost anywhere, as found out by the many runs to home depot already. But, I'd like to share with you some of my thoughts about our situation and how things went.

I got a little frustrated about the whole house buying experience due to the lack in communication by all of the many parties involved. But you know what? As my dad always says, "It always works out". Though stressful, we got out in time for our renters to move in and we had just enough help to make it work. It worked out. And really, there are far many people in far worse situations than buying a really big house in a great location. And that leads me to my second thought: Boy, do I have it good! I was starting to feel kinda bad because I was being a big whiner about the delay and timing when I started to unload my many many belongings into my very very nice and big house. Shouldn't I be using my fortunes for better things than for myself? Yes, and that leads to my third thought: Come to our house! We want to have our house open to anyone and everyone. Need a place to stay? Wanna hang out for a bit? Need to host a party? Visiting for a bit? Having a meeting? Come to our house. We are very adamant about making sure that everyone knows that our door is always open to everyone. When I was growing up, my mom and dad had that same theory, and people would really just walk in the door anytime. Forget the door bell, just walk right in!

Though I feel bad about the amount of things I own and have that so many other people don't have in this world, I will justify and redeem myself by giving back to the community and using my fortune for other things. And learn that I should stop whining about the little things...

Again, I'll post pics when I find the power cord, which I hope to unpack tonight. Come visit, our house is always open!

We're In!

Yesterday, Thursday, we signed our closing papers at 11am and finished moving everything into the new house at 11pm (and worked in between that time too). I'd show you pictures but I can't find the cord for the camera so you'll have to wait until I unpack that particular box. Still need a little help moving individual boxes from the garage to the appropriate rooms and a little bit of furniture but at least everything is at the new place!

Thursday

I think that we are actually closing on Thursday! Yes, tomorrow. Still waiting for them to give the actual go ahead but that's more for us because things have changed so much, we don't believe anything the first time it's said. But I'm going to be the glass half full person today and say, yes, we are closing on Thursday! We still have to rush to have everything out of the house by Thursday evening in order to let our renters move in on Friday, but I think we can do it with a little help from our friends. (Can anyone say "Wonder Years"). Anyway, we are pretty much camping in our own house right now and after tonight we'll have nothing in the house at all, but a little in the garage. Thursday morning the carpet cleaners come and after we sign paperwork, we will run over to our old house and move the trailers and a couple of trucks with our remaining stuff over to the new house. We will be unpacking when we can, but just need the "camping" supplies for the first few nights in the new house. By the weekend we'll be unpacked and returning the trailers to our friends that so graciously lent them to us.

Getting closer...

A friend in Search and Rescue let us borrow a trailer for the week on Saturday! It's 29 feet long so fits most of our stuff. We spent half of Saturday and Sunday filling it up and are pretty close to having everything all packed. We are pretty much camping in our own house for the next couple of days and plan on having Tuesday night be our last in the Layton house. As soon as we close, which is hopefully Wednesday (we'll find out today), then we are ready to move right on in! We will have everything out of our house by Wednesday morning and will have it cleaned and ready for new renters on Thursday night.

Anyone that can help on possibly Wednesday day to clean or night for unloading a trailer would be much appreciated! I'll keep you posted on the actual day as soon as I know!

A sigh of relief

Last night, we found a renter! Actually, we found two. Out of all the people that came and looked at our house, finally two people in one night wanted it. Hallelujah! So we will be finalizing and choosing a renter today, both wanting to move in by August 1st. This is great news because we will not have to pay the mortgage on the old house this month! We are really excited and breathing the proverbial sigh of relief.

We are in the final stages of figuring out the moving plan for the next week but I can rest my organized mind on the fact that by next Friday, we will be completely out of our old house and at least on a mattress in the new house. All of the things that need to happen in the next seven days are daunting but not impossible. Hopefully with the help of our friends this weekend and next week, we can accomplish the task of moving a whole house. We will be packing up all that we can this weekend into either borrowed trailers or a U-Haul so that come moving day, we are ready to just drive up and unload. We will know today a better estimate of when we will be closing and will make a plan for either completely vacating the house and staying at my parents cabin for a few nights or staying until the closing date. If the closing date is later, as in Wednesday or Thursday, we will probably move out and stay at mom and dad's so that we can get the Layton house cleaned and ready for tenants on Friday. If we close on Monday, than we can just move right into the new house with a few days to clean the Layton house. Either way, we have a plan and I like that!

Call to those that can help: We need some people to help us just fill up a truck. No unloading necessary yet. So if you have an hour or two to spare on Saturday, we could use some hands to just load a trailer. With some help, it shouldn't take long at all. We'll post another call to arms for unloading sometime next week.

I'm giving you a couple of pics of our vacation to Maine. Most are pics of my niece, who loves her Aunt Meg and Uncle Mike. Thanks for all of your harmonious thoughts to get us through the annoyance of moving!

Uncle Mike and Gabby looking for rocks in Bar Harbor, Maine

This is beautiful Gabby, our niece!

This is one of my favorite things to do in Maine, go to Jordon Pond in Acadia NP, sit on the lawn and have Popovers (it's like a biscuit) with strawberry jam, yum!

Aunt Meg and Gabby coloring at Dana's house.

Update

Good morning everyone,

I just wanted to shoot out an update for you all and to answer some of the questions that have come up on comments. First of all, thanks to all of our friends that have been involved in the new blog... It's working! I love that we will get to keep in touch with all of our friends and family!

Ok, update first. I talked with our amazing broker, and friend, Brett yesterday and he gave me the run down on the deal here. Mostly, the underwriter quoted a longer than usual time to review our information due to a routine audit. Then on top of that, it's good old Pioneer Day today, pushing the expected return of paperwork back to either noon on Friday or noon on Monday. If he returns the paperwork by noon on Friday, than there is a chance that we can still close on Monday. If it's Monday than we'll get to close on Wednesday or Thursday. We put in for an extension on the closing date with the sellers (yes, the faltering Fannie Mae, good timing right), so that they don't charge us $100 per day past their requested closing date of July 26th. Hopefully they honor our request there. So it's looking like we'll close either Monday, Wednesday or Thursday next week. So much for being out of the house by August 1st! We are still hoping to have a renter come through for us before then cause we really need the income right now.

Here's the current plan: borrow one or two trailers from some friends this weekend, fill them up with everything but a couple of plates, a few sets of clothes, a toothbrush and our bed then come closing day, we only have to drive over to the new place and unload. With some friends help of course. We still may be out of the Layton home by the first... Need a cleaning crew to help though.

Answer time! The new house is in Mountain Green - totally forgot to mention that, sorry people! The new address will be 5849 Highland Cove, Mountain Green, UT 84050. Mailing address is a bit different cause Mountain Green is technically Morgan so if you are mailing anything to us it will be 5849 N. Highland CV, Morgan, UT 84050. Strange, I know, I'm still trying to figure it out. If you go to google maps, type in the address and then go up the street a bit to like 5870 and turn left. The new house has an American flag out front and the front of the house is made of stone.

We are going to have a big shindig once we get all moved in, probably like early September, so you all should plan on being there if you can. For those of you from out of town, you better come visit sometime and spend a weekend skiing or something.

I've been wanting to post some pictures for you all but couldn't decide what to post, what do you want to see? I want to show some pictures of our vacation to Maine where we visited with Mike's parents and brother's family along with a lot of extended family. But I keep forgetting to put the pictures on my computer! I'll post them soon. Anyway, until then, I'll give you a picture of me with April and Tasha when I visited them in San Fran in May. We had a great time visiting Napa, setting up their new apartment and just catching up on life.

Cheers~