Ok, so it's a townhouse instead of a house house, but it's all ours! Pretty soon, anyway. The contract (sale) is still subject to a home inspection, subject to a bug inspection, subject to our financing, and a few other things. We went on Friday to get pre-approved for a mortgage, and we were supposed to find out on Wednesday if we were pre-approved. Well, Saturday, we made an offer on the place. The owner counter-offered and we accepted. The sale price is $333,000, down from $339,900 and our offer was $330,000. We're hoping to get all the subjects off by October 22, and take possession on November 23. We have to give our landlords a 30 day notice, by BC law. The 30 days takes effect at the end of the month when you give your notice. So if we gave our notice today, the 30 days would start at the end of October and we would be able to move into the new place on November 30. Hopefully we'll have most of our stuff moved in by then anyway because we will have had possession (and the keys) since the week before. Once all the subjects are off, I'm going to start packing, but not until then. I don't want to have half the place packed up then realize there was something wrong with the title search or something and we end up not getting the place. I don't see that happening, but I also don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, either.
Chris and I are VERY excited about this place! We're going to go to Sears later this month and order the matching love seat and chair to match the couch. I got a little worried because they were no longer available online, so I called the store to see what the deal was. Since I had my original receipt from the couch, I had the exact name of the style and the name of the girl that sold it to us. She was able to use that info to find the transaction from almost a year ago and find that the chair and love seat were still available, even in the color we wanted! For both pieces, insurance and delivery, it's about $2,000. Eventually I want to find a hutch to put some china in that I have been given and that I know I'll eventually get, but I haven't started looking for that (not to mention the foosball table I want to put in the basement!) :)
I'm actually going to ask Joanne if she can help me decorate it. We are going to be able to view the house again once the electricity has been turned back on, and we'll invite her to go with us. I'll let her know what furniture I have and hopefully we can decide on a color pattern that will work with everything. Little nervous about that. Also a little excited about repainting the upstairs bedrooms. I don't mind the colors, but Chris does not want to work in an office with spring green walls! The other is lilac on three and white on the fourth (don't know why, usually the accent wall is not white). Anyway, that will come later.
We have a bug inspection scheduled for this Friday, provided the power is turned on by then. Hopefully we'll be able to see the place again on Thursday with Joanne. I'm going to call a place on Tuesday that can do the home inspection for us, as well as a law firm that specializes in helping people who are buying a home (whatever they do). I know they have a couple of things to do on the subject list, and I want that stuff taken off as soon as possible. We won't have to pay a realtor, but we will have to pay a lawyer. Thankfully it's significantly less! We're trying to figure out if we have to pay the property transfer taxes or not, though I think we will end up doing that. That will be quite a chunk. I think we'll be able to include that in the mortgage, though the banker may have said the property taxes (which are paid yearly) instead of the property transfer taxes. Yet another question that needs answering pretty soon.
I know all of this may be a little confusing, but it's what's on my mind at the moment and my fingers are typing as fast as they can! We're so excited about this; I can't wait to take pictures and let you see them. In the mean time, you can go to the real estate agent's home page www.royallepage.ca and put 9176429 into the MLS # box. There are a few pictures here, but mostly of the main floor. There's nothing of the basement or any of the bedrooms. The picture at the bottom with the chairs and three seater are on a patio just outside of the master bedroom. There's a door there with a deadbolt lock. I'll try to send Laura some pictures whenever we can get back over there to put on here.
Well, we're about to go to another Thanksgiving dinner at Gary and Lenore's in about 45 min. Just waiting on the last load of laundry to finish in the dryer. I would have liked to do another load, but it's just the whites, and it can wait. We'll be going Tuesday at 4:00 to sign the papers for the contract. Then, once the financing is approved and the other subjects are removed, we'll have our very own house! Buying real estate wasn't as nerve wracking as they made it out to be on t.v. I watch a lot of shows about buying a house, one called "Property Virgins" who are looking for their first home to buy. It doesn't seem as bad as they made it look. Maybe I'm just used to moving and dealing with sales people (all the car lots we visited). Anyway, we love the place and can't wait for you to see it! Love you guys!
I know you're raising your eyebrows about the price, but the cost of living is pretty high here! I wanted to make sure we would have a place that had at least one other bedroom (for guest or future baby) and a place where Chris could have an office. I also wanted to make sure there were at least two bathrooms. Having an ensuite is icing on the cake! And a partially finished basement? Even better! Perfect for entertaining. The place is on the corner of Ethel and Springfield, and there is no visitor parking. There is space to park along Ethel, so it's ok (no space to park on Springfield). Anyway, better get going.
Things are still pretty hectic up here. Still haven't cleaned the place. Laundry is done, but not all put away. I told mom, but I didn't tell anyone else this; we got a new camera this weekend! It's a Panasonic, and it records straight onto this little DVD thing. Had some issues with it today (mostly user issues rather than camera issues), but Chris was able to help me after dinner. (Turns out I was pressing the wrong button when I was trying to open the menu screen!) Anyway, we figured out how to "finalize" the disc before using it on the computer and DVD player. Got it to play on both, but neither of us can figure out how to save it on the computer. What I want to do is to figure that out so I can keep using the DVD-RW (DVD rewritable) discs, save what I have filmed onto the computer and make a large DVD disc copy. That way, I can have it on the computer and have a hard copy backup. The sales guy told us that he uses the one time only use DVDs when he is recording and just uses those as his back up (since they play in computers and DVD players anyway.) Could do that, too, but I like the idea of having the larger discs for backup.
