Uneventful

Thought I'd just drop in and update. There really hasn't been much going on lately. Tyson's working a lot just to have extra "comfort money," just incase we want more for our house, etc. He's just thinking ahead and trying to make sure we stay comfortable. I sure miss him though. He's been working nonstop since a couple of weeks ago, and his first day off isn't until Feb. 10th when we go to our first design center appointment.

This Saturday morning, we will having our blueprint review of our house. I still can't believe we're building a house. It just seems so unreal, but so exciting at the same time! Ugh. We just can't wait to get out of this apartment. Feb. 10th, Hugh and Nancy will be meeting us at the design center. I'm glad I'll have Tyson's parents there to keep his head cool because I know he'll be a ball of stress. For what? Nothing really. It's just Tyson. I have a feeling he'll just be overwhelmed with the choices and making sure we don't go overboard with costs. I'm thinking of grabbing some home magazines and flipping through them with Tyson to see what sort of look we both like, which I'm HOPING will make it less overwhelming on the 10th. I sure won't be stressed! I have a feeling I'm going to have fun with this! But, you never know. I could be wrong.

Soon enough, you will see probably tons of pictures and videos on here that I'm going to post on the progress of our home being built. I'm going to try to go the video route more, so hopefully everyone will be able to view them on their PC.

Work is going well for me, and it's a hit or miss with Tyson's job. He's really pushing for this K9, but fears he won't get it. He's been in a cruddy mood these past few days, but he won't talk to me about it. I have a feeling it has something to do with K9. I wish I knew what I could do to make him feel happy and not stress over the K9 so much, but I'm powerless. I also wish I could knock on his Chief's door and tell him how hard Tyson has been working for this on his own time and out of his own bank account, and that he'd be crazy to not allow Tyson to become one of the K9 officers.

As for me, I've been preparing my kiddos for the writing TAKS test that's coming up in one month, and I'm exhausted as I'm sure my kids are as well. I'm grading 40 stories week by week that take about 5 mins. a piece to read, and then I leave my kids feedback. I'm usually very thorough because I want them to do well. But, when you're thorough, it sure takes up a lot of your time. I definitely can't wait until this test comes, so we can all breathe a sigh of relief. I have full faith in my kids though. I started grading some stories they finished up on Friday, and so far, I'm VERY impressed with the huge gains they've made. I just want to go to school tomorrow, tell them how proud I am of them, and give them all a big hug.

Well, that's about it. We'll continue to keep everyone updated on the house. There will be videos and pictures to come!

SOLD!

This past Thursday, we officially signed the contract for our very first home that we're building. So, it's now even MORE official! We are ecstatic and cannot wait to get started. We have our first design center appointment either Feb. 10th or 11th because, like I said, we're trying to stretch out the time that we're building our house that way we will have a June 15th close date. We're probably the only home builders in our section telling the contractors to take their time. HA!

Well, Perry homes has taken a few pictures of us at the beginning stages of getting ready to build our first home. Here are a few pictures out of the MANY you will see for the next four months! Pardon the 12 hour day make-up and hair.

Us posing with our SOLD sticker that I'm holding up! You can barely see it, but it's there. I'm SO glad Tyson decided to wear that lovely looking hat! (sarcasm)

Me putting the SOLD sticker on our lot we chose on the neighborhood platform thing. Tyson let me do the honors.

THUMBS UP! We're excited! We're building our very first home!

We're Building a House!

Yes. It's official! We are building our very first home! It just became official today. It's the house that I was talking about in the last post. If you never read it, there's a link down there that shows a model of what it will look like.

Yesterday, I went out with our realtor and the sales guy to look (in detail) at the three lots that Tyson and I were considering. When Tyson got home last night, we discussed a few things further and had our hearts set on a specific lot with the specific model we wanted. PLUS! The price of the home is OUTSTANDING! We got quite a deal! We knew that these were some "hot lots" and a popular home model, so we wanted to jump on it because.........who knows! They would have been sold the next day because it's such a popular home on a popular lot. We did not make a rash decision. We have been letting this home brew in our brains for a couple weeks solid. After looking at other options, we couldn't seem to get our hearts off this other home and open our mind up to the other possibilities that we looked at. We even looked at things BEFORE we ever saw this house, and we were never too thrilled at the selection. Turns out, last night our realtor told me that we made the best decision as well as a smart decision, so that made me feel REALLY good and confident. Honestly, I'd have to agree. Everything just worked out so beautifully.

Tomorrow, Tyson and I will sign the contract, and then it's off to the design center we go! Well......in about 2-3 weeks will be our first design center appointment. The builder is working with us to stretch our close date till the beginning of June, so we are in NO hurry. The builder has organized a time frame of how many weeks until we go to our first design center appointment. Then, we wait another couple of weeks and go to our second appointment, and so on and so on and so on. Basically, we're taking our sweet time until March. That is when we will say, "Get our stuff that we chose and let's start building!" I like this idea because it gives us time to choose the look we want for our house.

We are so lucky that these people are stretching everything out for us. It would be a big mess if they started building now. Our lease in our apartment doesn't end until July, and if we had them start building now, we would have to close in May; therefore paying a months rent ON TOP of a mortgage. That wouldn't be fun. So, we're stretching it out to June where we will pay our rent, and then the next month, we will start paying our mortgage. It works out perfectly financially. Plus, we want to close in June so we can get that $8,000 tax credit. I'm not going to take credit for this well thought out plan. Tyson has mapped all of this out on his own. Go hubby!

