First of all-- it's Spring Break! yay! And we only have 50-some days of work left before summer, which is mind-blowing! I'm excited, and scared because we should know in the near future what the upcoming budget cuts mean for jobs next year. I could be needing a new job, which is partly scary, partly exciting too. I'm comfortable in what I'm doing so as much as I would like a change sometimes, I think I'll need an involuntary move! I'll keep you posted.
So, remember we were planning to rent a house from a friend? They are now going to try and sell their house, which is great for them, but a change of plans for us. So, with the economy going to hell the housing market in Arizona is perfect for buyers. Ivan & I decided just to see if we could get pre-qualified, and we did! So we've been house hunting a lot in the past week. The good (and sometimes bad) thing is that there are hundreds of houses to see so it shouldn't be a difficult process. In fact, the first house we looked at was perfect so we put in a bid...so did 37 other people! That house had only been on the market for 6 days and the bank actually accepted an offer about an hour before we got ours in. It was a very pretty house with granite counter tops, stainless steal appliances, plantation shutters, wood & tile throughout except carpet in the bedrooms, a pool, hot tub, built in fireplace & BBQ in the backyard...so you can see why it got so many offers! The downside (only downside I think) is that the backyard was just filled with all those wonderful things, no grass. But I was pretty sure I could cope :) So, we kept looking and have actually put in a bid on another house. This one has been on the market longer with no bids so I'm hoping everyone's already seen it and didn't want it so it will be ours! Although it needed a little more work than the other houses we looked at, Ivan & I both felt it was the right house with the most potential and had all of our wants in it. It's a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath, with a pool and still a lot of yardspace, it's all commercial open lots behind the houses so you feel like you have a lot more room since you're not completely surrounded by houses, and it has a living room and a loft upstairs. Wish us luck! I spent a couple hours this morning with the loan people doing paperwork and still have a short list of documents I need to track down. I don't have pristine credit so I'm still scared at every turn that this could all go south! The mortgage lady seems confident so I should just trust but I don't want to get my hopes up and counting on something. I will keep you posted!
Mom & Dad just came to visit as they do every year around spring break. The first couple of days they were here I was still working so they got to lay out and hang around, at night we were looking at houses and one night went out to eat at this place called Rustler's Rooste. It's a pretty cool place--they have a Longhorn bull out front, sawdust on the floor, live entertainment, rattlesnake for an appetizer, and a slide you can slide down to your table. Kinda neat. Saturday we headed north to Prescott, had some lunch at this place called The Palace where Wyatt Earp & Doc Holliday used to hang out, and did some shopping. Then we kept going up to Page which is close to the Utah border. Sunday we took a float trip down the Colorado River which was pretty neat. We had thought it was leading into the Grand Canyon but learned it stops just before it because inside the Grand Canyon is white water rapids and you have to do a multiple-day trip. We weren't quite up for all of that! When we came back to Surprise we spent some time just hanging around and more house hunting.
I'm off the rest of the week but I think a lot of my time will be spent doing stuff for this loan! I guess it's good that I'm off so I can do all of that. It will be my project tomorrow cuz after meeting with her this morning I don't want to think about paperwork!
