At the finish line :)

We've been in our house for just over two months now. We are pretty much settled in - there's no boxes left to unpack and just a little bit of mess in the garage to clean up. (I really should get to that this weekend while it's still nice out!) We've been looking for deals on furniture and have most of the rooms done! It's crazy going from a 900 sq ft house to a 3,000 sq ft house - suddenly there are a lot more things that we needed! But we've shopped Craigslist and neighborhood FB postings to get awesome deals on the things we needed and paid in cash along the way. Obviously the mortgage was an increase, but so far the utilities have actually been about the same or even a bit less since the new house is much more efficient than the old one!
 
The rental on the old house is also humming along just fine. Our tenants seem to be taking care of the place well (from what we can tell with driving by) and keep paying rent on time. There's only been one minor maintenance call to take care of. We are coming out ahead a little bit each month after paying the mortgage and property management fees, so we are banking that to take care of any future maintenance issues.
 
And as of today, we are 16 days or less away from holding our little guy :) My liver decided it was not happy with me being pregnant and I developed ICP - cholestasis of pregnancy. Basically it's just not working the way that it should, but should go back to normal as soon as I am un-pregnant. It can cause some issues for baby if he's left in to term so we have an induction scheduled for 37 weeks. So far we are having weekly scans and he's doing really well. He's even bigger than the girls were, showing up in the 56th percentile!! I don't know what we will do with a normal-sized kid ;) We got a new crib for him ($50 on the neighborhood FB page!), have gathered the hand-me-downs, and pretty much have things ready to go whenever he decides to make his debut.
 
Moving set us back a bit financially, and we've been lax about shopping for things for J and A as we head into fall, but so far finances are humming along. We should end this year right where we started it. Kind of stinks that we didn't have more progress, but for the huge life changes we've made along the way I am happy with it.

Its time to move!!!

We've survived the past three weeks camping out with the in-laws (or, I should say, they have tolerated us invading their space for this long!). Tomorrow evening we get the keys to our house and move in :) I can not believe the day is finally here! After years of trying to figure it out and being patient for the right time, the time is now.

Renters are in and paying. One maintenance call so far for things I had expected anyway. Otherwise the property manager has said the tenants like the house and seem to be very happy there.

Will do a bigger update later. Time to get some stuff all sorted out and ready to go :)

Whirlwind

You know, we talked about moving for years. Seriously, forever. And now it's flying by!

Tuesday, May 20th we got our documents in to the mortgage guy to see if we could even qualify for a new house while still owning this one. Thursday we got the green light to look for another house.

Sunday, May 25th, we saw four houses and fell in love with the last one. We put in an offer and countered back & forth on Sunday and Monday. Since we weren't reaching a deal, we went to look at more houses on Wednesday, May 28th. We ended up seeing 10 houses that met our criteria, and we went back to the one where we offered originally and were able to meet a deal with the sellers. Thursday, May 27th offer accepted.

Friday, May 28th, we signed a contract with a property management company to rent out our house. They said it takes 30-45 days to get a tenant in. With a prospective closing date of July 10th, we decided to start the process now and hopefully have renters by the time we moved out of this place. The house was shown on Monday, June 2nd and Wednesday, June 4th. By June 5th we had a prospective tenant and a lease signed by June 7th. They want to move in ASAP! And the sellers of our new house moved up the closing date to July 5th :)

So Wednesday, June 18th will be our last day in this house. One month from starting this process! And two and a half weeks later we will be in our new house! I seriously can't believe it!

The new budget will take some adjusting to as we get settled in. The new house payment plus the expected increase in utilities is about $1000 more per month than we pay now. We can't quite cover everything on my salary alone now, but DH is more than able to cover it, and as we keep paying down debt and making progress on that front hopefully we get back to that point soon.

We also got daycare figured out starting in January once we have two kiddos. Our wonderful nanny is sticking with us two days per week for as long as she can, and then my mom has agreed to come to our house to watch the kids so that we don't have to get them out every day. This will be good for her too as she's been at home with my dad for several years now and was looking to get a job to have something to do ;) But it's only three days per week so she has plenty of time to still do what she wants as well.

Baby J continues to do just fine, and is becoming very active. 21 weeks pregnant today - more than halfway! So far I've gained about 10lbs which isn't bad. I still have 15 to go before I hit my limit to stay within my healthy range. A is getting so excited about her little brother and keeps lifting up my shirt and poking my belly to try & see him ;) In three more weeks we hit the first viability milestone, and it seems like I could actually see ourselves bringing home a baby in the fall.

Still here!

Life has been, well, life. Busy, fun, and always changing.

Baby update: we have a heart-healthy little boy coming in the fall! We've had several in-depth ultrasounds, including a heart echo, and everything is perfect. His name is Jaydon, meaning "God has heard." Aly is coming around to the idea of having a brother and we are starting to let ourselves get excited. I probably still won't fully relax until I am holding a screaming baby, but it is nice to have some reassurance.

House update: WE ARE MOVING! Seriously. After all this time we are finally getting everything worked out and we hope to move within the next two months. Our plan is to rent out our current house using a property management service. DH's income has gone up enough that now we qualify for another mortgage on top of our current one, because the lending rules have changed and now we can't count renting out our current house as "income" until it's been two years. So both mortgages fit into our overall eligibility range. Even though we plan to rent out our current house we could still technically afford to make both mortgage payments each month. Not that we would want to, but we could.

