House Update

It's hard to keep track of who knows what, but I think my parents are covered.

To update everyone, here's the short version. Our house has a contract pending on it. We accepted the offer placed and now are waiting for the option period to expire and set a closing date.

The new house accepted our offer and we're waiting to here if an earlier closing is possible.

Now the long version.

Our House

We're working with the realtor who showed us the new house. We said we needed someone to sell our house so we got him to do it. So we signed all the paperwork to sell the house (see a few entries ago) while my mom and aunt were in town, so that was Sunday. Mon-Wednesday we spent cleaning the house and got someone to come out to do the yards on Thursday. We tried doing the lawn but dammit that takes a long time to do when you have to tag out to watch kids and your knees and backs don't work like they used to. I don't care, these guys did a bang up job.

So we get the whole thing cleaned up. Family pictures taken down, flat surfaces uncluttered, kids' rooms cleaned, floor swept and mopped, bathrooms scented and polished, the whole shebang. The kitchen has never looked better.

The house officially goes on the listing service Saturday, just in time for the long weekend. We get a couple calls that morning asking to show the house. We had planned on this and we split up, Mrs. A doing some needed photo work and I took the kids to various shops and restaurants. We left about 09:30. At 12:30, eating Chinese food, we get a call from our realtor that the first person that came by submitted an offer. Full asking price, assuming all closing costs. Only thing they required was we get everything that's not nailed down out of the house. It's an investor that will buy it and rent it. Other than a straight cash offer, our realtor says it's the cleanest deal he's ever seen.

Asking price, the first day listed.

Amazing. So, you'll notice our status is now Pending - Accepting backups. We've had one showing since that day. It's hard to keep the house clean, but it's a small price to pay and it's a short time comparatively. An old friend tried to sell his house and it was on the market for 6 months. He had lake property as well that was listed for 18 months. My long time coworker friend is selling her house, it's only been a month but I'm pretty sure she hates me now.

Our New House

I feel like I may be jinxing it a little by calling it our new house. There are still things that could go wrong; financing problems, seller backs out of our deal, the world could end, etc. However, I'm fairly confident that by this time July 1st, we'll be all boxes and unarranged furniture in our new pad. It's a great little place and cute up front to boot. The backyard is nice with a great covered patio. The cost per square footage is wonderful. It's heavily carpeted, which may have to change, but I don't mind right away. I remember when Mrs. A and I did the floors in our house and how it only took a few days with both of us taking time off of work, but man it was a big pain in the ass. We busted hump getting it down and still had to call Lowes to come finish the parts I was too lazy to do.

But other than the carpet, it's what we need in a house. It has plenty of room, island in the kitchen, office space, entertainment room space, nice living area, good backyard, and if you mapped it, it's about 5 blocks from our current location.

Oh, and we get to use the realty companies moving truck for free.

Yay for us.

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Little Mr. Austin is moving up in the world. We had a meeting today with his care takers and he's moving from the Infant Room to the Toddler Room. He's got little shoes so he can go outside and play and he's officially off formula and breast milk. Unofficially he's been off breast milk for about a month, just kind of lost interest. The hard part now is the bottles. He loves the bottles, so moving to sippy cup is going to be hard.

Both he and his sister are doing well. We seem to have shaken our colds, though Lil Mr. A has an ear infection that's keep him up at nights.

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Mrs. Austin has some news that I was not aware of. It involves photography and book deals and magazines. I don't know that she'd like me to hand out specifics, but if you'd like to leave a comment that you're interested in hearing about it, I'm sure she'll tell you about it.

For some reason I didn't know about any of it till this last weekend, so I don't have all the facts.

But that's not really anything new.