A little less stressful!

Today was a relatively quiet day comparatively speaking and a lot less stressful. There were a few addendum's to make to the contract; basically, we pushed the close date to Sept. 3rd from August 26th. Still searching for the 'perfect' financing but I'll will stop after we've checked out three different companies. Hope to have that accomplished tomorrow.

Carrollton house update: Sorry to report...still no offer! My tummy is getting a little nervous but for some reason, I still have a good feeling. Only time will tell and this is definitely a wait-and-see game!

Laura says that Kristin is searching for a roommate to move into the townhome with. I hope it works out for her although I hope it's not too much for her in the end. I certainly wouldn't want to put her a place that would overextend her financially.

Until tomorrow.
Lisa

We were what??? Accepted.....ALREADY?

We were finally able to get the contract submitted today and within 2 hours, they accepted our offer. OMG...now what do we do!!!

Hopefully, we'll get that offer on the Carrollton house tomorrow. That's what the Real Estate person said today! Please Lord!!!

We're not ready

Wow..today was a whirlwind!

Now what do we do? We found a house that we love, we have another house for sale (that's been on the market for 130 days without an offer) and we live in yet another house. Do we really want 3 mortgage payments? Why of course...it's the American way!!! Actually, we don't want 3 mortgage payments so we decided to pray. We asked the Lord if this was NOT right for us...then to close all the doors quickly. However, it was from Him, than to let this happen quickly and effortlessly.

So today, was a day of preparing and learning.

We learned that Fannie May was selling this house and offered a special finance program for foreclosures called 'Home Path' financing. We were able to get a pre-qualification letter from one of the Home Path lenders in order to submit an offer and also started putting together the financing and contract...but what offer do we submit? This took longer than expected.

Carrollton house update: Laura called to check on yesterday's showing with the Real Estate person...good news, they're going to submit an offer!

This house has good bones!

We asked Laura to get a key so we could see the inside of the house, and low-and-behold, the selling agent was holding an open house...how convenient. There were several other folks that came in to see the house too while we were there. However, meeting Michael helped seal the deal. The next door neighbor, Michael came over to see how much they were asking for the house - just out of curiosity. He told us that the house had a new air conditioner and the pool actually worked (even though it was green) and only needed a couple things fixed to run like new. He had been putting 'shocker' in there monthly and running the pool so it wouldn't turn into a mosquito pond because he has young kids. Anyway, he said the house was in good condition it just needed some TLC as it hadn't been cared for in several months -- and that was quit evident.

We loved the house even though it does need some work. Laura said it well when she said 'this house has good bones'.

Ok...what's next!

By the way...we had another showing on the Carrollton house today. Somehow, I have a feeling this might be good.

I think we found a house

Ed and I have never been able to decide if we wanted to stay in the townhome, mainly because it's kind of small for both of us, but we could pay it off and live mortgage free OR should we purchase a little larger home that we could enjoy for many years to come. Because of this, I registered with Zip Realty and they send me all new houses postings in the zip code of my choice. Well...I've been doing this for about a year now and have seen many wonderful houses come up for sale, but none that I have ever thought was the 'one'...until this one. Not sure why, but I just really liked this home when I saw it and there weren't even that many photos of it but for some reason, it just seemed right. I asked Ed if we could drive by and just look at the outside of it. As we were driving into the neighborhood, we both kind of sensed something. Anyway, to make a long story short...we both fell in love with it. It was exactly what we have been looking for. The only problem is that is a foreclosure and that meant complications and a little more work than we were really wanting. In addition to this, our house in Carrollton is still on the market...and has been for 129 days, without one offer. What the heck...we have to see it!

We're Celebrating our 1st Anniversary in Paris

Ed surprised me with a trip to Paris to celebrate our 1st wedding anniversary!!! How wonderful was that.
We flew out of DFW on Friday, July 2nd and arrived in Paris on Saturday, July 3rd - our anniversary day. Ed had an incredible lunch planned for us at Le Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower.

As you can see, this was a beautiful restaurant (which takes about 2 months to get a reservation --- even for lunch) and the only problem was that we were sooo tired and because our room wasn't ready, we were unable to change clothes so we had to wear the clothes that we left Dallas in. We felt a little uncomfortable, well, I should say that I felt uncomfortable! Anyway, we had a lovely time!!!

We Made it to Maui

We had a wonderful flight to Honolulu. Ed really took care of us. We sat in first class from Dallas to Honolulu. This was great - the seats would lay back into beds. We didn't lie down too much but when we did...it was really nice.

Airplane seat controls

We flew into Honolulu and everything was running along like clockwork...until the pilot announced, as we were sitting in our seats on the jetway, that we have to switch planes due to a computer problem. We decided it was better to discover this on the ground rather than in the air...so off we went. This was only about a 30 minute delay but it did get into Maui around 9:30 pm. It was dark, so we couldn't see anything and by that time, we didn't care; we were very tired and hungry. We got into our room and went to bed.

Honolulu Airport

Hawaiian Airlines

Up at 6:30 am wide awake. We got up and walked down to the end of the beach where we found a nice little deli/cafe type place. We had breakfast outside with the wind blowing through our hair, sand in-between our toes and the ocean right in front of us. We had found heaven here on earth. It's called Maui, Hawaii.

For the next several hours, three to be exact, I layed out on the beach while Ed worked on getting our room upgraded, found a restaurant for our wedding dinner, and signed us up for a Starwood Villa Resort timeshare pitch - he felt like it was worth it because they give you 7500 points for an 1 1/2 hour sales pitch. He was one busy little boy. He eventually got out to beach with me, layed out for 15-20 minutes and my poor honey was lobster red by the end of the night. Next time...we'll definitely use the suntan lotion.

After the beach, we mosey'd over the gym for a nice little cardio/workout. Now, we're starving...time to eat. We found a great little restaurant, called Tropica, next to our hotel. Perfect..it was close, no line, not too many people and a little guy singing and playing the guitar, all right next to the beach. We had a wonderful dinner and a really nice time together. This dinner turned out to be pretty expensive so we learned we have to be more careful in our choices. Can't afford dinners like that every night.

Ed and Lisa at Tropica

Sunday...up for church; we're going to meet Pastor Dominic (Dom) Done from Calvary Maui. Pastor Dom will be marrying Ed and I this Friday. The church service was really really good, we both enjoyed it. Ed and I were both pretty surprised at how young he was. Ed thinks he was around 35, I thought he was closer to 30 years old. Nonetheless, he definitely has a love for the Lord and that is what we were looking for.

Calvary Maui Church

Inside church

Outside of church

Hawaiian 'Ed'

Van parked outside of church

After that, we drove down to Waimea, near Wailea, and had lunch on the beach. The view was great but the food could use some improvement. Did some explorin while we were there but we couldn't spend too much time - we had to be back to the hotel by 2:30 for the Westin time-share pitch.

Good news, we made it threw their sales pitch alive! We've done that before and it can be brutal. You actually feel worn out from the pressure. I guess because Ed is Platinum and has traveled so much, they let us off easy.

Ended up at the Tiki Torch for dinner. This was a a great find. They have a free hula show every night from 6:30 - 7:30 and live music until 9:00 pm. We really enjoyed all of that but my food wasn't all that great. No, actually it wasn't very good at all. Ed, however, liked his fish. They were very nice and didn't charge us for my meal which was very much appreciated.

Walked back on the beach and just had a great time together today.

Off to bed now. Trying to get up by 7:00 am every day to get in as much time as we can!

Night