Well, we have a new house! We closed Friday morning and have been discovering the fun (and challenges) of living in two places! I am taking a little break from painting and packing, so thought I'd write about it a bit.

         It was a little nerve-wracking Thursday night. Apparently, due to some bureaucratic issues (nonsense, really,) there was a possibility that we were not going to be able to close on our house the day we had planned. This had to do with flood insurance, which we had, but the mortgage lender needed a specific document. Of course, they waited until pretty late in the game to begin with to even let us know that this is necessary. We have a tiny creek at the back of our property that is not fed by a larger water source, only by field drainage. Furthermore, our backyard is HUGE.....almost an acre, so if our little creek were to flood enough to come up to our house, we would be talking about an actual disaster situation that would be affecting the entire region, not just our little house. Otherwise, our home is not even in a flood plain (but the yard is....) I just hate it when people (or businesses.... and esp. govt.) don't use common sense about things.  As it turned out, we were in the middle of the process of signing papers when the final phone call came to go ahead and complete the closing.

        Speaking of the closing...... we had to take all four of our youngest. (2, 4, 7, 10) with us to the closing. I let them play with Gameboys while we were there, and you hardly knew they were in the room. My 2yod did throw a fit, but once we got her dry cereal out of the car and into her stomach, she was less cranky and did a good job, too.

       We had a lot of people in the room during the closing. Besides Tony and I and our four younger children, our realtor was there, the sellers were there, their THREE realtors (one was the boss and the others were his assistants, I guess) and the lady from the title office. Wow! i just added at that up and counting the kids, that was 13 people in one room for the signing!  We found out at the end of the closing that instead of paying $2000.00 at the closing as we thought we'd have to do, we actually RECEIVED a check for just over $1600.00! This was exciting because this gives us plenty for finding a new oven and maybe even a new grill!

         After the closing, we picked up some lunch and went over to our new house to eat there. The kids had never seen the inside of the house before, so they were VERY excited! Each loved their bedroom and they really loved the basement and backyard. I started cleaning bathrooms after lunch, so hopefully, I will start painting soon. We have a LOT of work ahead of us. :-)