We went to see houses today and found one that we absolutely fell in love with. The disclosure looks great, the price is right, and the neighborhood is the one we've been dreaming about living in for the past four years. The schools are great for DD, the area of town is one that will be retaining it's value for years to come, and the neighborhood is full of young families so DD and DS will have plenty of opportunity for friends and playmates. So now we are in the process of making an offer!

Work is going well for DH and for me. I feel like we've finally made it to the point where we can breathe and things are finally running on a good note for our family.

February Update

The financial updates aren't nearly as fun now that we've paid off so much debt. We are to the point where all of our remaining debts are under $10,000 each and just about to be under $40,000 overall. At this point our focus has shifted from paying off the remaining cc's (3) to paying off the car since that will open up the most in terms of monthly obligations ($360 payment on the car vs. $200 min payments on the CCs). Then we will start socking away cash as much as possible while we look for a new house so that we have the funds ready to go when we find a deal.

As for the house, the plan right now is to do a trade if possible. The good news is that we don't really have a timeline. We can be in this place for another two years if we have to. But we are also ready to jump on a trade deal and close as quickly as possible if we get the deal. It wouldn't take more than a weekend to move out of this house and into another (one heck of a weekend, but possible!).

We had an ultrasound on Wednesday and baby is right on-track at 8 weeks. And baby had a normal heartbeat! We still have to wait another month to get the full genetic test done and the 12-week scan to check for brainstem issues. From there we will have a level 2 ultrasound around 17-18 weeks with the specialist, and then a heart echo at 24 weeks. Hopefully things all check out fine and we can continue with a normal pregnancy after that point. I haven't really even let myself think about actually getting to bring a baby home. I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to it (hopefully we get to it!). We have to figure out daycare, re-arrange Aly's room and things to make room for baby, etc. But there's plenty of time to figure out the details. For now I am just trying to enjoy the fact that today I am pregnant and trying to keep the anxiety at bay as much as possible.

Update :)

Wow, it's been awhile! Time for an update I guess :) Here goes:

1) Refinance finally done 12/31/13. First they said we lived in the wrong city, then they had our street name spelled wrong. Fannie Mae is seriously annoying. They never confirmed it but I honestly believe this was the reason we didn't qualify for the principal reduction when we had called about it since so many others in our neighborhood/area did. Ughghg. So glad all of that is settled and corrected now and we can move past it. Nice, lower payment and everything is finally set up in our bill-pay.

2) Our remaining non-mortgage debt is down to $43,000, from a high of $88,000 a few years ago. Our 401k balance is now higher than the remaining debt! Nice to be moving in the right direction. We have our tax appointment later this week and then we can start hitting the rest of the CC debt after taxes are settled.

3) +hpt last week confirmed that baby #3 is on the way and due in October. We have nearly the same due date a year later. I thought I would be excited but I am ambivalent at best. I don't think I will believe it's real until I get to bring a healthy baby home. This is the point of development where everything went wrong with Aubree, and there's no way of telling if we have the same situation or not for at least another 10 weeks. I am going to push for an induction at 38 weeks this time. I've met too many mommas in my loss group who lost babies at 39+ with no explanation. 1:160 babies are stillborn and more than half have no explanation, and I am at even greater risk now that I've had one baby stillborn. I am just not risking it. I am sure the doctor's office already hates me since I am refusing the first intake appointment with the nurse. I am not watching some video that tells me not to eat raw meat or drink while pregnant. And they already know my history pretty well - nothing has changed in the last 6 months that I know of. There's nothing they could get from that appointment that could help prevent an early loss for me anyway. I am not wasting my PTO on a worthless appointment. They work for me anyway, right? I would hate to have to get another doctor but I am not going to put up with crappy office staff either.

4) We are starting to look again at new homes. There are a couple of builders doing trades and we are in a much better position to do that this year than we have been in the past. Trading in a home is sort of like trading in a car - we won't get as good of a price for our house as we would if we took the time to sell it on our own, but the benefit is getting it all done in one transaction. Our other option is to rent this place out with a property management company. DH has been looking in to some that cost a bit more, but we would NEVER have to see this place again unless we wanted to. They take care of absolutely everything. For about $100/month that is well worth the cost.

Fannie Mae Sucks

Yeah, probably no surprise there.

We've been trying to refinance our house for two months now. Paperwork all submitted, credit reports ran, things all lined up the way they should be. But for two months our appraisal has been held up by one tiny detail.

Fannie Mae says our house is in another city.

This should be an easy thing to fix, right? Our original loan documents, appraisal, and deed all show our home in the correct city. All county documents for our house show us in the correct city. But somehow, somewhere, Fannie Mae got their records confused. I could see how this could possibly happen as our current zip code covers two different cities. And we are about a block away from the city limit.

But no matter what documentation we provide or how many times the mortgage broker calls, we are sitting here 8 weeks later with nothing to show for it. Eight freaking weeks! What the hell?

So maybe by March we will have this mess done. I am so annoyed right now it's not even funny. I know it's not the mortgage guy's fault but at this point I want to throw in the towel on it. Fannie Mae is the reason that we've not been able to get a principle reduction or refinance in the past. I freaking hate them.