We're in Escrow!

So, on Sunday night, April 15th (also my birthday-THANK YOU to everyone who gave me birthday love, you guys are the BEST!) we flew in late to Minneapolis (sidenote: our flight was delayed due to the fact that we were flying into an identified possible tornado zone, and if that wasn't fun enough, once we actually flew it was by FAR the STINKY-EST flight I have ever been on.  Happy Birthday to me!  Seriously.  Those people must have been seriously ill to produce such retched gas for the entire flight.  Multiple people.  Wowza.).  Early the next morning we checked out a rental car and headed the 70 miles to Rochester.  We got snowed on a tiny bit that morning in Minneapolis, and froze all day Monday as we searched for homes.  We saw 16 houses the first day, as well as went through ALL the information and paper work with the realtor before searching.

Monday night we went over to meet some good Rochester folk who had invited us to dinner.  They actually ended up throwing us a little party and inviting a few other "Mayo Families" over.  It was lots of fun, and so nice & friendly of them.  We were exhausted after only being in our hotel for 4.5 hours the night before and running around looking at homes all day, but we had a great time.

On Tuesday we saw 8 or so other homes, then went back in the afternoon to look at our top 2.  At that point we had a really hard time deciding between 2 homes.  They were very different.  Home A was a little smaller, the bedrooms were all really small and it had a detached garage, but it was SO clean, updated, in perfect move in condition, had a wonderful fenced backyard (which is REALLY hard to find, no one has fences there!), the garage was HUGE even if it was detached-WAY over sized, and it had really great views from the front window and the deck.  Home B was 100sq feet bigger-which was obvious in the bedroom size, it had an attached garage-BIG bonus!, a great fireplace (which the other one doesn't have), but on the downside it was older, not well maintained at all, horrible mismatched carpet, yard needing work, dingy, dirty, no real big problems, but LOTS of little honey-do's that add up.  It was the same price essentially as house A.  Home B had lots of room for improvement, which would increase the value.  Home A was already at the upper range of its value, but needed no repairs.  The bottom line ended up being that repairs cost money.  At this stage of our lives, we don't have the time or extra money to spend fixing up a house.  If it were a couple years in the future, we totally would have bought house B.  However for right now we decided to get house A.

We made a written offer at the end of the day Tuesday, and headed straight from the Realtor's office to dinner with some new friends.  They were a great little family and it was wonderful to meet them, they were fantastic.  Unfortunately I had a HUGE migraine by late afternoon on Tues, so I wasn't feeling well at all, but I still managed to enjoy myself.  If it had been a dinner date with anyone we knew even remotely well, I would have canceled, but I managed to make it through.  At dinner Dan (our Realtor) called with the home owner's counter offer.

We went back to the hotel and talked about it a bit.  At this point, I honestly felt so terrible that I didn't care what we did.  We decided to accept, and the next morning we signed on the dotted line that says, pending an inspection, we are buying your house for X amount!  We will close on June 29th.

It was a long and stressful few days.  I am relieved to be home, and am so glad that we found a home!  Now here is the part you actually care about: PICTURES!

 Back yard looking at deck

 Nice big deck

 Front sitting Room

 Other side of the front sitting room

 Dining/Kitchen area

 More Kitchen

There are also 4 small bedrooms and 2 full baths, evenly split between up and down (the home is a split level, as are 90% of the homes in that area), and a good sized living area in the basement in an L shape.  We will probably have this defined in 2 sections, either family room/office or family room/playroom.



Spring is here!

OK, time for a family update!  Its been a while since I posted about our going-ons around here, so here is a brief update.  I got my tonsils out 2 weeks ago.  It was AWFUL and no fun at all (Imagine someone cutting out 50% of the back of your throat and then cauterizing-AKA burning the flesh enough to seal the wound--the back of your throat to stop the bleeding.  Yep, it feels just like it sounds), but hopefully I won't get sick as often now!  My throat is almost healed, and I am feeling MUCH better, just in time for Matt and I to head out to Rochester tomorrow!  Hopefully this time next week I will be updating that we put an offer on a house!

