Surprising Events

(no, I'm not pregnant, though that truly would be the capper on the events of this summer)

When last I posted, I was bemoaning the lack of housing, either rental or to buy.

In the weeks since, we located an apartment complex which would (a) accept all three of our animals, (b) allow us to sign a 3 months lease instead of 12, and (c) was centrally located in the area into which we wished to move (Also? it is on the other side of a parking lot from a very nice mall).  We put down a deposit with plans to move in the weekend of the 18/19th of this month.  This would give us a place to stay while the movers came and did their packing/loading/hauling to storage thing the week of the 20th as per the signed contract, and would allow us to keep house hunting / decide on our future housing plans.

We've also signed LO up for two day a week, half-day preschool with her projected start date the beginning of September.  This preschool is located a reasonable distance from both the apartment and the neighborhoods in which we have been searching for the, THE, house.

So, of course, this past Thursday DH went and looked at a house which still met his criteria for distance from his office, and my criteria for distance from a grocery store but was in a completely different area of the suburbs.  And? He called me after seeing it with more excitement in his voice than I had heard since the house we missed out on being able to buy thanks to it going under contract a measly week before ours.

I went to see it on Friday (bringing LO along who ended up not getting dinner until 7, and was a super trooper the whole time), Saturday day we spent hunting appliances for replacement and inclusion in the contract price along with many other items we wish to upgrade/change, and around 8pm signed off on an offer.  Honestly, this house doesn't compare to the first in being generally wonderful, but between DH's and my (sometimes significantly different) lists of items we wanted in a new house, it meets about 95% for both of us.  The things that are missing are easy enough to either add or tweak what is existing to include, so that's what we'll do.

As I type DH is off to meet the seller/builder (it's a resale, but needed some significant touch up after the prior owner had an incident which ended up requiring the police to use tear gas and other police type encouragements to communicate like a rational human being...very abnormal for the neighborhood) to discuss/clarify our requests and we're hoping to have a final contract signed off by this evening so we can start undoing the plans we had laid prior to the end of last week. 

If this works, since the house is unoccupied, we'll be able to move in the first week of September, not have to spend any time in an apartment, save big bucks on our moving expenses, and be able to stop stressing about whether we'll have a house and start stressing about decorating/enjoying/updating the house & yard.

In the meantime I'm (DH says obsessively) searching for replacement light fixtures.  Including 2 sets of sconces - whoever built the house obviously believed that you had to have sconces on either side of a fireplace - I disagree.  And between DH's dislike of fabric shades on lights which are not lamps, and my wanting to minimize the appearance of said sconces, it's taking a lot of effort to find any which might possibly work. If you need me I'll be neck deep in lighting websites...