Pictures as Promised!

Finally! We had the inspection and appraisal done today. All is one track to close by the time we are being kicked out of the temporary housing. WOOHOO! This is a view from the front of the house:

This is the side back. It is a two car garage and walkout basement. The basement is not finished and will just be storage.

This is the master bathroom - it does have the big jet tub and a shower. Lots of great light from all the windows.

The kitchen is really huge! There is a pennisula (Mark took the pictures as I couldn't be there) and an eat in kitchen . The slider for the porch is off the EIK. And then the family room is off the EIK. Good set up I think.

This is the dining room - just off the kitchen. And there is already a light! Bonus!

And this is the living room with built in bookshelves and gas fireplace. It is a bit wider than it looks.

There are four bedrooms and 2 and half baths - a total of 2500 sq. feet. Lots of room for visitors! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!

Offer Accepted... Next Step...

inspection! YIPPEE! Our offer was accepted and we will be having the inspection on Thursday afternoon! Financing is back on track and we are hoping to still be in our new home by Labor Day weekend! I'm not so fearful that we'll end up in a questionable roadside hotel that takes cats for a couple weeks - and I'd be just fine if we had to wait a few days for our furniture to arrive. Housing ends here August 31st. And now I have a few things to rejoice about...
No more rusting pots and pans!
No more sharing the bathroom with the cats!
No more carefree days with no house to clean!
No more short drive to work!
No more freaky neighbors! (like the guy who stares when we go to the pool - trust me I am not a playboy bunny!!!)
No more excessive use of the air conditioning (you see we aren't paying the bill and I like it COLD at night)!
What am I scared of? Unpacking the boxes. It will be sort of like Christmas as I have not laid eyes on much of this stuff in SIX months - except for the few hours before the packing started in June. We are already discussing the giagantic garage sale that needs to take place. I'm not even sure I need my clothes at this point. I mean it's been six months - do I really want to wear that stuff? I'm also fearing the unpacking of the kitchen and all the stuff that will need to be washed - all of it!!! It took the guy a day to pack it all. Oh goodness.
Now for a positive. Since I am not really cleaning or organizing at home right now I did manage to clean out the office at work - major feat. It consisted of my office, my assistants work area, a first aid room complete with medical instruments from the 80's and a storeroom full of first aid items and "history" stuff. There was stuff from the 1960's! Not joking! It was 4 big push carts of crap. Plus my first week there were 3 big burn barrels of junk. The storeroom was totally packed when I started and now it's neatly organized and the cabinets are becoming less clustered. And this week I had a temp shred 12 garbage bags of papers. The non-confidential crap went in the garbage or it would have been 30 bags easy. And I have pulled a Julie when some things can't seem to make the garbage can. haha...

Ouchie!!!

Just so you don't think all we do is have fun here's a few pictures of our poor car! Keep in mind we've had our new insurance for just over two weeks and the damage is at least $4000. Of course it wasn't our fault. Damn BMW driver! When turning right don't hog two lanes!!! So let the voting begin... guess who was driving? Mr. Safety or Ms. Get Out of My Way?

p.s. no one was harmed in the making of this mess and no air bags deployed - go figure!

Sunday in NYC! Go Mets!

To distract us from dwelling on our latest house offer we went to NYC for a Mets game today. We had bought a mini-ticket package back in March and this was the first game we were able to go too. So in true NY style we took the train in and then jumped on the subway to Shea. Driving is a nightmare and almost just as much. This way we got to read the Sunday paper and all the other papers we didn't get to this week. Nice way to start a Sunday.
It was our first time going to Shea Stadium and it was neat to see yet another ballpark. It's huge! It was hot and a bit overcast and the rain held off until the 8th inning (which was about 2 hours into the game so a short game really by baseball standards). We had our first ever Nathan's hotdog. A must for all NY'ers and visitors alike. For those of you who don't know Nathan's are the hotdogs that they use for the 4th of July Coney Island hotdog eating contest as seen on ESPN - not joking! It's so gross they eat 40+ hotdogs in under 10 or 15 minutes. It's truly disgusting. I only ate one! However I will say they are easy to polish off. The man in front of us bought one when we did and it was gone before I was even two bites into mine and then his wife came back and she had two for him. I know she didn't know he'd just eaten one. Sneaky, sneaky. We had a good laugh about that. He was nice and gave her half of one however, which made me laugh even more. She had no clue.

If wouldn't be an adventure without pictures...

The ocean view from our seats

Mark is a Mets fan for the day!

as am I too!

hit a home and the apple comes up - it came up 3 times in one inning!

Go Mets!

p.s. they won 9 to 1! Woohoo!

Picked out a house in under 2 hours!

I know amazing! We met our new realtor on Saturday at 11:30 am and she is an absolute gem. We wrapped by 1:30 with a decision made pending being able to see one more house on Monday or Tuesday. Of course I had sent her the 4 houses we wanted to see to make it easy, but she did add in another one. And while we liked her suggestion we chose house #1 at that point. The one we didn't see was a pre-forclosure and the seller insists on being there. Annoying to say the least, but a great deal on a unique lot. If we can't see it we will just go with house #1. The funniest part of this go round. We had already been in the 3 houses I sent her - I just didn't remember the addresses. At the first house we told her that - she knew we had seen the 2nd, but for #3 we kept quiet. By that point we felt sort of silly and it did make things go faster. #4 was her choice. Our first choice is even better than the last house we walked away from. The builder did lots of cool things like a drain in the laundry room on the 2nd floor and a gas fireplace. Mostly lots of the items we would want to add anyway. It's in the country near some orchards and there are neighbors across the road and next to us. It's a slow windy road so traffic isn't fast at all. Unlike before the next time we go I will take pictures. This is it!!!

New Deal

So the latest deal for house #3 fell apart. By now you must think we are crazy or super picky or something. This latest one was advertised as a 4 bedroom and we were told when we made an offer it was only 3 the 4th didn't have a closet, but we could PUT one in to make it a bedroom. Yesterday we found out that the septic was only big enough for 3 bedroom house not a 4 bedroom so making it 4 bedrooms wasn't possible. Then the water had coliform in it, the roof leaked, and we could not access the septic clean out because there was a water pipe in front of it. While I am getting very anxious I was feeling like we were buying the money pit and it's brand new. So our realtor was fired - three strike rule and we meet a new one tomorrow and check out four new houses. Fun times!