a hodge podge

We closed on our house yesterday. We are now official homeowners. (How did this happen? 2 kids and a mortgage!)

Even Emma seemed to understand and all day was so relieved to have “home”. I only moderatley panicked before, during and after closing. I can’t take it back to the store if I change my mind! BUT we are excited.

After the closing, Daniel and I first came to the house before getting the girls from my parents and THIS was posted on the windows:

What!? They were warning stickers stating the house was under surveillance and demanding that a Certificate of Occupancy must be obtained before moving in.

WHAT?!!?

The stickers were signed and dated for yesterday. Posted the day we purchased our first home. Talk about immediate stress. We literally only owned the home for minutes and there was already a problem. I called the number posted, and prayed in the Spirit while on hold. The unhelpful man told me to call a different number. No answer there. I call back to Mr. Unhelpful. Another number is given. They, also, are unable to give me answers but think the inspector who posted the signs might know something. He has one office hour per day and is unreachable. But where and who I question out loud, has my answers. What is wrong with my house and why weren’t we notified or red flagged in an inspection?

The inspectors secretary explains that he gets all of his orders from the city and it is the city that will have all the information I need. She offers me a phone number….it’s the first phone number that I called twice. To my delight, someone else answers. I explain my situation and she takes my name and address and the name of the inspector.

“Oh really? He just walked in for a meeting, please hold……holding…..He’s says it’s your lucky day. Take the stickers down. The city only wanted to start monitoring it because it has been vacant!”

Thank You, Jesus.

Once we were given permission to enter our own home, we photoed our first keys and unlocking. Daniel also carried me over the threshold and proceeded to walk around the house saying “That’s my toilet, that’s my light fixture, that’s my ugly kitchen floor”…and then he did “snow angels” in the carpet. (Why not!? It’s our house, right!?)

We brought the girls back took our first family photo and showed them their room. Emma was so excited she was jumping and dancing in her no-longer-gold room.  

We had a wonderful dinner last night with our families and our pastors. We had subs on a blanket in the living room floor and prayed for God’s blessing and protection over our home. Daniel also enjoyed his first game of pool with his brother.The four of us “camped out” together on the living room floor last night.

Today we were busy painting. We have a crew lined up for Saturday to help us move in all our belongings.

It’s good to be home.

We are continuing to pray through this process but we decided that we should apply to see if we could get preapproved for a mortgage. If we did not get approved, then we’d know we were not to buy a house and if we did get the word to buy it would already be set in (pre)motion. We heard today that we were approved. And continuing in the spirit of preparation we felt that no matter where we move we know that we really want to purge and get some clutter out.

I quickly perused through the kitchen and gathered an overflowing laundry basket of things. Anna was helpful in the decluttering process.

                                     

Emma is talking so much now it seems like she uses several new words each day. I’m talking complete sentences. And. She cracks us up. Here are some conversations we’ve had over the last two days.

E: I wanna go.

Me: Where do you want to go?

E: Restaurant….Coscto! I wanna go to Costco! (She’s two! What does she need at Costco!?),

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Me: Hey Emma, do you want to get a new house?

E: Yeeess…..a Fuggarugga house.

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Emma is pretty possessive of me. So if Daniel, or anyone is hugging me she’ll say “That’s my Momma!”. Daniel will say, “Well, that’s my wife”. So tonight after, church I was holding Anna and Emma yells out:

“Anna Joy, that’s my wife!”

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On the way home from church tonight she asked if we could go to Starbucks. She knows where it is off the exit ramp by our house.

The silver skirt is also pictured. You missed out on the sweater.

As I pulled cat urine carpet and pad from our living room and hall today I was thinking of new and exciting ways I could blog about cat pee. Looking back, I wish the largest contributing factor of drama to my day was stinky carpet.

One of our window frames is broken - it won’t stay up. It’s been like that since we moved in - there was a piece of wood used to hold the window open. We didn’t think much of it because 1) we hadn’t opened our windows much before the last week or two and 2) it was behind our couch and pretty inaccessible. That is until, today when we were pulling up the carpet.

Emma was looking out the window and we told her several times not to touch the window. I finished telling her for literally the fifth time in twenty minutes, turned around…and heard screaming. She knocked the wood out and got her hands crushed by the very heavy window. I am thanking God that some of the wood got stuck in the window so the whole weight of it wasn’t on her baby fingers. I thought her fingers would be broken because it is so heavy and she immediately had huge blisters and some bleeding. We took her to the E.R. It was our first trip there for one of our children.

The hospital was more tramautic for her than the window incident. It was new and scary, she was in pain and to top it off she hadn’t napped yet today. The poor baby. Through the x-rays and blood pressure tests she kept crying to go to the “Mickey Mousey store” (The Disney Store) as we had told her earlier in the day we would do soon.

We were told a good report: no broken bones! and headed off to the Mickey Mousey store where you better believe she picked out some fine princess goods. She ended up with a silver princess cardigan, a silver princess skirt and an Emma- sized Fuggarugga doll.

As it stands, my baby girls are sound asleep and my living room smells better.

To give the moms a break Daniel is leading worship on Sunday for the first time in a looooooong time (since our church closed in ‘06). The girls were helping him practice. Emma was helping strum and Anna was organizing his music.

…and Anna found it. Ooops.

…I had to watch commercials.”

I was trying to explain this to Emma as she whined to watch the rest of the show as I fast forwarded through the commercials on our dvr.

I like our dvr.

I bought the Enchanted soundtrack. I love this movie - it’s sweet, has great acting, fun music and it makes me laugh. The bonus is that Emma also loves the movie and even Daniel enjoys it. Anna seems pretty mesmerized when it is on. I like it so much I can’t even decide which is the funniest line, my favorite part or my favorite song. I think part of it is that 1) it’s a grown up fairy tale and 2) it’s a princess movie with actual non-animated people in it. Movies of the princess genre have been dominating our tv time. Have you seen it?

So, what will you admit, has been your “most embarrassing” music or movie purchase?