Friday, February 27, 2009
A (Temporary) Place to Call Home (FINALLY!)
Good news! Today we found an apartment to rent until we find a house. It will house our whole family (3 people, 3 pets) and will finally allow us to regain some sense of normalcy in our everyday lives. Tomorrow's moving day and we're exhausted. We'll update you with more details ASAP.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
A Tough Week (Continued)
So I was getting ready to check in at the Indianapolis airport to fly back home on Tuesday when a tall, well-dressed man hurried up to the ticket counter. He told the lady at the counter that he needed to get to St. Louis as fast as possible. He was wearing a suit and tie, but there was a certain lackadaisical, somewhat goofy air about him. He then decided to disclose that he had had a very tough week. He was 22 years old, $70,000 in debt, and as of that day, unemployed. He had payed for his ticket to Indy for his job, unknowingly so that he could arrive to get fired in person by his superior. He had also totaled his car the Friday before. He seemed to be in a state of denial about the whole thing as he laughed it off and simply said, "bad luck always happens in threes". I sort of laughed to myself as he said it, thinking we had had out own string of bad luck lately.
Robbie has told you about the wreck, so let me continue the story as I tell you about our house-hunting horrors...
It seems like I went through this not too long ago when I was in college. Robbie had just graduated and was going to ASBC in Alabama. I had to stay behind in Indiana and finish my last semester at Purdue. We were staying in married student housing the semester before, but I could no longer stay there since Robbie was leaving. I had to find a place for just one semester that wouldn't break our bank account. And I had to do this all over Christmas break of 2006. I remember thinking then how horrible it was to feel like you had no place to call home. But, thankfully, God provided and I was able to move into an apartment with two other girls from our church up there. The rent was super cheap and everything eventually worked itself out. Well, here we are again 3 years later without a place to go, but this time we have a 5-month-old baby, a 50-lb. dog, and two full-grown cats. This presents a little more of a challenge.
Perhaps I need to back up and start at the beginning. Robbie left for survival training, as you know from previous posts, on January 3rd. This was the beginning of the move, in my mind, since I began packing the day after he left. We lost our cable service that next week and I spent the entire rest of the month packing boxes, working online, and preparing for the big moving day. Robbie got home on the 24th of January, and we loaded the moving van on the 31st. That was the last day we had a place to call home.
That night, we brought our caravan to a TLF on base at Columbus and from there went to a Holiday Inn Express the next night, to a TLF at Tinker AFB the next night. The TLF at Tinker, to our surprise, was a glorified hotel room. Peyton had no yard, and the 6 of us were stuck sharing a place the size of a standard hotel room with one small bedroom and a tiny kitchen. We had a reservation to stay there until February 15th. Originally, we thought that would be plenty of time to find a house (not to mention we would only be reimbursed by the Air Force for up to 10 days). Of course, the place was too small for all our belongings, so the majority of our stuff gets loaded into a storage unit outside of base.
We started house hunting two days after we arrived at Tinker, thinking we were getting a good head start. We found a house, but it sold before we could make an offer. We found our next house, and we wasted no time to make an offer. We were excited when the deal went through, and we thought we were set. We signed the preliminary contract on the 7th. And then the trouble began.
Our bank informs us that they can close no sooner than March 3rd! We fax them all our information ASAP, and still have trouble getting our processor to get to work. We talk to our realtor about the loan issues, he talks to the processor, and finally things start to happen. Meanwhile, our reservation at the TLF runs out and our animals have no place to go. We can move into another TLF, but this one does not allow pets. So we had no choice but to put Peyton and the kitties in a kennel. That was on February 16th.
We couldn't get the initial inspection done on our house until February 18th thanks to our slow processor (we nicknamed him "Dirty Sanchez"). We go through inspection and find approximately $980 worth of repairs that must be done on the house before closing, not counting the roof which would have to be replaced due to extensive hail damage.
So on the 19th, I'm ready to leave to visit family back in IN. That morning, we get a call from Paw Prints and Peyton had broken loose from his cage in the night and had done some damage. They told us we had to come and get him and find somewhere else for him to go. Robbie takes me to the airport and then picks up Peyton that afternoon and takes him to "Camp Bow Wow", a $30 a night "resort" of sorts for dogs. (Mind you we are already paying out the wazoo for hotel fees at this point). Peyton stays a night there while the kitties continue their stay at Paw Prints (a.k.a. kitty jail).
