Mormon Monday: House Miracle

So, I mentioned last week that we had bad news about the house that actually turned out to be good news.

We thought that we were ready to close last Friday (the 30th). The way it sounded, our loan had already gone to the USDA and we thought that we would be closing much sooner than we had expected.

However, when we called our lender to get confirmation and to ask a couple of questions, we were informed that our loan was stuck at underwriter and had encountered a few hiccups. At the time, our lender sent us a text telling us he couldn't talk to us about it in depth (it was too late at night), but he told us he would call us in the morning. He also told us not to worry about it.

I felt a great deal of peace, so I didn't worry about it too much while I waited for him to call the next morning. However, it wasn't until Wednesday afternoon that I heard from him.

He called back and explained that even though we were making enough that our debt to income ratio would have been more that sufficient for most loans, the USDA required that the loan be only 30 something percent of your income instead of 48%. They thought they had already solved that problem by having the company that Grig works for sign a paper saying that his average of 48 hours a week was required, but the underwriter was now telling them that they couldn't count any of Grig's overtime because he hadn't worked there for two years yet.

Before I could even start worrying about it, he told me that the loan was going to go through one way or the other, and they were willing to do a reduced interest rate  to make up for the extra hours if we were willing to bring $1000 to closing. (Originally, we weren't going to have to bring anything to closing).

On the previous Friday, we had submitted our taxes, but we hadn't quite gotten our tax returns back yet. We had been planning to pay the rest of Grig's school loans with the tax returns, but now we decided to put $1000 of it toward closing costs. The reduced interest rate had lowered our monthly payments by nearly $100, so in ten months, we'd make up for the $1000 that we were spending at closing. It is also going to save us around $20000 of interest money in the long run. Our monthly payments are now going to be only slightly more that what we are currently paying for rent.

It is a miracle. It's a miracle that we couldn't have even have prayed for, because we didn't know it was possible. We weren't planning on moving right now, but we felt impressed that we needed to do so. We weren't planning on buying a home, but we have been brought to the home that we know the Lord intends for us to purchase. We didn't know for sure how we were going to pay for everything, but the Lord has opened a way and directed us to the correct real estate agent who directed us to this incredible lender who is willing to do this awesome thing for us.

We are so blessed and grateful. I know some of these blessings have come because we are trying our best to keep the Lord's commandments and follow the promptings that we've received from Him. I know that as we've paid tithing, we've been given sufficient for our needs.

I can't even tell you how grateful I am, right now, and how excited.

The last loan went through in three days, so we should be closing by this Friday. I'm starting to pack a little bit and deep clean things in preparation.

Thank you for your prayers and interest. We know many of our blessings have come through prayers from others in our behalf.

The Lord loves each of us, and He takes care of us. Trials often turn into blessings, and we are pretty excited for this one!

We are so excited for the yard!

Good News on the House!

So, excellent news on our house.

A couple of days ago, I was waiting for my lunchtime call from Grig, and the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID, and it saw that it was our real estate agent. We had finished the inspection the previous week, and we were waiting for the lenders to do the appraisal.

Worried, I quickly opened the phone, not sure what I was going to here. If the appraisal had told us we needed to fix the roof, I didn't know what we were going to do, because neither the seller nor us could afford it at the moment.

However, to my delight, it was good news! He told me that the appraisal had come back and they assessed the home as worth more than we were paying for it! That means that the lender is willing to loan us money for it. Also, they didn't flag any repairs, so there is nothing holding back the rest of the process! That means that we are clear to submit our loan to the USDA.

That is supposed to take 8-10 days. That means that we may get the house as soon as the 1st of February! That's 11 days before the closing date on our contract, which would be just fine. The sooner the better.

Honestly, I'm ready to move now. I would love to be packing already, but with our little cockroach problem, we can't pack until we're ready to take things out of the house.

We really don't want to take any of the little critters with us, so examining everything closely and taking it right out of the house and then freezing everything (with the hopefully cold temperatures that we'll have that week) should do it.

We're super excited and grateful. The Lord is answering our prayers.

Part of the backyard, including Kevin's playhouse

Goals for 2015

This was meant to be yesterday's post, but I didn't get my goals chosen until this morning. So, first, I need to follow up on how I did last year.

My last year goals I was taking month by month. Here is what I had in January:

This month, I am working on reading/studying scriptures for 1/2 hour, exercising 1/2 an hour 5 times a week, and writing five pages a day.

For the most part, I did pretty well. Exercise especially reached a good point after we got the puppy. I was walking at least an hour a day until the cold hit. November I accomplish my NaNoWriMo goal, which was awesome, and I am close to finishing my first novel. (Technically, it is the second one I've finished, but the first one is the re-write process. Maybe while I'm editing this one, I'll finish writing the second draft of that one.)

