Closing Day...technically

Today is supposed to be my closing day on the house. I am not closing on the house, and I am not sure when I will be closing. While I was on vacation I received an email from my realtor stating that the appraiser had been denied access to the house a few times by the seller's agent. He never showed up to unlock the door. My agent had to run out to do it for him which caused the appraisal to be a week late. Then the appraisal came back at less than the sales price. We asked that the seller come down to the appraised price. He took his sweet time deciding (it wasn't a huge chunk of money). We knew that there would need to be repairs done in order for the VA funding to be approved. He decided one week before closing he would accept the appraised price and fix the wood rot for the funding. Now, we can't close until the repairs have been made. I have no clue if he has done it. I am pretty damn frustrated because I want this process to be finished. It has been one large ball of stress that I would like to kick to the curb. My guess is it will be another week before I close. Hopefully someone will let me know.

I am back!

It has been awhile, but things have been busy. 8 days in Orlando followed by a sick child, and now a visiting mother-in-law makes for a whirlwind few weeks.

Orlando was fun and stressful. It was nice to get away and have a distraction from deployment, but I was used as a babysitter a lot. So instead of having fun with other adults, I was watching three children. Not exactly what I call the best of times especially when it rained every single afternoon, but I made the most of it. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the trip.

Hannah was angry for some reason, but I did receive a kiss from Mickey

Meeghan was a ham this trip

The Beast allowed us to dine at his castle one evening

Sideshow Bob took my stroller and then did this. It was awesome!

Already having fun in a car

Visiting Minnie on a rainy afternoon 

Time

I seem to be short on time every day. It seems like I try to accomplish a task, but I never finish it. I typically only have Meeghan's nap time to attempt most things. I am lucky since she will nap for close to two hours. Unfortunately, by the time I shower and play a board game with Hannah, my time is limited. Lately I have filled it with phone calls and emails about closing on the house. Or finishing up stuff for vacation next week. Yesterday I had the pleasure of killing a bunch of ants in my kitchen during nap time. (You leave one crumb on the ground and the little bastards find it.) I am so ready to be finished with this single parenting gig. I don't know how real single parents do it. You have my respect and admiration because I don't think I could do this every day. E was given his return date which makes his return home seem much closer. By the time vacation ends, and finishing everything for closing, we will only have a few weeks left.

I am leaving for Orlando in a few days. I will have a week of vacation with my best friend and her family. Hannah will have another 4 year old to play with, and I will have another adult around. Yay for adult conversations!  Oh! Hannah turned 4 this week. Hopefully I will throw a post together about it before she turns 5.

Flying solo

The Big D has taken over my house. E checked in last Wednesday morning, and they told him he would be on a plane later that day. 18 hours later he arrived in Japan. I have been dealing with all the house drama, and little kid drama. Meeghan has decided that she must start throwing temper tantrums and will only eat dairy. I was happy today because she ate two bites of pasta and some salsa before throwing her lunch on the floor. Meeghan is a daddy's girl and I know she misses him. Yesterday she was confusing the thunder with the sound of the garage. She would run to the kitchen yelling, "Daddy!" and waiting for him to walk through the door. Hannah doesn't seem to care much. She says she misses him, but she told me we can do stuff without him so it is fine. She is a bit more obnoxious than normal, but nothing too out of the ordinary. We have been able to Skype with him a few times, and I think that is helping. Thank goodness he will be home this summer so it is a short deployment. He lucked out joining his squadron when they are at the end of the deployment.

The house situation is slowly moving along. The inspection has been completed. My financing was almost turned down because we didn't have enough to cover closing. I was freaking out because I thought the seller agreed to pay closing costs. My agent said she was going to put that in the contract and forgot. She said since it was her mistake she was going to cover closing (or most of it) with her commission. I feel bad because I should have caught it when I was signing the paperwork. We didn't sign until after the deal had been made, and so I don't know if that would have changed anything. Lesson learned. Ask to see a hard copy before a digital copy is sent. My agent is doing all digital copies and e-signatures which did make it difficult to read because it kept sending me to the signature box, but I am guessing I could have forced it allow me to read it. Either way, I think we will be okay.