On the 20th, our reservation in the regular TLF runs out and Robbie moves all our stuff from there to a friend's house in South OKC. Kyle and Lena are an AF couple from Columbus who just moved here in December and graciously agreed to take us in for a few days. They have a beautiful 4-bedroom house with a fenced-in yard and a very nice chocolate Labrador named Jersey. Peyton was delighted to be reunited with Robbie and go to Kyle and Lena's to meet their dog. Unfortunately, the kitties had to stay in "kitty jail" because Kyle is allergic to cats.
On the 21st, Robbie had his big scary wreck while I was away visiting family.
The entire weekend I was gone, Robbie was driving to our house to see if any repairs were in progress. Every day proved more and more disappointing as the house continued to remain untouched.
I arrived at Kyle and Lena's last Tuesday, the 24th. Peyton seemed very happy, Robbie was okay despite being a little shaken from the wreck, our poor kitties were still caged, but our house closing was set for just a couple days later on the 26th.
Then we get a call yesterday. According to an additional inspection done by a structural engineer that morning (at the request of the bank handling our VA loan), our house is structurally unsound and will require an entirely new foundation. The process would take at least 2 weeks, and approximately $20,000 to complete. Not to mention it could open up an entirely new set of problems in and around the house after it was completed (which at that point would be our responsibility to deal with). Needless to say, we decided that it would be in our best interest to get out of the deal now, before it was too late.
So as of today, the day we were supposed to close and begin moving into our new house, we are back to square one. Only this time, our money is dwindling, our SUV is in the shop, our kitties are in jail, and have to find a place to live even faster than when we first arrived. May I also add that the place where our kitties are being held was robbed last night, so we narrowly avoided another disaster there.
Robbie and I are now searching for an apartment, which is a whole nother headache in and of itself. We have to find an apartment that will offer a short-term lease, will accept 1 large dog and two cats, is on the first floor, and has enough room for the 6 members of our family along with all the stuff that formerly fit snugly into a 4 bedroom house. Our hunt for a home has suddenly taken on an entirely new level of impossible. Welcome to our never-ending nightmare.
So the question I am asking now is, was that guy at the airport right? Does bad luck really happen in threes? We've lost our car, we've lost our house,... I'm wondering what comes next. Or maybe the bad luck started before that when Robbie was wisked away for training way back in December with only 2 days notice. We can only hope things will start looking up from here. As always, we will keep all of you posted!
Robbie has told you about the wreck, so let me continue the story as I tell you about our house-hunting horrors...
It seems like I went through this not too long ago when I was in college. Robbie had just graduated and was going to ASBC in Alabama. I had to stay behind in Indiana and finish my last semester at Purdue. We were staying in married student housing the semester before, but I could no longer stay there since Robbie was leaving. I had to find a place for just one semester that wouldn't break our bank account. And I had to do this all over Christmas break of 2006. I remember thinking then how horrible it was to feel like you had no place to call home. But, thankfully, God provided and I was able to move into an apartment with two other girls from our church up there. The rent was super cheap and everything eventually worked itself out. Well, here we are again 3 years later without a place to go, but this time we have a 5-month-old baby, a 50-lb. dog, and two full-grown cats. This presents a little more of a challenge.
Perhaps I need to back up and start at the beginning. Robbie left for survival training, as you know from previous posts, on January 3rd. This was the beginning of the move, in my mind, since I began packing the day after he left. We lost our cable service that next week and I spent the entire rest of the month packing boxes, working online, and preparing for the big moving day. Robbie got home on the 24th of January, and we loaded the moving van on the 31st. That was the last day we had a place to call home.
That night, we brought our caravan to a TLF on base at Columbus and from there went to a Holiday Inn Express the next night, to a TLF at Tinker AFB the next night. The TLF at Tinker, to our surprise, was a glorified hotel room. Peyton had no yard, and the 6 of us were stuck sharing a place the size of a standard hotel room with one small bedroom and a tiny kitchen. We had a reservation to stay there until February 15th. Originally, we thought that would be plenty of time to find a house (not to mention we would only be reimbursed by the Air Force for up to 10 days). Of course, the place was too small for all our belongings, so the majority of our stuff gets loaded into a storage unit outside of base.
We started house hunting two days after we arrived at Tinker, thinking we were getting a good head start. We found a house, but it sold before we could make an offer. We found our next house, and we wasted no time to make an offer. We were excited when the deal went through, and we thought we were set. We signed the preliminary contract on the 7th. And then the trouble began.
Our bank informs us that they can close no sooner than March 3rd! We fax them all our information ASAP, and still have trouble getting our processor to get to work. We talk to our realtor about the loan issues, he talks to the processor, and finally things start to happen. Meanwhile, our reservation at the TLF runs out and our animals have no place to go. We can move into another TLF, but this one does not allow pets. So we had no choice but to put Peyton and the kitties in a kennel. That was on February 16th.
