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.

Getting Healthy

DH and I had checkups recently. We've not really had them in years, but we were encouraged to get some extra tests done due to the genetic results from Aubree. She received a defective gene from both of us that could have contributed to her heterotaxy. Thankfully, it appears this gene is recessive in both of us and neither of us have heterotaxy. So our chances of us having another baby with issues as severe as hers were are back to around 1:10,000. Which seems comforting, unless you've been that 1, and then statistics seem irrelevant.

We have really let our healthy habits slide over the past few months. Instead of cooking dinner we've been going out to eat or ordering a pizza. As a result, our checkups showed some unhealthy cholesterol levels. Boo! The doctor recommended a healthier diet and exercise. With DH's broken foot, he really can't do a lot physically right now, but we can work on eating better. We will basically be going back to the gluten-free diet that we did awhile back. Only because it immediately cuts out a lot of the bad foods we were eating (fast food, fried foods, desserts, etc), and helps us focus on eating lean proteins and veggies instead.

Tonight I have a pork roast in the crockpot with a bag of carrots and an apple. I have the day off today, so Aly and I are cleaning the house and getting things organized for our week. And I am hoping when she's napping that I can run out to clean the gutters a bit, which will save us some $$ in not paying to have it done.

October Update

Ten months down and two more to go. I could never have imagined all that this year held for us, but in spite of everything I think we have done an amazing job!

Overall Debt:

Starting 1/1/2013: $62,300.13

Current 10/31/2013: $42,404.91

Total paid: $19,895.22

I can not believe that we have paid off nearly 1/3rd of our debt in just one year! And we will hit $20,000 as soon as I get my next paycheck (but that will go towards November's update!). 

And on the "racing" front, the debt we are paying extra on and trying to eliminate as soon as possible, here's where we stand:

Starting 1/1/2013: $24,500.00

Current 10/31/2013: $9,900.00

Total paid: $14,600.00

Obviously this is where most of our payoff has taken place. We had wanted to have this at $0 by the end of the year, but life happened. We still got it down under 5-digits. This is all at 0% until June 2014, so we are taking our time here and will have it paid off by then.

We are also making some changes to reduce our monthly expenses. We changed up our daycare arrangement a bit which will save around $200, and we are in the middle of refinancing the house which will save another $100. We are also considering trading in our Explorer for a nice sedan that DH can drive to save on gas mileage. We like the big car, but with me driving downtown every day and DH driving all over the place for appointments, it does not make sense for us to have a car that only gets 17mpg on a good day. We don't need the car to tow anything and it only snows 2-4 times a year here. A front-wheel or all-wheel drive car is really all we need to get around if we do have to get out. While trading in the car would be a setback in our overall amount owed for awhile, it wouldn't take too long to catch up. We may save a bit on the monthly payments and we will definitely save on gas each month.

 

Back to square one

DH and I have officially started trying again for another baby. Aubree's due date came & passed, and it feels like that part of time was reserved just for her. Any baby from this point forward could have been here even if Aubree was still here (although I would have been insane to get pregnant again that fast!! lol).

In some ways I am more relaxed this time around, and in some ways I am a bit more neurotic. I am super strict about taking my daily handful of vitamins, and I tracked ovulation religiously. But now that I am in the dreaded TWW (two-week-wait), I am feeling more calm about the process. We've done all that we could possibly do and now we just have to see if it worked or not. One more week to go to see if we will have another July baby or if we will be trying for August. I am trying to not read into every pinch or twinge I feel, but just focus on whatever else I can to keep myself occupied. We have a couple of baby showers coming up at work and I need to get some yarn to start in on some baby blankets. That will keep my hands busy enough to keep me off the computer and prevent me from googling things to death ;)

Sometimes I feel ok, and other times grief will come out of no where and knock me to my knees. Thankfully those moments are getting fewer & farther between, but it still happens. Yesterday I was surprised to discover that going to the baseball stadium made me sad. We got a partial season ticket package this last year and DH wanted to do it again for next year. They held open stadium day to come try out the seats and see what was available. We took Aly along and thought it would be a fun family outing. But walking through the stadium made me think of the night we took Aly to her first game when I was pregnant with Aubree. Both girls got first game certificates, and Aubree danced around to the sounds of the stadium. I am glad we had that night all together as a family, but it still makes me sad knowing that Aubree won't be with us for the games this next year.

Aly was really enjoying her hotdog. Hahah!! Aubree enjoyed her's too ;)