On the Home front

Things are moving too slow but I shouldn't complain because it took 8 MONTHS for our Ogden house to FINALLY get financed for a assumption loan!!!  5 weeks I SHOULD be patient for.

We got the appraisal back on Tuesday and the house appraised for more than our loan, so that's great news.  In the report, I found interesting, it had 2 of the other homes we looked at as comparable houses. I have no idea how some of those houses can ask what they are because according to the appraisal values I don't think it's possible.  The problem is that the market is crummy, for selling at least, and so all these homes are being compared to the many short sales and forclosure houses which are A LOT cheaper.  We got our house at nearly a short sale price and really feel like in the end, with living there for a while, that we should make out well if we ever NEED to move.  However, that's not in the plan by any means.  So these other houses are nice and all and feel like their homes are worth the price their asking but the other homes around are bringing their values down.  So good luck to them trying to get that much for their houses. 

Craig and I feel so blessed to be moving to this house.  Here's the inside scoop of how we feel our house FOUND us.  (I use this blog as a journal type but also keep up with family so this might be long-beware) 
Craig and I are really religious and when it comes to big decisions in our life we feel it's EXTRA important to involve the Lord in our decisions and ask for guidance.  When we first got the phone call from Ryan about Kleinschmidt, it took a really bad situation to get me to even think twice about it.  At the time, Craig's hours at work had been cut to 30 and his salary got cut 10%.  Oh man it made me furious.  I felt like Craig went to school and worked his butt off to deserve better than that.  They had told him it'd only be a few months but still in December we were going on 6 months with no change.  I was picking up extra hours at work, thank you Dr. Jessen's office, and things were actually okay.  But the thought of quitting my job when we wanted to have baby #2 sounded unrealistic with a truck payment, car payment, house payment and cut hours.  Not to mention at his previous work there was no room for advancement-with along with it would hopefully be raises.  So we decided, after lots of study and prayer, to sell our house and make the journey to Maine with Oregon as the end goal  (They told us 3-5 years in our interview)  I would be able to stay home with the kids since working for this company would replace what I made and not-to-mention the growth that Craig has to look forward to.  I still remember the overwhelming feeling to text my friend Kristal about our house and the whole time we should've been nervous but I always felt calm like things would work out and they did.  We feel very fortunate to have lived in Maine for the experience and for the things we learned and grew from.  Also it was like a vacation that lasted 2 years.  Afterall, Maine is Vacationland.  We've done lots of fun things but it also feels like it's time to settle and "put some roots down" as Craig says.  Last summer when we were told there was a meeting about moving out West, I felt very confident and assured that we'd be moving in 2012.  Craig doubted but I got my famous "feeling".  Our friends doubted and made it sound like Kleinschmidt wouldn't move us and blah, blah, blah but I just kept positive and faithful and knowing the feelings I had.  He came back from a meeting in July and again in November that confirmed we were moving in summer of 2012.  At first I was stressed thinking about how to afford rent (it's about $400 more/month for what we live in now), who would accept dogs (not like I WANT to bring her-she's mean) and the timing of it all. We quickly found out that Craig would be getting a promotion & raise come Jan and also that they would fly us out to look for places to live.  That was when we decided we would buy a house if we found something.  And that's when the house shopping started.  We started getting familiar with the area, on a map of course, and figuring out things we wanted in a house that we wanted to raise our future kids in.  Some things included: a garage, at least 4 rooms (we're thinking 4 kids but we'll see what happens when #3 comes), at least 2 bathrooms, a decent backyard to at least have a trampoline & garden, good neighborhood for kids, schools are good for Jaycee and Hadi, not too much of a commute, a family room & living room, and wanted at least 2100 sq feet (some houses have less but feel big so the sq footage wasn't a huge deal) and at least 1990's home or newer (something newer in case we HAD to sell and could hopefully sell it quickly).  We weren't too picky but we def know what we wanted.  We did research of living in Oregon vs. Washington and found that Oregon has rediculous property taxes.  We're talking about $4000/year vs some homes we looked at in Wa that were $2000/year.  That was huge for us.  So that pretty much led us to go across the river into Wa since the commute of about 15 minutes from his office would be where we'd look anyway.  (We didn't want to live in Gresham which is a bigger city out skirts of Portland)  My mom had told that her uncle lived in Vancouver.  How Crazy!  