We bought a house!

Cross-posted from my Google+ account. 

[If you haven't joined already, you know you will eventually, so you might as well do it now]

We bought a house today. If you've been following our occasional updates, it's none of the ones you may know about. This was a weird very sudden thing that popped up a few days ago. Not a short-sale, so we put an offer on it, and we got a response back today that it's ours. The house is empty, so we just need to wait for the paperwork stuff and for the previous owner (an investor) to own the house for 90 days before he can officially sell it. That puts us at March 15th 'til it can be ours (Okay, okay, it won't be ours. Lets be honest. That won't happen for years and years).

It's um . . . beautiful. 0.28 acres. Big back yard [Probably too much yard work -- yuck]. 3278 square feet total in the house. Unfinished basement, but its actually well on its way to being finished. The basement is mostly sheet-rocked already.

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Yep. We're ridiculously far into debt now. But we're sure excited about this house.

Hurry up and wait

We're at the wait stage now -- on a couple of items.

School:

We decided to say 'no' to Duke University and really hope to get into the University of Utah.  I'd love to go to either school, but it just makes sense with the massive price tag difference without the scholarship to choose the U of U.  I should be able to get a job in Nursing Informatics with either school, so that's not an issue at all.  We're hoping to hear back from them sooner than later (It still likely won't be for months) but we do have some back-up schools in mind to apply for should the U not work out.  So we wait...


House:

Personally, I like the house in the
second-to-the-right spot.  You?

Some of you already know we put offers on a few short-sale houses.  It sounds like one of the original three is still a viable option, but we found out yesterday that we are "the offer into the bank" on the one house and are in a "very good position" on that one. Our real-estate agent sounds very optimistic about us getting that one.   However, the latest question-mark in the puzzle is that the day before yesterday (before we found out that other stuff), another house popped up that Katie has had her eye on since we started looking at houses.  We could never see it because there was a pending sale.  As of 2 days ago, it was re-posted online as "Sale Failed."  I guess the buyer backed out for some reason.  We jumped on it to look at it yesterday and we like it.  We put an offer on it right then and there.  Without getting into the boring details of some "stuff" that has to happen, because this house already went under the short-sale review in the bank, this offer could be processed very speedily -- possibly getting back to us even before the offer on the other house we made mid-December.  If we end up buying that house, we'll of course cancel our other offer and let the next offer in line behind us for that house take it.  And so goes the short-sale game.  Right now, we just wait...

House 1: (Our original offer)	House 2: (The one we put an offer on yesterday)
Pros: Slightly bigger house 2/3 of the house is finished space (2 floors finished + unfinished basement). Unfinished basement to add to. 4 bedrooms (space for the kids to run amok in for a while until we finish a downstairs family room) A bigger/nicer master bedroom/bathroom/walk-in-closet Huge kitchen/cupboard space/pantry	Pros: Great looking yard. Landscaped. Sprinklers. 0.25 acres. Unfinished basement to add to. Everything is on the main level – bedrooms, laundry, kitchen, family room. NO BLASTED HOA FEE (unknown on the other one)! Bar in the kitchen (the kind you can put benches up to)
Cons: Unfinished back yard (UG!) 0.14 acres. More expensive for utilities for a 2-story (basement + 2 floors) house? Unknown HOA fee status.	Cons: Only ½ of the house space is finished (2-level, with the basement mostly unfinished) Currently only one “living area.” We'd have to finish a basement family room area for kids to run amok in. While it's a decent sized kitchen, it's nothing like the other one.

Pedometer

I asked for a pedometer for Christmas. I'm not sure why I did this... who wants to be continuously reminded at how little they move in a day? On days where I went to the grocery store or when I went to do returns from some Christmas stuff, I averaged 4,500 steps as opposed to the 1,000 that I got one day last week when I was feeling sick and basically sat around reading "The Help" all day. I decided to look up how many steps you're supposed to get...

Most things on the web suggest 10,000 steps a day. From fitsugar.com (a reputable sounding site, I know...) there's a little more detail:

• Women:
  Age 18-40: 12,000 steps per day
  Age 40-50: 11,000 steps per day
  Age 50-60: 10,000 steps per day
  Age 60 plus: 8,000 steps per day
• Men:
  Age 18-50: 12,000 steps per day
  Age 50 +: 11,000 steps per day

I'm not even making the 60+ requirement! Sheesh! Time to pull out my walking shoes.