Exciting but frustrating news...

So I meant to wait to tell everyone our exciting news. I meant to wait until everything is said and done before spilling the beans. HOWEVER, at this point I'm not sure everything will EVER be said and done, and somehow my exciting news post has turned into an extrememly frustrated post about waiting...

We're still extremely excited and giddy about the whole thing, it's just now our excitement is laced with undertones of anger, frustration, and loss of faith in the human race...that's all. No big deal.

I'll start with the exciting news, and then explain the whole harried situation.

So we bought a house!!!! we're in the process of buying a house!!!

Not just any house, but rather our very first home! It's nothing too fancy--just a little town home--but perfect for us for a few years and perfect for a new beginning. Not only is it our first house, but it's exactly where we've wanted to be for the past 2 years...Daybreak!

Now I realize Daybreak isn't built for everyone. I've always commented that living in Daybreak would be like living in Stepford. Ya know, like in the movie Stepford Wives--minus the robots. I see this as a positive and inviting attribute, but apparently it is a nightmare come true for some. In fact, a coworker of mine made the exact same comparison of Daybreak to Stepford during my first week of work, only she followed it up with a good shiver and shake of her head...Funny.

BUT for us, Daybreak is perfect. Huge LDS communitee and tons of young couples with young families. So long to our ward with the retirement home! Plus, it will be so fantastic to be within walking distance of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple! My very favorite part about the new house though--the brand new TRAX station that they opened up across the street from it in August. The brand new TRAX station that Andrew and I can walk to in the morning and ride from end to end to get to work at the hospital each day. For free. Together. :)

This whole house thing is not something we decided to do over the weekend. In fact, it's been a huge pain and frustration with a never ending deadline since the middle of August and counting. Because of the fact that Daybreak is such a new community--everything was built within the last 10 years I believe--a whole freakin lot of people bought houses during the housing bubble and ended up stuck in mortgages they couldn't afford when prices plummeted. This means that 100% about 95% of the homes currently sold in Daybreak are short sales and foreclosures. We knew we wanted to move to Daybreak, so we had to play the short sale game along with everyone else. So we put an offer in on our house in the 3rd week in August, just after we got back from Hawaii. Then we settled in to wait. and wait. and wait. It seemed like there was always some other paper that we needed from someone, and it always meant more waiting to get it. As someone who likes to take care of things the second something needs to be done...as someone who plans out EVERYTHING...this has been a painful learning experience in the art of patience. It's been a ridiculously hard thing to do to simply put it in the hands of our realtor and broker and then just wait for everything to finally come together.

Throw Andrew digging a hole into the middle of his forehead and a weekend spent in the ER in with all of the house stress, and you get one very long and frustrating Summer that turned to Fall that eventually turned into Winter with still no house.

We had an end of November deadline that was pretty important not to pass, but alas it came and went with no house and we survived and kept on patiently waiting. Our livingroom was filled with boxes, packed and ready to go for all of November--I had to do something to feel like I had control of the situation. Supposedly Thanksgiving was what threw a wrench into the situation, and so we were told that right after Thanksgiving everything should be set and ready to close. You see, we've been waiting on 1 single piece of paper from the seller's bank for the past month. As soon as someone simply decided to send it on over, we could close the next day and finally be homeowners.

Obviously this didn't happen after Thanksgiving because it's now the 8th, and we're headed into a 2nd December weekend with no paper and still. no. house.

Not only has it not happened, but apparently as of yesterday we are still 10-15 days away from receiving it. Why the sudden change in story??? Well, there's a reason short sales take so long, and a reason they are quite the nightmare. You see, we're only allowed to talk to our realtor, who is only allowed to talk to the seller's realtor, who is only allowed to talk to the bank negotiator (the bank the sellers owe all this money to), who is the only one allowed to talk to Fannie Mae--which is owned by the government and has to approve this whole shibang (they're the one's with our missing paper...).

Can you see where things could get lost in translation?!?!

Really the biggest problem is that the seller's realtor is a total dweeb. Not the smart kind, the weird kind. The kind that looks like he's 12 (I think he's truly only in his 20's) and weighs a buck twenty-five soaking wet. OH not to mention that his hair has highlights circa the year 2000. Perhaps we'd be able to look past all of that, except that the guy has a website. Probably the worst website in existence. The kind you visit and marvel over the fact that people think he is legitimate and are willing to put trust and money into his hands. The kind with YouTube videos showcasing his cue-card reading skills, which aren't good at all, and those gorgeous highlights, in a button up shirt that looks like he shopped in the men's section, when really he should be wearing a medium in the boys section. The kind where none of the links work and if you try to click on a house listing it makes you sign up for a free trial of some kind in order to get access. Seriously. And our future in our perfect house in Daybreak is in THIS GUY'S hands.

He's also the guy who gives our realtor bad information just to get her off of his back for a few days, and then avoids her calls and emails when things don't pan out the way he says they will (like getting our paper right after Thanksgiving). The guy who literally yelled and screamed at our realtor because he thought she was calling him for updates too often--ya that happened. Seriously, he's like a teenager. Totally professional.

Basically he's the guy not doing his job because he obviously doesn't know what the heck he's doing, and it's literally ruining our lives right now. Since we're not allowed to call him though, there's absolutely nothing we can do about it except to sit and wait to see what happens. While our realtor--who is awesome by the way--continues to call and email him like it's going out of style (she thinks he's an incompetent dweeb too) in hopes that eventually it'll get us somewhere.

Oh and we have to be out of our current place by the end of December and will be in Seattle from the 23-29th, but no big deal...

Enough of the complaining though. We LOVE this house! We're ridiculously excited to call it home, even if it requires being homeless for a short-time (I hope not longer!) in order to do it! I've been racking up ideas to make it our home since the middle of August. My Pinterest account is just bursting with awesome DIY projects and decor ideas. Oh, did I mention I'm getting tools for Christmas this year. TOOLS. Not like hammer and screwdriver tools (I already have those anyway) but like POWER TOOLS! I have so many plans and Andrew is completely  trying to be on board with the whole thing. --I have to have something to do while he's at grad school! Home alone using power tools, super good idea.

Sorry about the super long post, but I need to be able to look back at this whole horrible mess later in life and laugh about the whole thing. I feel like it will be an awful long time before that happens though.

And just for the sake of giving you something to look at...here's the awful listing picture of our cute little townhome...