Anyway, my WONDERFUL mother came down and took care of me and the girls for the first few days after my surgery, then when Matt had a few days off, she left me in his care and took the girls home with her for a week.  What would I do without her?!

Anyway, not too many pictures have been taken over the past month, due to the surgery and also me just being lazy!  In March we finally started going to the gym again, and even got to take the girls swimming for the first time this season, which was lots of fun!  We tried to stay healthy, only somewhat successfully and both my and Lily's allergies were HORRIBLE.

Speaking of going to the gym and getting my tonsils out, HERE IS WHERE I BRAG.  Which, I usually try not to do.  This blog is really not a "look how much I get done and how fabulous I am, you should feel fat and lazy and super guilty" type of place.  However, I am really proud of myself, and since this is my journal, I am gonna come out and say it!  Today I put on my skinny pants and they fit nice and loosely!  WOOT WOOT!!  I can't take all the credit, after my surgery I hardly ate a thing and lost 4 lbs, which is what put me over the top.  I have held onto these pants from my pre-babies days.  I got rid of all my jeans, and most of my other skinny clothes after about 3 years of being no where even close to fitting back into them.  They took up too much space and it was depressing.  However, I kept  two pairs of pants that were more baggy on me, and I have been able to fit into them for about 7 months.  This one particular pair is the only pair that I kept that truly fit me nicely back in the day that I kept (and I only kept them because they are super thin and take up hardly any room, and I had to hold out hope that just maybe one day I would make it to my goal).  I put them on this morning, because I only have 2 pairs of jeans, and I want to be able to pack them for my trip tomorrow and they are both freshly washed, so I didn't want to get them dirty, but without real hope that they would fit.  I have tried these pants on every month or 2 over the last 6 or 7 months and though I have been able to get them up, they have been skin tight and disgusting.  But today, they fit fantastic, and it only took 5 years to get there!  :)  Ha!  It's been a long road for me, and a big struggle for lots of years to lose all my baby weight.  I still don't look as good as I once did, because I am still not as fit.  But its a huge improvement and it feels SO GREAT to put on the goal pants that I really didn't know if I would ever fit into again!  No more dieting in my future, just trying to be healthy and exercise, what a great feeling!!

Anyway, back to the family update.  We had 2 different big parties here over Easter weekend.  My kids were gone and I was SEVERELY drugged and in pain, but I managed to make appearances at both, albeit in my pajamas.  Matt was working and couldn't attend, and I didn't take any pictures at all.  But I got to see lots of Matt's family and had a really nice time. 

 Late Easter Sunday my kids came home.  They were all asleep and got put straight into bed, so on Monday we celebrated Easter with them.  Don't mind the fact that Kate (the baby) is still in her PJ's, she came home sick and I didn't even bother to get her dressed, or comb my girls hair.  Gimme a break I felt pretty terrible.

 Easter baskets, and gearing up for the Easter Egg hunt!

 Nana trying to encourage Kate to pick up the eggs

 Lily as the oldest and fastest naturally collected most of the eggs, but being the sweet girl she is was willing to share.

Katie's newest obsession is balancing her food on her head, then wiggling her head to see how long it takes to fall off.  This works with cheerios, fish sticks, peas, pasta, green beans, hot dogs, or whatever else we happen to be eating.  As the mom that has to wash her hair out afterwards, this is irritating.  However as a person, it is HILARIOUS.  I have to try hard not to laugh, so that I can scold her.  A couple weeks ago we had a family home evening about David and Goliath, then acted out the story.  the girls got to be David and Daddy was Goliath.  They used marshmallows as stones and threw them at Daddy.  Then we ate the marshmallows.  After Katie had slobbered all over her marshmallow, she tried her head balancing trick.  However a slobbery marshmallow is very sticky and won't fall out.  Good times.