The Beginning of The Beginning

WOW it's been a busy week! Bryan started teaching and is getting into the swing of things. The teacher that he's student teaching for is going to retire after this year, so maybe if he does a good job he can be his replacement...! We've started slowly moving boxes into the house, but we wanted to try and paint/ fix some things before we officially move on Saturday. We don't know where anything is at this point. So crazy! A HUGE thank you to Bryan's parents, Kim and David, for a refurbished lawnmower and to his grandparents, GG and Troy, for a weed eater! I forgot to take a picture of the front of the house, but here are some before and afters on the inside:

Kitchen Before:
What's with the dark blue accent wall?

Kitchen After:
Minus all the clutter on the counter of course.
Living Room Before:

Brit actually came with the house, but don't worry we had her removed. :)
Living Room After:
You can't see it in the picture, but even the gray brick fireplace doesn't look so bad now.

Bryan and his dad worked really hard putting in the wood floors for the past 2 days! Thanks David! I was in charge of painting, and I have so much more to do! Good thing I love painting! We're moving on Saturday, so once we get settled we'll have an omg-we-just-bought-a-house-come-over-and-see-it party!

Closed

We closed! We signed all the papers and gave all our money and we're DONE! Well, done with that. What a long process. Now we have to paint, clean, mow, etc. Hooray! I'll post pictures of our progress as we make it.

Another cool story, we saw Paul McCartney last night at the new Cowboys stadium! What a ridiculously cool show. Not to mention the stadium. Now I even want to go to a Cowboys game, and if you know me at all you know that's totally out of character! How old is Paul now? 60something? And he can still rock. it. out. Awesome!

Hurry Up and Wait

As it turns out, everyone is trying to get this house deal closed - so it's not as bad as we feared! We have a good chance of getting into it now. The liens have been cleared from the title, so all we need to wait for is "short sale approval" from their lender, which I still don't have a complete understanding of. I think it means that the lender needs to approve a sale that is less than what they owe, but I'm not positive. Still good news though! (I think...)

In other news, Bryan is starting his student teaching this Fall on August 24 in Denton ISD. Exciting!

Also, we've got a washer and dryer now (thanks Melanie!), so does anyone have a black refrigerator they are willing to sell us?

Closing Date, Schmosing Date

Well, August 6, 2009 has arrived and we are NOT the proud owners of a new home. As it turns out, the sellers had too many liens on the house and were about to go into foreclosure - but they didn't tell their realtor. Obviously they thought that maybe if no one knew about their debt, then it would just go away! They told us they would try to work something out so we could still close on the house, but needless to say it didn't happen.

The reasons we are in a bind now are threefold:
ONE - We have to be out of our apartment by August 31 because we had to give our notice.
TWO - We don't have enough time to close on another house at this point and still be out of our apartment on time.
THREE - We are out $320 for the home inspection, and $440 for the appraisal. That's money we don't get back. Not now, not ever. There has been some debate as to whether the realtor is liable for this since it's his client that was dishonest. I'm still not entirely sure, but I do know that $760 is a lot of money to just throw away.

So we begin the house hunt again. LUCKILY, we live in a rockin' apartment complex (The Remington) and they are able to extend our lease for 1 month, even though they've already leased our apartment to someone else starting in October. So we have an extra month to find something, which is a little less bad.

God has a plan!

P.S. Does anyone have a washer and dryer they are looking to sell? Our leasing company is coming to pick ours up on Monday because we thought we were moving. Awesome.

New 'Toos

So I can't decide what my favorite part of our San Antonio/Austin road trip was. Was is when Bryan nuzzled a strange woman? Or when he came up from under water in the pool right into some girl's butt? Is he trying to tell me something? Maybe it was when he was excited about his new shirt, until he saw 2 middle aged men wearing it too. :)




On the way down we ate at the aptly named, Yumm Factory. It was indeed yummy. We played Bananas while we ate our "Burger Specials" with sweet tea.



We went to Schlitterbahn first to take care of some schlit. After that we checked out the Riverwalk in San Antonio and ate at our favorite place, Rita's. We got over served though, and totally forgot to use our coupon. Dammit!

Bryan wanted to fit in and not look so touristy, so we opted to purchase some traditional San Antonian garb.

The homosexual barista at Starbucks most definitely hit on Bryan that night too. When he found out we were married, and that Bryan is in fact straight, he pointed out that he had the sombrero on backwards and walked away. Nice.

After San Antonio, we headed up to Austin to see what 6th street was all about. I very much prefer 6th street to any sort of bar situation in Dallas. We got some sweet 'toos, but I almost chickened out on mine for sure. Bryan was making really painful faces and I got nervous! (In case your curious, we were completely 100% sober when we got the tattoos.) I finally went for it though, and I quite like how it turned out! I designed it, and it says "love" in the swirlies if you look closely. It's also only about 4 inches tall. The picture makes it look a lot bigger.

P.S. In the picture on the top I'm smiling on the outside, but crying on the inside. I'm pretty sure I permanently injured Bryan's hand from squeezing it so hard.


Bryan's turn! He actual went first, and his took almost an hour and a half. I can't imagine how people sit through hours worth of tatooing.


This pic was in our hotel room right after he got it done. The face says "eeeeeeeks-look-at-the-blood-o-m-g-this-hurts" doesn't it?

These were taken in a diner on the way back home. The seat belt in the car pressed his shirt to his tattoo and made it stick, doesn't it just make your skin crawl thinking about having to rip your shirt from a fresh wound? The next pic is of him rubbing aquaphor on it after he finally got his shirt away from it. It wasn't SO bad after he got some water for it.


And here is his sweet new 'too! He already had the cross there, but it was blue before. He said that going over the old tattoo was the worst pain ever. The picture is a bit blurry, it's a lion on his back legs facing the cross and a crown over the cross.




Bryan also got a sweet new hat to fit in with the locals in Austin. We were all about the rockin' head gear this trip.
And that's that!

Progression to Adulthood

So it LOOKS like we will be getting our first house! I don't want to post the address because I don't want to jinx it... but it's in Mckinney and it's wicked cute! We close on August 6, unless we close July 31 (which is my birthday, so that would be super sweet). The sellers want to close by the end of July, but the lending complany says they can't unless they rush it, and even then it's still just a maybe. When did we become such grown ups? Getting married and buying a house... Next thing you know we'll own an SUV.

...A Month Later

Surgery is EXPENSIVE! Why is medical care so outrageously priced? And why don't they give you a heads up before you go under? When I go to a store I know how much I'm spending before I hand over my visa. Do you know how much my foot surgery cost before insurance? $15,000. Fifteen THOUSAND dollars, just for the hospital. Then you have to pay the doctor and the anesthesiologist on top of that. THEN you pay for physical therapy. Thank goodness I have insurance, but my deductible +15% is still a ridiculous amount for such a minor surgery. What about cancer patients who are in and out of the hospital? What about people who DON'T have insurance? Maybe Obama's plan will help, but then again maybe it won't. Medicine is a thriving industry, whether we like it or not. But then how do we change it?