Anyway, apparently I made another entry while making this one. Opened a new window to search something, and ended up reading news articles, got distracted and made another post! I guess that means I should go to bed. It is 9:34 here and I have to be up early. Love you guys and talk to you later!
Check out the last question from the second article. It asks, "Why are the McCanns suspects in their daughter’s killing?"
The answer? - Under Portuguese law police can not question someone as if they had committed a crime unless they are a “suspect”. It could simply be that police wanted to ask the couple about the evidence they had collected, and that the seriousness of the process has been misunderstood and exaggerated by cultural and language differences.
The Portuguese police had to declare the parents as official suspects before they could even question them about the case! I feel so bad for the parents. I pray that Maddie is found (alive) soon and that this will all be explained in the end. What a nightmare for a mother to be suspected of, let alone charged with, the death of her 4 year old daughter.
I don't know if you've heard (Tracy), but Club Penguin was bought out by Disney. The site itself won't change much. If it changes at all it will only be for the better. You won't see Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck wondering around among the penguins. The major changes are going to be things like having the site translated into different languages. There are so many kids who have been waiting a looooong time for that!
We had a company meeting on Wednesday afternoon so we could all find out at the same time. The meeting started at 1:00, and the official time it could have been announced was 1:05 (something to do with legal stuff, but it couldn't have been announced any earlier than 1:05.) This time frame was the time that it was announced not only to us, but to the rest of the world. Our boss promised us at the last meeting that whenever they found a partner, we would be the first to know who it was. He did his best and kept his promise. He had to stall a bit because the meeting started at 1:00, so he told us a bit about the other companies that they were thinking of merging with. I don't know if you heard about the rumor that Sony was going to buy us? They were eliminated pretty early on, but someone decided they didn't like that. They "leaked to the press" that Sony was going to buy Club Penguin for a certain dollar amount and the only thing I saw from it (other than misinformed news articles) were a lot of kids sending us emails asking if it was true.
The moment finally came and he announced that it was Disney they decided to go with. Everyone was in shock! Chris had kind of hinted to me that it could be Disney, but he wasn't for sure. Just the same, we were both shocked when they started announcing the things we were going to be getting from the deal. The boss, Lane, started talking about how he appreciated that we worked hard. They always want to encourage us to work hard and play hard, so they have all kinds of things in the office that help us play hard, including a foosball table (you can read the blogs about the tournament), an Xbox 360 and all kinds of snacks and food. All of this has been in the office since the beginning. To help us work hard, the company is buying everyone Macintosh lap tops! I don't know exactly which one, but they will be here pretty soon. To help us play hard, they are taking everyone on a mandatory 4 day business trip to Disneyland! They are splitting the company in half, so half will go one weekend and the other half will go the next weekend so there will still be someone in the office to keep things running. It's strictly business, so family members are not invited. Chris and I will be going the first weekend, from Thursday August 16 to Sunday the 19. I'm so excited I can't stand it!
That wasn't all. At this point, they gave us a little break to get some snacks and something to drink, then took those from the Development team into another room. They also gave everyone a monetary signing bonus that shocked us even more! I don't want to say exactly how much I got, but it will pay off either Chris' student loan or most of the loan we have for the car. Chris, on the other hand, got a bit more than me. It's enough that we can put a down payment on a house if we want! I was so much in shock that he had to drive me home!
Over the past couple of days, they have been working hard to get the details of the trips to Disneyland sorted out. Because it's on such short notice and not everyone has a passport, they will be driving us down to Seattle and then chartering a private jet to take us to California. (You don't need a passport if you are driving across the boarder.) On the way back, we will be flying back to Kelowna. I have a permanent resident card for Canada as well as a US passport, so I'm good to go. (I've flown down to KY enough times since I've been here and plan to do it again very soon!) We don't have much information about what we will be doing on the trip, but I think we will be meeting some executives from Disney and Pixar! Chris is really excited about that. I think they're going to keep the rest of the itinerary a surprise until we get down there, but I'll let you know if I find out anything else.
Well, it's 9:40 AM Saturday morning. I need to get in the shower because Chris and I are going to go out for breakfast. This is a wonderful tradition we have been doing for some time, now. We always go out to eat for breakfast one Saturday a month. Normally we go to Perkins or a place called De Dutch, and we've been to Denney's once. I think this morning we are going to try IHOP if their line isn't too long because I've never been to one. Well, better get in the shower!
So you work at CP? My little girl that I nanny for is OBSESSED with CP! She's like, addicted to it! I'm Laura's friend Jess from Berea, btw. I read the articles on the merger from her site, then came to your's.
And those are all the posts I have made since November, I think. I don't post every day; I don't even post every week. But I'll try to remember to repost my blogs from the other one to this one. Let me know what time works for you if you ever want to talk on MSN again.
I was talking about "The Heaberlin Girls" and this one. Tracy (my friend from Paintsville) can't read the Heaberlin Girls blog becaue it has that lock on it, so I told her I'd put all my posts here, too, so she could read them since I never put anything on my Myspace.
