Sunday, October 21, 2012

House Update

Well, permits for the house came back a week later so we were pretty excited that they hadn't taken the full 3 weeks. This was supposed to mean they break ground on 7/2/12. Well they didn't actually break ground until the following Monday 7/9/12. We went out every week and took pictures and at the end of July got an update from Hubble saying the house was to be completed on 9/24/12. This was a bit past the 65 days the builder had said it will take from the time they broke ground but I was just happy to have an end date in sight!

Well, we continued to just work and live our life with nothing too exciting going on and going to see our house every chance we got and the progress being made. Well on Labor Day my mom sister and I made invited for my baby shower with the address being my new address. On Tuesday I asked for an update from the builder to make sure the expected closing date was to be 9/24/12. This is when we found out there had been some type of delay (they said due to HVAC installers) and that estimated completion date was middle of October.

The next week consisted of fighting with the builder and trying to figure out what they were thinking, how this happened, and that was too late. All we wanted was to get us into our house. Well after a lot of phone calls and meetings they agreed to a date of Oct 8th. (Yes I had to redo all the baby shower invites, luckily my sister in law who was throwing the shower for me had just bought some so we used those.)

Well as it got closer to the 8th the builder called again saying the cabinets were on back order and was going to be another 3 week delay. Our realtor let them know that of COURSE this was not ok, that would put us at my due date and we needed in the house before the baby comes! They allowed us to upgrade our cabinets, and it was also with a different company. Josh went and picked them out and we continued on. Well then they said there was a delay with those cabients! Luckily it was only a couple days. Soooo after all was said and done the house was completed and we had our final walkthrough on 10/12/12 and were supposed to be able to close with the bank on that day as well.

Unfortunately at this point we ran into ANOTHER hiccup, this time with the bank. To make a long story (and more than our fair share of phone calls and e-mails) the Processor at the bank hadn't been doing her job, none of our paperwork had been sent to underwriting, she finally walked out on her job, and someone new took over. (this was after about a week of phone calls and e-mails trying to get a hold of her to get a real story, and then another week of phone calls to the bank to get the story about why we weren't closing on our house) so now it seems progress is finally getting made on the underwriting and we're in a race to see which comes first... moving into our house or the baby coming. We're hopeful that it'll be, we sign closing paperwork, then that day or the next we get to have our baby!

Needless to say because of all this work with our house it has been hard to be excited just about the baby. Next post I'll give an update on how the pregnancy has been, since we're now finally up to date on the "living" situation of our lives. HAHA

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Big News

SOOO on to the next update in our life, which happened on February 27,2012, we found out I was pregnant!! As excited as we were, this meant we really needed to consider what our next step in life was going to be to help take care of this little bump! And so we decided to buy a house!

Well, we have tried this once before, last summer, and we did not have much luck! It was frustrating, but luckily I think we stopped looking before we decided to never try that process again. So, with this new goal in mind, we went back to our bank and applied for another loan just as we had before.

After getting out loan approved about the middle of March we began looking again. Between Josh's and my schedule there wasn't many days we could go together, so he went with our realtor most of the time to see what we could find.Well the pickings were not near the same as they had been the year before and we weren't having much luck yet again. So we decided to look into just building a home.

After looking around we decided to go forward with building ourselves a cute little starter home, and signed papers for this on 4/28/12. The gentleman with the company told me "I can only move as fast as you can move" and so on 5/2/12 we went to the designer show house to pick all our colors, for cabinets, counter tops, and flooring. It only took about an hour and we were so excited when we left!

Well after a week we still hadn't heard anything from the builders. After numerous unreturned phone calls and e-mails we finally went down to the office again. There was another gentleman working and he was with other clients. We told him we didn't mind and we'd wait until he was free since leaving "messages" never got us any results. Once he was finished we informed him what we were waiting on and he told us to pick the colors and stone for our exterior. Josh and I drove around their subdivisions for a while looking at what we wanted then went back to the office with our selection.

This 2nd gentleman found our file, put everything together, confirmed our final selections and said we'd hear from them soon to confirm the blue prints.

Well it took unil 6/22/12 to finally approve the blue prints. We found out the reason for this delay later was they "lost our paperwork" which believe me we were calling and looking for updates at least twice a week, so I have NO idea how this was possible.

Well once again I wasn't able to be there so Josh went to the meeting with the builder to approve blue prints. Everything looked good so we gave the go ahead. We were told it takes about3 weeks to get permits back and from the time we get permits back it's 65 days until the house is complete. we were SO excited to have things finally moving, and this meant that we would be in our house middle of September!

(Also, in May we found someone to take over the lease for our apt and so moved in with the parents so that we didn't have to worry about paying rent on an apt and a mortgage.)

In other news during this time frame, on 6/13/12 we found out we are having a girl!!

We also went to St George June 8th or so for my cousin Lasca's wedding and to see family. This was a lot of fun and we enjoyed our weekend away and seeing family! There are pictures of this on my facebook page.

Will post more updates soon... hopefully sooner than 3 months apart. I hope to have this blog caught up to real time in the next couple weeks!

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Harry Potter WORLD!!!! and the rest of the trip

So for the most exciting day! We went to Universal studios on Tuesday and got to enjoy the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!! It was absolutely phenomenal! And must I say, I wish I could have a butterbeer with every single meal. It was just absolutely amazing and so worth the trip!!! HAHA, not that there wasn't more amazing stuff. The rides were great, had amazing technology/graphics that just blew me away. Ollivanders shop was really cool, and though I didn't buy a wand because I knew it would just get forgotten and be clutter in my house, the gentleman who did the show before going into the shop and chose the child to volunteer to get a wand did an amazing job at being eccentric. Overall just fabulous! There a a LOT of pictures for this, so I'll just refer you to Facebook where I have all of them posted. But I'll at least post the Butterbeer photos here :)



I was really impressed by all of Universal, and with Dr. Seuss land and all the amazing characters. We also had a Caricature done which was fun and something I had never had done before.