We couldn't get the initial inspection done on our house until February 18th thanks to our slow processor (we nicknamed him "Dirty Sanchez"). We go through inspection and find approximately $980 worth of repairs that must be done on the house before closing, not counting the roof which would have to be replaced due to extensive hail damage.
So on the 19th, I'm ready to leave to visit family back in IN. That morning, we get a call from Paw Prints and Peyton had broken loose from his cage in the night and had done some damage. They told us we had to come and get him and find somewhere else for him to go. Robbie takes me to the airport and then picks up Peyton that afternoon and takes him to "Camp Bow Wow", a $30 a night "resort" of sorts for dogs. (Mind you we are already paying out the wazoo for hotel fees at this point). Peyton stays a night there while the kitties continue their stay at Paw Prints (a.k.a. kitty jail).
On the 20th, our reservation in the regular TLF runs out and Robbie moves all our stuff from there to a friend's house in South OKC. Kyle and Lena are an AF couple from Columbus who just moved here in December and graciously agreed to take us in for a few days. They have a beautiful 4-bedroom house with a fenced-in yard and a very nice chocolate Labrador named Jersey. Peyton was delighted to be reunited with Robbie and go to Kyle and Lena's to meet their dog. Unfortunately, the kitties had to stay in "kitty jail" because Kyle is allergic to cats.
On the 21st, Robbie had his big scary wreck while I was away visiting family.
The entire weekend I was gone, Robbie was driving to our house to see if any repairs were in progress. Every day proved more and more disappointing as the house continued to remain untouched.
I arrived at Kyle and Lena's last Tuesday, the 24th. Peyton seemed very happy, Robbie was okay despite being a little shaken from the wreck, our poor kitties were still caged, but our house closing was set for just a couple days later on the 26th.
Then we get a call yesterday. According to an additional inspection done by a structural engineer that morning (at the request of the bank handling our VA loan), our house is structurally unsound and will require an entirely new foundation. The process would take at least 2 weeks, and approximately $20,000 to complete. Not to mention it could open up an entirely new set of problems in and around the house after it was completed (which at that point would be our responsibility to deal with). Needless to say, we decided that it would be in our best interest to get out of the deal now, before it was too late.
So as of today, the day we were supposed to close and begin moving into our new house, we are back to square one. Only this time, our money is dwindling, our SUV is in the shop, our kitties are in jail, and have to find a place to live even faster than when we first arrived. May I also add that the place where our kitties are being held was robbed last night, so we narrowly avoided another disaster there.
Robbie and I are now searching for an apartment, which is a whole nother headache in and of itself. We have to find an apartment that will offer a short-term lease, will accept 1 large dog and two cats, is on the first floor, and has enough room for the 6 members of our family along with all the stuff that formerly fit snugly into a 4 bedroom house. Our hunt for a home has suddenly taken on an entirely new level of impossible. Welcome to our never-ending nightmare.
So the question I am asking now is, was that guy at the airport right? Does bad luck really happen in threes? We've lost our car, we've lost our house,... I'm wondering what comes next. Or maybe the bad luck started before that when Robbie was wisked away for training way back in December with only 2 days notice. We can only hope things will start looking up from here. As always, we will keep all of you posted!
Tough week
So this has been one very hard week. It all started Saturday night when I was in a wreck driving home from a friend's house. So there I was... I had just gotten off the interstate and was stopped at a stop light, there weren't any other cars at the light so when it turned green I started to go. Where I was stopped I could see the oncoming lane and a car out in the distance, but because of the hill, turn (check out the map), and it being night my depth perception was pretty off. With all these factors I probably made the wrong decision and decided that I had plenty of time to turn, once I started to turn I lost sight of the car and we collided - awesome. Everyone was ok, so thank God for that. But both of our cars were really tore up. I was only going 5/10mph in the turn, but the impact was hard enough that both drivers' airbags deployed - so in my opinion she had to be going pretty darn fast. Even though it was hard to see the other car, I was sighted with 'Failure to yield while making a left hand turn'.
Right now my car is in the shop waiting to get the damage estimate and the insurance company is waiting for the police report. Now Amber will tell you about our house...
Right now my car is in the shop waiting to get the damage estimate and the insurance company is waiting for the police report. Now Amber will tell you about our house...
Monday, February 23, 2009
Wow...