Whirlwind

It has been a crazy week. A week ago we were pre-approved for a mortgage loan. We quickly found an agent, looked online, and then looked at homes. We saw nine houses one day, and three the next. By Friday night we made an offer on a house. They accepted the offer Saturday night, and now we are waiting on inspection. It wasn't exactly what we wanted, but it had more pros than cons and it was the right price. We saw a beautiful house that I fell in love with, but it was at the very top of our budget so we ruled it out. We are moving to the other side of the river here in Jacksonville so life will be different. We don't usually leave our little slice of suburbia, but by moving across the river I think we will be able to explore more of the city.

The other news is E checked in this morning and was told he should be leaving some time this week. His orders said he didn't need to check in until June, but he decided to do it now because he didn't want to take leave just to sit around the house. Since they weren't expecting his this soon they did not have a flight scheduled. I guess they will take care of that, and then he will be on his way to Japan. He should be back before we have to leave the rental so he can help with the moving. I am feeling a bit stressed knowing that I will be going through the inspection and closing process alone again. I bought a house in 2009 while he was in Iraq. I sold the house while he was at OCS. I am assuming that when we decide to sell this new house he will be away somewhere. There are benefits to a military lifestyle, but some days it is very hard for me to see it.

So, now I start to purge our stuff so I don't shuffle it to the next house. I still need to get rid of all the baby stuff. I was going to take it to a consignment store and donate other stuff, but we have been considered a garage sale. Decisions, decisions.

A jumbled post

I had every intention of sitting down this past weekend to write about my feelings on Mother's Day. It never happened. Somehow the weekend slipped away from me. I don't really celebrate Mother's Day, but I wanted to write about my mom. Hopefully soon I can sit down to write about what life has been like the past ten years since she passed away.

In other news, this past weekend was a bit hectic. E finished his FRS training which means he enters the fleet next week. His assigned squadron is currently on deployment in Japan, but are scheduled to come home this summer. We know nothing about what will happen to him so we are planning on him leaving. He could leave as early as Tuesday, or maybe not even go at all. He checks into the squadron on Monday so I am hoping they will tell him something.

On top of all the deployment talk, the property manager called to say that we need to supervise our dogs at all times while they are in the yard because they are destroying the property. If they find any more holes, they will ask us to get rid of them according to the pet addendum. It is true that Rowdy dug around the foundation which the insurance company didn't like. We have fixed it, but then the property manager had his "handymen" fix it as well. They undid all we did so Rowdy dug a small hole again, and they saw it. His workers showed up unannounced and walked right into my backyard. (This is not the first time they have done that.) We fired back saying  you need to give us 12 hours notice that is stated in the lease. After that hole is when they warned us. It was a tiny hole that she had dug that morning, and I hadn't been able to get out to fill it. Basically, we have had it. We were going to live here until early 2015, but we decided to get the heck out of the house. We weren't happy about the condition of the house when we moved in, and I can see that they are out for money. We decided to apply for a mortgage loan again. We tried last summer before moving here, but E's credit was too low. He never thought to apply jointly with me. My credit score is higher, but I have no income. This time we decided to try jointly, and we were approved. Yay! It was a relief. We know we can find a house since we aren't too picky. We have about 8 weeks to find a house, close, and move. This could all take place while E is gone, but I have bought and sold a house while he has been away so I think I can handle it. We have already narrowed down our search to nine homes. Let's hope we can look at them this week and start this process.

Catching up (picture heavy)

We don't really celebrate Easter, but I do let Hannah color eggs and then she hunts for them. We took the girls to two egg hunts and then they had one at home. I don't have much to say about the day so I will let the pictures say it for me.

Oh, we also took a day trip to the Magic Kingdom and guess who we finally met?

We finally met the elusive Anna and Elsa. You can now use a fastpass to meet them which is what we did. We did not wait 3.5 hours. We waited about 10 minutes. Elsa was very sweet to Hannah. They were discussing what it is like to be a big sister. We also ate lunch at Be Our Guest (also used a fastpass). I loved it. I can't wait to eat dinner there in June.