Life or something like it..

I've learned a lot about buying a house over the last month, first never say you are closing until you are in the office signing paperwork! Our close got rescheduled 3 times in one week. We finally closed at 2pm on January 21st. We officially moved in Januarty 22nd.

I am loving having my own house. It is way more than enough room for Chris and I. I feel like we can start a family here. We have our fur babies Higgins and Achilles living with us, and we have all kinds of plans in store for the next few years.

The second thing that I've learned is that you can't pick your neighbors. The morning of the 22nd. We loaded up my jeep and then I headed to the house to start unloading while Chris and Randy loaded up Randy's car. We had actually dropped off everything from the storage unit the night before and Chris and left his card there over night in our garage. So it is about 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday and this older woman who happens to be our neighbor comes over and introduces herself, cannot for the life of me remember her name.. anyway she asked me if we were going to build a fence and I quote said "If you do you know you have to pay for that part of the fence right?" pointing to the side of her fence that runs next our yard. I just tried to stay civil and polite and said we hadn't decided yet on fence. When she left I proceeded to text Chris and let him know.

I could not believe the audacity of some people. Let me make this clear it is not written ANYWHERE that if you build a fence and your neighbor has a fence that you HAVE to pay them anything. Her fence was up before we signed the paper work purchasing the house. It went up the day after we signed our contract saying we wanted to buy the property. We have no legal requirement to pay her anything and since she came over like that and immediately said we do we have no intention on paying her a dime. Had she come over after she saw us putting up a fence and discussed it with us maybe we'd help re-imburse her something but not now.

Chris promises to take care of her when we do have our fence built, we have every intention to build a fence because we have a 90lb dog that we currently shuffle to Chris's mom's house and then back so we don't have to worry about him destroying our house out of boredom.

In happier news my lovely, wonderful, amazing parents bought us a sectional for our house. It is what they call a birthday/adoption day gift. It was way more than I expected. When we saw them for my birthday they said they would buy us a piece of furniture. I expected an end table or coffee table, maaaybe a sectional or some chairs for our dining table (a table they are lending to us for the time being). We are so happy and blessed and lucky. This gift allows us to have enough seating in our house not to make it feel like we live there. It should arrive tomorrow so we have to vaccum the living room and move the green couches up to said living room, then vaccum the family room and make sure its prepped for the sectional. I think Chris is going to put up the only set of permanent blinds we've bought so far.

Even as big and empty as our house seems to me at times it still already feels like home.

Oh on the plus side it has a 5 star energy rating based on the 2006 requirements. We also plan on recycling as much as we can. We just got a few more of the reusable bags to take with us when we go shopping. I think we have 4 now. I figure we'll get a few more each time. Go Green! Haha -_^

So many changes and it is only January!

So once upon a time Chris and I had a deadline in our head saying we'd have money saved up by Feb for a down payment for an FHA loan and so we'd start looking in January for a house. We were going to the store a few weeks ago before the Bronco's game to help his Mom and Step-dad do some grocery shopping and we drove past a new housing development that we've been interested in but has always been just out of our price range.. until that day.. they were now listed as "Starting in the 170's" so we stopped by the model home - no one was there. It was Sunday and the Bronco's were playing so we headed home and unloaded the groceries and watched sadly as they lost..

The next day was of course Monday and that is Chris and I went to see if anyone was there. The office was still empty. Chris took the number though and called the guy. We went back an hour later and we got to see a few of the homes they had finished. We walked out of there having decided on getting one of these homes. We found out about a USDA Rural Development loan that Weld County is covered under which allows us to get the home without a down payment and no mortgage insurance like what is required for an FHA that ups your mortgage by like 100 bucks a month for so many years.. We crunched the numbers and went back a few days later and signed a contract. We officially close on Jan 14th, exactly 1 month after we first signed the contract. I'm really really excited.

Mead, Colorado is a small town. There is no way getting around that fact but I like it! They have good school system and its a really friendly community. Chris, his uncle Randy and I all had lunch at one of the 2 restaurants they have. Yes that is right folks there is only 2 places to eat in this town! It is a farming community. They do not even have a grocery store. The Brick House BBQ has good food and the waitress was really nice. She welcomed us to the neighborhood and chastised Randy since he only lives about 2 miles away and has never been there before.

We are going to own a house! That is what I can't get past.. I am really giddy when ever I think about it. We had to buy a refrigerator and washer/dryer and we got a new bed..king sized... all thanks to the king sized bed we got to use on our honeymoon.. lol.. but on the plus this means we have a spare bed for the guest room! We have a 3 bedroom house now so we have plenty of room to start a family. Chris and I call this our starter home.. we agreed our next one will be our dream home.

I need to start getting ready for the day.. My birthday is on Tuesday.. I can't believe I'm going to be 28.. I am starting to feel old.. in honor of said birthday and since we didn't get to see them on Christmas we are going out to lunch today with my Aunt Paula, my parents, and my cousin Emily and her family.

It is also snowing so we need to get gas in my Jeep and stuff before we go.

Hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year!! I am feeling really good about 2011 so far! My mom pointed out that my birthday falls on 1-11-11 this year. I hope that means good luck!