A Couple of Updates

After sufficiently working myself up about this last weekend, things went just fine. I wish I had amazing news, like "We've bought a house!" but the most I can say is "We have pre-qualified for a loan and so we know what our payments will be and we know how much house we can afford to buy!" Believe it or not....that's great news as far as I am concerned. I was very worried that finding out that we qualify for way more house than we can afford payments for would really depress me. But it doesn't. There is a freedom now in knowing where our ceiling is. There is no more wondering if we will be able to buy a certain house that we see online. We can know, without a doubt, that if it is below our "magic number", we can buy it. We also know, without a doubt, that for now, there are very few homes below our "magic number". As I've said before, I am not interested in stretching our budget to places it does not belong. There are other limitations we have, also. We have a life where we are and have no intention of moving so far away from our friends, family and church that our gas bill eats up whatever we may have saved in house payments further out from the city. So where we stand is this: We have one home in particular that we are very interested in. It is a condo that is being renovated. So far we have seen the 3 bedroom and the 2 bedroom. The 2 bedroom has been finished and it is adorable. The 3 bedroom (the one we want) has not been finished, so our realtor is going to check with the seller to ensure that it will be finished to the same level of adorablity (is that a word?) as the 2 bedroom. If it is....we will more than likely buy it. If the 2 bedroom has upgrades that are not included in the price of the 3 bedroom, then we are not interested. Did you get that? Clear as mud? Bottom line....we will know tomorrow whether or not we are purchasing our first home. Mark and I have prayed about it and feel that if God closes this door, we will see what pops up in our area, in our price range, for the next two weeks (there is a reason for the "two weeks...it's not an arbitrary time frame). If we only find things we feel we would be "settling" for, then we will renew our lease here and see what happens in the next 6 months. I am really amazed at how much peace I feel about the whole situation. I have a renewed sense of God's sovereignty and feel very protected. He may just be saying that now is not the right time, and if He has something better for us down the road, or something He's trying to protect us from now.....I want to listen to that.

So everything and nothing has happened in our home buying endeavors. I will let you know what tomorrow brings!

The other update, for those of you who read this post, is that everything has been resolved with my bank. As of yesterday. That is right. It took from June 30th to August 25th (yes, that is almost 2 months) to get things fixed. The guy who finally took care of things for me couldn't have been nicer, and he even gave us a $25 deposit to our account for the trouble we went through, but it was too little, too late. Unfortunately, I have to stay with my bank for the time being since we have the whole "home buying" ball rolling. Our mortgage broker said it would be fine if we switched, it would just require more paperwork, but from what I hear, buying a home already has enough paperwork, so for now....I am staying put. But not forever. In all honesty, September is the world's craziest month for us, so the fewer extra things I have to put on my plate, the better.

So now you're sufficiently updated on what's going on in our house. Oh....except for the most important thing! Micah is walking!! He's been taking a few steps here and there for awhile now, but today he was all over the living room. I guess he knows he's going to be one in a couple of weeks, and he really wants to be able to show off at his party!