So I was just tooling around facebook and I 'rediscovered' this picture of me as a baby and I couldn't believe it...the resemblance of Zaylee to me is amazing, hopefully this trend doesn't continue and she grows up looking more and more like her beautiful mom. I'm curious though to find out what all you in tv land think about this, leave a reply.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Pictures, pictures, and more pictures
This post is the pictorial story of our adventure this past month - along with a lot of cute Zaylee pictures.
This Picture and the next series of pictures are of our teeny tiny little bitty hotel room in OKC. This is a picture of our bedroom, it was so small that we couldn't fit Zaylee's crib in there, and since we didn't want the cats sleepy in the same room as our baby we had to put their litter/food/water/etc... in there - it was awesome.
This Picture and the next series of pictures are of our teeny tiny little bitty hotel room in OKC. This is a picture of our bedroom, it was so small that we couldn't fit Zaylee's crib in there, and since we didn't want the cats sleepy in the same room as our baby we had to put their litter/food/water/etc... in there - it was awesome.
Just a note - Peyton is probably the greatest dog ever
Ok, here is the first of many Amazing Zaylee pictures; Peyton may be the greatest dog ever, but Zaylee is the cutest baby ever.
She does have a thing for our cats, but she tends to grab their fur and pull/twist - they don't like it very much. This is a funny picture to me though, it reminds me of one of those old corny monster movies where the bumbling monster reaches for a villager and everyone screams/scrambles. Just picture it - it works
We also started Zaylee on baby mush this month, and she loves it! Just be careful not to feed her the same veggie twice in the same day, lets just say we didn't like the aftermath.
Daddy's Girl
This was probably one of the cutest moments of our travels. Staying in the hotel on our way to OKC, we decided to take Zaylee swimming - she laughed, played, and had a overall great time.
Proud Pappa
This is are awesome caravan to OKC - Amber drove the highlander with Zaylee and the kitties, I drove the uhaul with Peyton in the cab and my Grand Prix in tow. Our total weight of stuff moved came to 13,700lbs.
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Zaylee made a friend - Thomas - but I think I might have to activate my D.A.D.D. membership (Dads Against Daughters Dating) if this continues, he's a little too forward in the next picture.
The next series of pictures are from our moving experience - we greatly appreciate all the help everyone gave us
This is the first of three pictures where the grandparents try posing with a very uncooperative Zaylee
Hey Everyone!
So I know everyone has been wanting to know how it is here in OKC, and you may be thinking 'there they go, slacking again'. But thats not the case! I promise. For the past 3wks we've been living in this teeny tiny little bitty hotel room, that was about 5 blocks from the nearest internet source (the lodging office). Just getting there was challenge when you have a little 5mo old baby that goes to bed at 8ish, and then once you get there, they have security settings in place that don't allow you to get on social sites like Facebook, blogs, etc... So its been rough trying to keep all of you fans out there up to date on things here, but thats about to change.
I've been "working" - if you could call it that - going in for a few hours here and there and then I'm home most of the time. Amber has been spending most of her time with Zaylee, and when she's not taking care of the baby she can be found cleaning, painting, working out, etc... We did find a house - YEAH! - In south Moore, OK (about 15-20min away from base). It needs some paint and some other minor work done to it, but we really like it. Here are some pictures:
Front of the House
Master bedroom
Master Bathroom - it also has a shower and walk in closet
This picture was taken from the main entry way lookin into the living room
This is our living room (none of the furniture is ours)
Sinks in the guest bathroom
Living Room
Backyard - It doesn't have the biggest backyard, but there's nobody behind us, which is a rarity for many of the housing additions
Back Porch
I've been "working" - if you could call it that - going in for a few hours here and there and then I'm home most of the time. Amber has been spending most of her time with Zaylee, and when she's not taking care of the baby she can be found cleaning, painting, working out, etc... We did find a house - YEAH! - In south Moore, OK (about 15-20min away from base). It needs some paint and some other minor work done to it, but we really like it. Here are some pictures:
Front of the House
Master bedroom
Master Bathroom - it also has a shower and walk in closet
This picture was taken from the main entry way lookin into the living room
This is our living room (none of the furniture is ours)
Sinks in the guest bathroom
Living Room
Backyard - It doesn't have the biggest backyard, but there's nobody behind us, which is a rarity for many of the housing additions
Back Porch
Right now Amber and Zaylee are in Indiana - they flew there yesterday. Peyton and I are staying with a friend of ours until we close on the house, and the kitties got the shaft - they're staying in a kennel until we move into our house because my friend is allergic to cats. Well thats about all I know. Talk to you later everyone!
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