I'm making an ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!

Most of you knew this anyway, but by putting it out there I'm reassuring myself that it will happen...........we are going to be moving to the Grand Forks area! There I said it and there's no turning back!

Our initial plan:
Move to GF by September 1st, start out renting a small house from my current bosses, and begin the financial process to be preappoved to purchase a house, start house hunting.

What really happened:
Derek was looking at houses for sale on Sunday night and found one that looked really nice. So I called the realtor, expecting it to be already sold or sale pending and not off of the internet yet...I totally think they do that on purpose-anyway, it wasn't. In fact it was just put on the market 2 weeks ago and they just dropped the price by $10K! So we made a quick decision and made an appointment to see it on Monday at 4:30. We both left work early and drove to GF, expecting to shrug off the disappointment and drive back home with nothing but a wasted tank of gas! ---BUT----the house was amazing!! Like SUPER-AMAZING! It's a modular home built in 2001 and it's huge, and has 3 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, big ass kitchen with lots of cupboards, a family room with a fireplace, the master bathroom has a jacuzzi tub and the room has a walk-in closet big enough for 2 twin sized beds, a big entry/laundry room that is all tiled, plus it has a big living and dining room, and I think I forgot to mention the SHOP/GARAGE that is about the size of the one we have in DL, and did I mention it's on 4.35 acres of land! And it's only 15 miles from GF just outside of Thompson. Everything we wanted in our starter home: out in the country, big, and new, and has a shop! The only negative is that we would have one neighbor, but we found out that they are renters and they looked younger and had 3 or 4 kids. Plus I'm sure there is at least 1 acre of land in between us!

We were pretty excited, but not ready for this. I was planning on having a couple of months to work on financing and saving some cash. But we jumped in head first anyway. We met with the realtor, Jill, at her office at 9pm and she walked us thru the process and we signed paperwork so it'd be ready if we could get preapproved for a loan. I took a personal day off of work on Tuesday and spent the entire day on the phone with bankers and Jill and after most of the day sitting by the phone waiting, we got a call at 5:30pm saying that we were preapproved for the purchase price. The down side: we have to ask the seller to pay for the closing costs, and we had to come up with only 3% for the down payment, which is about $4000! So I've spent the last couple of days researching with my banker for any grants or allowances to help with this and we've come up empty handed. I am also playing with our finances and trying to see what we can do.

I'm not ready to give up yet! I'll sell myself on the street if I need to...well, maybe Derek could do that! Is it legal to have a benefit of some sort even if you're not sick or dying? Maybe we could say Derek is sick again from his thyroid, that's why he's lost so much freaking weight and is continuing to loose even though he's not trying anymore! Can't we just ask people to donate money for us because we are good people trying to do things the right way.

I'm trying very hard to be optimistic with this. So I try to make jokes about it even though it's all that I think about ALL DAY LONG! I'll let you know when I know! Cross your fingers for us. If you don't, I'll come find you and cross them so you can never UNCROSS them!