15 Weeks and Counting

Three and a half months pregnant is a strange time. I definitely feel as though I look a little more pregnant these days though half the people in my life say "You look the same!" and others say "oh my goodness look at that baby pooch!" My belly is swelling, but not clearly full of a baby just yet so it's a weird in-between time where friends and family know I'm pregnant and the world thinks I'm bloated. haha Both of which are true!

14 Weeks (since I missed it last week)

15 Weeks

This week our baby continues to work its way through the produce section and is the size of an orange (about 4 inches from the top of his/her head to his/her bottom). Following previous weeks where the baby developed fingernails and teeth under the gums, baby is taking more steps this week toward being an attractive person with proportional arms and legs. The eyelids are still sealed shut, but the baby can sense light and tastebuds are forming. He or she also now has functioning joints and is wiggling around in there like we saw on the sonogram last week... but is still too small for me to feel.

In other news, my braces are on and no longer sore. This past weekend we went on a family vacation with my family to Wimberley and had a great relaxing time. Aaannd last but not least, the last day of week 14, yesterday, we came home to a broken AC. We're staying with our good friends G & Lu at least one night to see if we can get it repaired ASAP, but for now the same sweet friends that saved us during the water shut-off crisis have pulled through again. Huck is in doggie heaven playing with their Boston Terrier Charlie Daniels... and it sure beats our 93 degree house!

Huck with our 'ghetto A/C' - a bowl of ice and a fan - before we left for G & Lu's.

Officially Out

As of Monday night we are officially out of our apartment. Looking at all the moves that we have made together each of us from one apartment to the next I would say that this, by far, was our most challenging move. In the past, we were two people moving one person... this time, all of our stuff was combined and we were two people moving two people!

We reserved a truck for 9 am Saturday morning ... I confirmed this Friday night. Saturday morning at 8am I got a call that said the guy that rents the trucks wouldn't be in until noon, so I should wait and pick it up. We finally got the truck at 1, but not until Michael was able to throw in an awesome Seinfeld reference at the rental place.... "Anybody can just take a reservation...it's the holding that is important..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7uvttu8ct0&feature=related

We moved all day Saturday with some help from Nate and Caleb (thanks so much) but we made countless trips following the return of our truck in the 4-Runner. It's like our stuff was multiplying... we are SO ready for a garage sale! As Michael put it, "If we were doing this in reverse and I was standing in our house with all this stuff, and you told me that I had to move all this stuff into our 1200 sq. ft. apartment, I'd tell you there was no way." And that is the TRUTH!
Last night was the first night we did laundry in our house, the first night I attempted to use the gas cook top (more on that later) and the first night I used the tub (ahhhhh). We're making progress unpacking, but there is still a ton of stuff just dropped wherever we could find room to put it! We are REALLY looking forward to our long weekend to make some huge strides. I'll post pictures of the 'wreckage' soon but for now I'm attaching some painting pictures...
Our breakfast nook got a couple of coats of paint before I pulled off a huge strip of paint like a big gummy worm - I was trying to pull a paintbrush hair off the wall (lesson #1: cheap paintbrushes are cheap for a reason and nice ones are worth the investment!). We're now going to have to sand and start over in this room, but the other rooms were more successful.

The Master Bath all ready for painting. The lighting is bad in this pic but the tile is a beige color and the walls were yellow.

Michael hard at work painting his walls this lovely "Dry Pasture" color.

Priming the niche in the secondary bedroom for painting. It was a VERY dark red and you can tell it's been painted about a hundred different colors so it was pretty crazy texture AND color to paint over.

Anyway, we also painted the other bathroom and got the final color on the niche so more pictures are to come! Thanks to all of you who are sharing in our joy for this very exciting step in our lives - it's an adventure!

Natasha

One big box of surprises...

So closing day is tomorrow. We went by earlier this week and saw the foundation work complete, added some top soil, and watched some construction guy haul off all the yucky dirt and cement on our back driveway.

We also peeked in the windows and saw no major cracks or anything from the foundation work and our Realtor's walk through confirmed the same. The sellers movers have come, her maid has come, the yard guys have come for the last time (on her bill at least) and the house sits in wait for us.

Because we've purchased a few items from the seller those things remain in the house, but we were told on Saturday that there would be an additional "surprise" for us. Then, we got an email this week saying she left "more than one surprise". Some surprises we know we're getting are awesome, like the extra speakers for the surround sound in the livingroom.... others are questionable, like the 'disco pillow' we saw when we went to her garage sale last Saturday.

I guess for now all we can do is wait until tomorrow night when we go to our new home to evaluate whether or not which of these surprises are 'the good kind' - she has promised it's not her standard size Poodle Emmy or Tess the Schnauzer. Any and all surprises aside, we are SO very excited about our new home.

