9 months? I'm even worse at this than I thought I would be...

OK its been forever since I even thought about this page let alone done anything with it but I have a completely legit and very very cute excuse...

This lovely young lady is Lillian Bethany and she's 6 months old. If you have children you know where the last 7 months of my life just went, if you don't you will when you have one of your own. Add to that we're buying a house (more on that later) and completely reordering our lives and since we've seemed to reach a lull in the chaos that has been the Life of Brian for the past few months this seemed like a good point to begin reflecting on some of the major events.

Here's a shot of Double Trouble. They get along pretty well now. Dharma tried to ignore her for about the first month in the hopes that she might go away but that didn't work out so now Lilly's her pal. Want to bet that this won't last?

On to the blogging...

This is the story of the Almost House.

I call it the Almost House because the sale has taken almost Lilly's entire lifetime. I was fortunate enough to be able to take a month off from work when the baby was born and part of that time was meant to be for getting my finances in order to find a house for my growing family. Needless to say I procrastinated. My wife and I found ourselves together for the longest stretch of time in nearly ten years. It was great. I got to enjoy being with Lilly and Dharma and that month just kind of vanished. Towards the end when I was facing the reality of going back to work I got off my ass and made some phone calls and found that while I qualified for a mortgage the days of no money down loans were over so I was SOL. My father steped in and gave Sheri and I the money for our down payment and closing costs and Sheri found the house she wanted. This was very important because she was going to be giving up a career to spend most of her time in said house so

"I'd better damn well love it."

The fly in the ointment? The house is a short sale. In short this means that it's owners and the bank have an agreement to sell the house off for whatever they can get. This translates to a very nice deal for my wife and I pricewise but this is offset by the sheer pain-in-the-assedness

of awaiting the bank's approval for our offer. For instance, we signed the paperwork on our offer on SEPTEMBER 17th! We were supposed to close on March 5th but yesterday we learned that the bank screwed up our contracts and we have to wait at least another two weeks. We have to close before the end of April to be eligible for the $8000 credit and since we had to pay more than our origional offer we're going to need that money for repairs and furiture. I cant wait to put up the before and after pics. That is assuming that we ever get to actually move in.

The wife and I are definately doing some hiking this summer so I hope to have some pics and drop about 20 pounds.

Thanks for reading...

bjoly