Week 1

Well week 1 is coming to a close in this installment of our house adventure.  It hardly warrants a post, but I shall do one anyhow. 

The title company received our documents officially on tuesday, which is a major step.  And as far as we know they have since passed the documents onto Sun Trust Bank who holds our ultimate fate. 

In the meantime we've been 'home loan shopping' with Bank of America.  We are on a first name basis with Amy-the-loan-officer.  She crunches numbers & asks for lots of personal information that is annoying to obtain.  But she tells us nice things like, "your credit totally rocks."  And then she bursts our bubbles & says things like "your year-to-date income is too high for the mortgage revenue bond loan."  Of course that's the loan we've been crossing our fingers for- the one that allows for 100% financing and zero down. 

It's always bittersweet playing these numbers games.  Sometimes you wish you could shake them & say, "yes- this is the take home number & that's a very pretty number, BUT (& it's a big one) these are the bills i'm responsible for & heeeeey lookie here- there is nothing left over!!"  But they see what they want to see.  So we play on.

Now it's penny pinching time- something really hard for the Rathbuns.  We tend to live by the saying: "Work hard, play harder."  But now play-time seems to be on hold.  We tell ourselves that this is what grown-ups do, so maybe we should step it up.  Part of that means having new conversations with our homeowner friends about their favorite fencing & flooring companies. I mean I get REALLY into these types of conversations now. 

And a note on penny-pinching.  I have a funny story.  As you know mi amiga Renee is getting married next month & I have been helping as much as I can from here (which is not a lot) but something that I could do was call the Costco Flower Request Line & order roses- 10-dozen to be exact.  

So the other night Zane & I are sitting in bed talking about our days & without giving him any of the above background information I say:

"guess what?" 

He says: "what?" 

I say: "I ordered 120 white roses today." 

He totally calmly says: "for what?"

I say: "for our bedroom." 

AND WHAT DOES HE SAY?!

"Kay."   That's all.  Just a sweet little resigned "kay."

Umm..... are you serious?  You would be okay with this!???  

We're still laughing about it.  What a kooky sweet guy i'm in love with.

Anyway now we're feeling even more patient when it comes to waiting for Sun Trust to sign off their approval (which they will!) because the longer they wait, the longer we have to save for some kind of down payment. 

On a sidenote we asked the Magic 8-Ball at Cracker Barrel today if we would get the house, I mean, one can never be too sure.  And the Magic-8-Ball's reply?  

"Positively."

So if Sun Trust tries to pull any funny business, we can be like, "but the Magic-8-Ball said!!!!!!" & they'll be like...

"Well I mean if the Magic-8-Ball said................" 

& then we'll live happily ever after on Forsythe Lane.

P.S. We consigned our ginormous bedroom furniture yesterday because in our new house (<===you like that positive energy i'm spewing into the universe? i do!) we won't need it.  The movers will pick it up tuesday morning.  How exciting!  & for those who are thinking that we are being overly optimistic?  We tried to sell this stuff over a year ago when we moved to this condo we're in now, but Craig's List wasn't having it.  So this is not out of the blue.  It was a major lesson learnt.  Before you purchase pretty furniture- take measurements.  Make sure it will fit under ceiling fans & not swallow up an entire bedroom whole.  Those are good things to be noted. 

Anyhoo.  Since our bedside tables were doubling as our dressers (yah, they're pretty large, like i said.) We have packed all our undies & socks & tee-shirts into plastic boxes.  It kinda feels like we're in the process of moving already, and i LIKE it!!!  & our bedroom suddenly feels HUUUUUGE.  i like that too.