I can't remember much more from the trip. We didn't go back to Universal even though we had one more day with our tickets, mainly due to transportation. Since we had gotten through both parks already, and the tickets were only good for one park per day/no switching in the middle of the day, we didn't feel like we wanted to be there from open to close again, which was the only time the bus from our hotel went there. So instead we spent a day at Downtown Disney to get shopping done for Christmas and see a movie. The movie theatre there had a part that was dine and watch, sort of like the theatre here in Nampa, only way more high tech. There was a button on the table in front of us you'd press when you were ready to order or needed a refill or anything like that and the waiters/waitresses came to you. It was also set up Edwards style, so with big comfy seats and lots of room. We had the 4 seats in our row all to ourselves which was nice to spread out on.

On the way back home our flight out of Orlando was delayed, causing us to miss our connection in Minneapolis. So we ended up having about a 5 hour lay over there. Which gave us plenty of time to make a quick trip to the Mall of America!!! It was cool to see it, and someday we'll go back and spend more time there. We didn't get very far, and only went to GameStop to shop where I got the limited Edition Zelda 3ds. Tee Hee. :)
Well, after getting back to the airport, we had signed up to give up our seats if the flight was overbooked. Well, it was overbooked, but only because they brought the wrong plane to our gate. It was too small and there weren't enough seats for everyone! Josh and I had been upgraded to first class because of the delay before, and the 4th row that was supposed to be first class was actually the first row of coach... Well, we ended up just giving up our seats and getting vouchers for flights, food, and hotel. We flew into SLC instead and stayed the night there before finally getting back to Boise Sunday late morning. It was all totally worth the vouchers we got which helped us go to my cousins wedding in St. George in June and then also got us tickets to Disneyland this coming January :)

More to come later :)

Sunday, July 15, 2012

DisneyWorld Continued

We spent Sunday At the Animal Kingdom.We went to Rain Forest Cafe which was a bad idea for lunch. We had gone to Rainforest Cafe in Anaheim when we went to Disneyland for our honeymoon and had horrible service and horrible food. Well this time we had better service but the food was still very subpar. So we have definitely learned our lesson and will not be going back!




















There was a ride called Dinosaur that was pretty intense and we couldn't imagine taking children on it. We went on a "Safari" ride and saw a lot of cool animals. Ostrich eggs, the Rhino up close. From far away we saw a female lion though I didn't see that we took a picture. That was really fun. At one point the Ostrich stood in front of the vehicle so we were stopped for a while waiting for him/her to get out of the way.
Next day was Monday and we went to the Magic Kingdom. I still think haunted Mansion was one of my favorite rides because of the cool effects at the end. I have NO idea if it's like Disneyland's or not because that ride was closed when we got there. It seemed pretty crowded in the streets but it wasn't very crowded waiting for the rides.


















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The castle was of course gorgeous. Especially at night!! And I love seeing it all decorated for Christmas!! It just makes it that much better. Well this seems like enough for today. I'll post about Hollywood Studios and HARRY POTTER WORLD later this week :)

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Only 9 months later...

Well, it seems I've waited a long time to post again, and it seems I have a LOT I need to update.

So First off, we are back in Boise, actually Nampa at this point. I finally moved back to Boise with Josh over the Thanksgiving holiday. We moved into some apartments across from Chris and Jill. I went right back to Primary Health on State Street.

Our trip to Orlando was amazing! We had such a good time. We got there on Friday afternoon and after getting our luggage and our rental car made our way into town to find some grub. We settled on McDonald's, cause we're fancy like that ;-).

On Saturday morning we got up around 6 so we could go to the first session at the temple at 7:30 that morning. Orlanda has such a beautiful temple. It was such a great experience, there were only 4 of us in that session and the spirit was so strong and it was such a different experience with so few of us. Well after the session I talked with one of the ladies that helped direct the session for probably a good 20 minutes. She was so sweet and it was fun to talk to her. She told  me that the first session on Saturday was always empty but after that they never had enough room. It was easy to see this was true, the temple was packed as we were leaving and there were a lot of couples there to get married/sealed or to get their endowments. It is always such a blessing to see so many people at the temple and know it's so right :)

 Orlando Temple
 This was right after the temple picture... but I'm thinking it is from a wedding we went to summer of 2011
Me in front of the fountain at the temple

Anyway, so after the temple we changed and headed straight for Universal Studios Orlando!!
Josh does not let me take pictures often, so I'll try and add pictures of him if I ever find any...

Universal was a lot of fun. The movie scenes were so cool. The Twister was one of my favorites. The Mummy ride was impressive as was, surprisingly, the Simpson's ride. Here are just a few more pictures from this day
 This was at the restaurant we ate at. They had a lot of classic cars, as well as the dog from MIB, though it doesn't seem we took a picture of him... You'll find as this goes on we're not the best at taking pictures.
 Well, I couldn't figure out how to rotate it, but Josh is in this one!!


 The big Christmas tree. Since we came the first week in December everything was decked out in Holiday style. It was very awesome!

Well, I think this is enough for today. I'll try and get the rest of our trip up in the next week or so... This was only day one, but I'm sure the rest will go much quicker, especially as the pictures get fewer. haha.