Natasha

The Move

We close on our house this Friday and the big move is upon us. Today they are supposed to finish the foundation work and we should be able to assess the success this evening. Yesterday was the first day that we packed together - as opposed to one of us packing odds and ends on our own - and though we got a lot accomplished there are still a lot of little things that need to be put in boxes. (Like, ahem, everything in our kitchen.)

It's pretty exciting as this is our first house and because it feels more like our first place together than our apartment did. Because I moved into the apartment first and lived there for about 6 months before we got married, it felt a lot like we moved Michael's stuff into a place that I was living ... I guess because that's exactly what we did. Now we'll get to pack our things and have a true merger of our stuff when we get to the new house.

The house is also different because we know that we'll stay there for a while and we can really get settled. Since my Junior year in college I've changed residences at least once a year. My senior year at A&M I moved in with Meredith, then my first year of grad school I lived with Marcus, then with cousin Stephen for a semester. Then I moved to San Antonio for about 11 months and lived with mom, then to Austin. In Austin I lived by myself in an apartment for about a year, moved out and ended up living with a lady from church for a few months (that's another story), then got an apartment again in Austin by myself. After living in that apartment for just under a year I moved to Dallas. Between the moves that Michael and I have helped eachother with and the moves of others, we have been part of a LOT of moves over the last 5 to 6 years and we are sure looking forward to settling down.

All of this is made more joyous by the seller who has turned out to be a really cool lady (aaaand she's had some great furniture that she wanted to unload that we have purchased!).

The Green Gate House

Alas, we have fallen in love again. There is another home that we've made an offer on as of yesterday as a matter of fact, three offers on yesterday (long story for later). The back and forth is emotionally exhausting and because the home is new to the market, the seller is especially ornery.

This house doesn't really have a color that I can assign to the brick and when I told Michael it was like a cottage he said "no". Indisputable (unlike an opinion such as 'it makes me think of .....') is the fact that this home has a green deck and fence, so for now, that is how we will refer to it. That is, until we can hopefully refer to it as 'our house'.

We countered last night and supposedly our counter was never received, so we resent today at 5pm and are anxiously awaiting a response by 9pm tonight. We still know God's plans are better than ours, but Michael's been better at reminding us of that than I have lately. I'm just so ready to begin mentally arranging my furniture and planning a barbeque and I refuse to do that again without knowing a home is ours...

I like apples better anyway....

Well, we're very sad to announce for those of you who have been following that we did not get the orange house. The seller received another off mid-negotiation and decided to strike a deal with them instead. They kept saying he'd get back with us and deadlines pushed again and again and finally tonight we found out that the home has been sold.

As much as we trust that there is another home out there that will be just as wonderful and in which we will be just as happy, we're still having a hard time thinking about not having the one that felt so right. I guess next time we know not to let ourselves get too attached - the more you love, the greater the risk for hurt.

Thanks for all of your encouragement in our search. I'm sure we'll be back in the saddle again soon.
Natasha

Still seeing orange...

Well, the owner of the orange house has decided that he is willing to negotiate with us and we will get his counter offer in T minus 74 minutes. This, is a good thing considering he could have dismissed us entirely or have had another offer on the table. We are anxious and excited and hopeful as the process gets serious.

Meanwhile, it's funny to me how much this process highlights our strengths and how very different they are... Michael's understanding of how rates and financing work is soooo much greater than mine and his negotiating skills will surely come in handy as we move forward. As I try to understand the mortgage side of things best I can, I've made a spreadsheet that helps us determine the best refrigerator (the house doesn't come with one) and pursued advice from all my builder friends regarding updating to be done, solid construction, discount connections, etc.

Hopefully together we prove to be a successfully unstoppable team, at least when it comes to the orange house! We'll keep you updated.

Do you believe in love at first (home)site?

So I guess it's not the first home we looked at, but it IS the first one we visited. Two weeks ago we did some driving around looking at homes in a nearby neighborhood that we'd found online. Only slightly more formal than what we sometimes like to do after lunch on Sunday afternoons, because we'd found homes online beforehand. Before we headed back to the house, Michael said there was one more that he thought I would really like.

And WE did. That little "orange house" as I would call it because of the orange brick (not orange paint!) looked so cute and felt so homey even though all we could do was peek in through the windows and sneak through the back gate to check out the yard. The following week I thought a lot about the house and we set only a semi-serious appt to check out the inside the following weekend.

Last Saturday, we toured the house and loved the layout and the condition of the home. Monday night we went back at night and walked the yards and looked in the windows again to see how it felt. Last night we went back with a realtor and went inside.

How could we just stumble on this little home with an Aggie Realtor and fall in love so quickly? It just all seems so crazy.... not foolish, just fast. I've had so many people say "When it's right, you know it." and it does feel right. I guess now we'll see how right our gut is!

Wish us luck!