We will continue to keep everyone updated on the home building. I'm going to be taking pictures like CRAZY! I want to photograph our FIRST home being built from beginning to end, and then I might put it into a book. This is definitely an experience and a memory I believe we will want to cherish. AHHHHHHH!!!! THIS IS SO EXCITING!!!! We're so thrilled!!! I would have NEVER thought we would end up BUILDING our first home together................never! Come on June! I can't wait!

Happy New Year 2010!

Wow. Tyson and I can't believe it is 2010 already! This decade has flown by quickly. In August, Tyson and I will have officially been together for 10 YEARS!!!! Boy that flew! The beginning of 2009 was an awesome year for the both of us............our wedding, me landing my teaching job before I graduated, and my graduation. The end of 2009 wasn't so nice to us.............I was diagnosed with IC and it put our lives on temporary hold. HOWEVER! I'm VERY optimistic about 2010 and the years to come. My gut feeling tells me that we've got many wonderful, happy things and events heading our way! I've got great intuition *wink*.

For the past week, Tyson and I have been patting ourselves on the back and are especially proud of all of our accomplishments in these past couple of years. We've managed to put a ton of money in savings which leads me to some awesome piece of news.....TYSON AND I ARE FINALLY LOOKING AT HOMES! We're both VERY excited, and Tyson is growing very impatient (typical). He wants to get us into a home very soon. We want to be under contract by April and be able to close in June so that we qualify for the $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit that we will get next year. But, we won't get it if we don't get under contract at lest by April and close at least by June. That is why Tyson is stressing to get into a house by then because we've got a plan for what we want to do with that money like furnishing the home and putting more in savings.

We've worked it out to where we'll be able to put money down on the home and still have plenty in savings. Then after house payments, fees, other bills, fun money, etc. we'll still have money to continue to add into savings, and THEN we'll get the tax credit and put THAT into savings! Overall, I'm pretty pumped! I like to see money go into savings! I'm pretty impressed with how financially smart and organized my husband is (thanks Hugh and Nancy!), and he knows he doesn't have to worry about me blowing our money on things unless we HAVE it. Being a broke college student in the past taught me a lot of financial lessons like learning how to save every penny just to pay for a semester's worth of classes. It wasn't fun, but it sure taught me a lot. In the end, I think the past has prepared us, and now we're ready to get into a nice, new, and cute little home. EEEEEEEEEEEK!!! I'M EXCITED!

For the past couple of days, we've taken advantage of both Tyson and my days off together, and we've gone house hunting. We originally were looking at both Plantation and Perry homes. Tyson was really going for Plantation because he got a bad first impression with Perry when he met with one of the sales people in the Imperial Oaks neighborhood. Well, we went into the Spring Trails neighborhood and looked at Plantation first. Tyson was dead set on Plantation until I told him that we need to keep an open mind and at least meet with the Perry sales people in the Spring Trails neighborhood. Well, as it turns out, Tyson kept telling me yesterday that he was thankful that we took a peek at Perry because he is now dead set on Perry. So am I.

As we've discovered, Perry will give us more for our money. The home we're looking at with Perry looks EXACTLY the same as the home we liked with Plantation. The difference with Perry, though, is that they have more standard options. The home automatically comes with tiled kitchen (60 different choices in tile!), tiled backsplash, separate bath and shower in the master, tiled showers/bathrooms, etc. It basically has a lot of the things we want, PLUS they pair us with an interior design person to put together the look of our house. With Plantation, none of those things I mentioned come standard. Those are only upgrades which is yuck. By the time you add in all of the options, the price of the home would be more than we wanted to pay. I decided to convince Tyson to at least allow me to see the Plantation homes in the Imperial Oaks neighborhood so I could see how he got a bad first impression. As I've said before, I wanted to keep an open mind. Well, the sales person showed us a home with the same layout we're looking at with Perry, and when I asked him if the tile came standard, he said, "No. Linoleum is standard." I then proceeded to look at the guy, and said, "EW!" He lost me at linoleum. Then Tyson and I both looked at each other, and we didn't even have to say anything. We knew right away that the Perry home in Spring Trails was the way to go!

Below is a virtual tour of the house we like. It's the model of the Plantation home because I couldn't find the virtual tour of the house with Perry. It's the EXACT same look and layout we like with Perry. What you'll see in this tour is an added media/game room. This will not be in the home we're looking at. Also, the Perry home we're looking at has a square footage of 1,909 and it has 4 bedrooms, not 3. The home you're about to see on the virtual tour is smaller and has one less bedroom. I thought this would at least give you an idea of what we're looking at. Click on:

http://www.plantationhomes.com/community_details.aspx/Houston/SpringTrails-45ft-Homesites

On the left side of the page is a box named COMMUNITY LINKS. Click on 4817D/Kendleton under model home tours. The page will load. It might be quick, or it might take a while depending on your PC. If it doesn't load, just keep X-ing the page, and re-click 4817D/Kendleton. Sometimes it's stubborn. Once it loads, a picture of the home will pop up. You can eith click on SLIDESHOW or VIRTUAL IMAGES to see the home. I'd suggest VIRTUAL IMAGES.

Let us know what you think! We love it and we think (or I think) it's super cute! We want to move right away. We're tired of the screaming, angry guy that lives above us who's always screaming at someone on the phone. We're also tired of the people who live on the other side of the wall from us because they blare loud, techno music all night. Also, some people just moved in the apt. right across from us, and they have late night arguments which leads to screaming and slamming front doors. Plus, they have this little annoying moped, and every time they drive in, Rosco goes NUTTY! Needless to say....WE'RE READY TO GET OUT OF HERE! But, we will continue to pace ourselves, but I think we've already nailed down the house we want.

We wish everyone a Happy New Year and may 2010 bring you wealth, health, and happiness!