This year, I have some yearly goals I'd like to accomplish, besides setting monthly goals. Some of those goals will hopefully be accomplished within the next couple of months. Here are the goals I want to share with you for 2015:

• Schedule every day
• Set monthly goals
• Buy a home
• Fence in Backyard
• Help Grig get his Welding Certificate
• Exercise 5x a week
• Read scriptures daily
• Memorize The Living Christ and The Family: A Proclamation to the World
• Finish and publish one novel
• January: Finish 1st draft
• February: Edit
• March-April: Re-write
• May: Edit
• June: submit to publisher

I'm going to try to make goals on the first of every month. I find that monthly goals do better than yearly goals for me. If I reset goals every month, then I tend to at least do well for a few weeks each month.

Hopefully we'll have a bought a home by the middle of next month. I have faith that it's going to work out. With the Lord's help, the impossible becomes possible.

Spending Time

Last week, Grig worked Monday and Tuesday, and then he was told not to come back in until this Tuesday.

That wasn't as bad as it sounds. They were paid for Thursday (because it was New Year's Day), and he used his floating holiday for Wednesday. So technically, he was still paid for the full week. This week they are working Tuesday through Friday (or Saturday), so he'll get a full week of work this week too.

That's not a good sign for what is supposed to be the busy season, but I was pretty grateful to have my husband home most of last week. It was strange to have nearly a week to just get things done and spend time together.

We got a lot done, and things are moving forward with the house.

It looks like we'll be closing the sale mid-February if everything goes well. There have been a few  hiccups, but nothing that wasn't overcome with the help of the Lord.

Thursday, we are paying for the inspection. Hopefully everything checks out alright.

I'm pretty seriously excited. Everyone who comes over to our apartment gets a virtual tour.

Having Grig home all last week wasn't that good for our finances, but it was awesome for our marriage! Good news, our marriage is stronger than ever!

Sometimes it's nice to just spend time together as a family. Life gets busy, and we don't always stop and appreciate the people in our lives the way we should.

I am so grateful for this new year and the new opportunities that come with it. I'm excited by the changes that are happening in our lives right now.

We have been blessed and helped by so many people, and we are so grateful for everything that has been given to us.

We are constantly reminded how much we have to be grateful for.

One of the things that we finished this weekend is that we were able to voice-record for Dragon and the Wolf Episode 4! That should be finished later today or tomorrow.

Every time I make one of the cartoons, I learn quite a bit more about animating. Everyone is kind of a way for me to see how much I've improved.

Do you remember I announced I had a new idea for a project a few months ago?

Well, we finished voice recording for that too. I realized that voice recording first and animating to the voices is a much better way to go about it.

I'm learning a lot, and grateful for the time that I have to work on these hobbies and with my hubby.

We're Making an Offer

So, as of today, we are officially making an offer on a home.

We went to look at one of the homes again last night. It was the home we felt the best about, and as we were looking in the backyard, snow was finally falling from the sky and a hawk landed in the tree next door. That was pretty cool. It was our first really good snow storm this year. Hopefully it doesn't all melt.

The hawk is in the center of the picture

We feel pretty good about this home we're looking into, and if they accept our offer, we will get an inspection done. We don't really want to pay for an inspection if they won't consider our offer.

If the inspection tells us things we don't like about the house, we can keep looking. This is our favorite home so far. It has four bedrooms and two bathrooms. It has a large garage and two storage sheds. Part of the backyard is completely fenced in, which is great, and means we can take our time saving up to fence in the rest of the yard.

The house does have a few problems, but it's nothing too serious or that would need to be fixed immediately. It's in pretty good shape.

We're pretty excited about it, and we've been praying a lot. We feel like we could afford the mortgage payments, and with a USDA loan, we wouldn't need to pay a down-payment.

With any luck, but this time next month we'll be in a new home. That would be awesome anyway.

Thank you for your prayers. We know we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, and I know part of that is because of prayers on our behalf.

We'll keep you informed.

Big Change on My Mind

I've been really bad this last week on writing on this blog.

Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving and Kevin's birthday. We've been pretty busy with parties and gatherings.

Do you like Grig's Snake necklace?

However, that's not the real reason that I haven't been writing.

I've had a big thing on my mind, and it's taking up my every waking thought.

We're going to buy a house.

Whoohoo!

I've been spending hours researching potential homes. We've hired a real estate agent, seen a home, and done a lot of praying. We've been pre-approved for a loan, and things seem to be falling into place.

We have a few homes that we're interested in, and hopefully we're going to get to go and look at them in the next couple of days.

In some ways, this decision happened suddenly, but it feels right. It is time for us to move. We love our apartment, but it costs quite a bit of money every month, and we've found out that paying for a mortgage can actually be quite a bit cheaper than apartment rent. We feel like we're supposed to be in this area for a while, and we feel good about this decision.

Thus, I've been so excited that I haven't been sleeping well and I can't stop looking at potential homes. It makes it hard to focus on anything else.

I'm trying to do better though.

Hopefully I'll be able to get the house ready. I feel really confident that we're on the right path.

There's one home in particular that I'm really excited about. If anyone wants to pray for us as we're making this decision, we'd really appreciate it!

Wish us luck!