So we called him up to talk about the area of Vancouver and if he had any agents that could help.  He gave us Doug's number, who we contacted right before Christmas.  It was about middle of Jan and Doug wasn't doing much and not really even contacting us so Craig got the agent a lady from their OR office used.  He was your typical agent and a go-getter, Pat was his name.  He quickly told us that with what we want and our price range that we'd have to lower our sq footage, only 3 bedrooms and probably something older.  I was bummed because we had found homes we liked in Wa with our wants, but kinda felt like maybe Oregon was where we should go at the time.  Pat also told us about USDA loans.  Pretty much they are for living in rural areas which provide 100% financing (we were thinking we'd have to do an FHA loan which require 3.5% down so about $8000 up front!!!) and also mortgage insurance was only $30/$100,000 of the loan.  That made a HUGE difference!  We QUICKLY decided we wanted to take advantage of the USDA loan.  The homes in Oregon that qualified for USDA were about 25 miles/30 min commute for Craig but we felt was worth it to get that loan.  Having cheaper mort ins would make up for gas money (thank you civic!)  After about a month we were having no luck in Oregon finding anything in the areas of USDA and in our price range.  I felt a little discouraged. We had gotten a hold of Doug and mentioned we wanted to do USDA and said he didn't mention it because at first we said only a 30 min commute for Craig.  Buying into USDA in Washington would make his commute 5 extra minutes, but there were TONS of homes.  We settled on the idea of Battle Ground and Ridgefield; Vancouver wasn't in the areas for the loan. We found so many houses!  By the time it came for us to fly out we had a good list and when actually out there we found at least 6 homes that weren't short sale that we would be happy with.  Our loan officer, come to find out, lives in Battle Ground and talked all about the area and how much he liked living there.  Even driving through the first day we loved the area and wanted to live here, but then we found the Ridgefield house.  We fell in love, but it didn't have quite the schools we wanted for the kids and it had no kind of shopping so I'd still have to drive to BG for groceries; also the commute was 5 extra minutes.  We felt like those were some sacrifices that could be made for this house that we loved!  We even had the last minute idea to go to church there on the Sunday we flew out.  (Although I wasn't impressed with the ward-it was huge and only ONE person was friendly and tried talking to us)  When our first offer fell through we said a quick prayer and felt what we should counter at and a day later we had lost the bidding war.  Our next decision was obviously BG but which out of 4 houses.  We spread the papers out on the counter and brought up pictures from online and 2 already went into "pending".  We said another prayer and decided to offer on "the second house-as we called it because it looked like another house but was the second one we found similiar to that floor plan.  We went with the one we ended up getting and felt SO good about our decision.  I'm still leary about bad ju-ju in the house, since the owners are getting divorced, but I think a blessing on the house will change that atmosphere (Craig thinks I'm silly when I say that).  Everyday I look at the house and more and more everyday I fall in love and know our house found us.  I'm really looking forward to the ward and hopefully we'll fit right in.  Oh, and after talking to our loan officer we found out we live about 10 houses away from him.  Ironic?  Makes me feel good because he had so many good words about the area.  So there's the story.  I just feel so much in my heart that Heavenly Father is looking out for us and helping in so many ways.  We've been faithful in our callings, even knowing when we're moving-we could just stop doing anything; also tithing is so huge!  I have such a firm testimony of tithing.  That's what calms me when I get scared about finances with moving to a more expensive area.  I just feel so blessed and full of thanks for my Heavenly Father and for my family.

So now that the appraisal is done we called the moving company and they came out yesterday to walk through the house to get a "tonage" of what we have.  We have the dates as of right now of closing on the house with a title company out here on April 30; movers coming on May 1 to pack up the house; truck coming May 2 to pack up boxes and that night we'll head for Pelham for the night and final good-byes.  We're hoping to arrive in Utah around May 6 or 7.  Then Craig will be flying from SLC to Nebraska for the 8 & 9 for a job site visit while I will stay in Utah.  He'll be back Friday sometime and we plan on heading for Idaho on May 12-sleepover somewhere-then continue our drive to Battle Ground at our new address on Sunday, May 13 with movers potentially getting there Monday, May 14.  I say potentially because sometimes they are a few days late.  And from there will be MANY hours of unpacking boxes and getting settled in.  We're so excited and can. not. wait!  I should be sad but I'm not at all.  Well minus missing my friend Julie and her family and leaving my brother and his family.  This has been a 2 year decision that has finally been ready to get going.