Selling Our House – Under Contract!
As of this morning, our current house and the house we want to buy are under contract. Here is how it went down. This past Wednesday someone came to look at our house a second time. It was Alexis, a college student at Drake, and her dad. She had 6 more years in the pre-pharmacy program at Drake and rather than renting and losing money for 6 years they decided to buy a house that she could live in with some roommates. We received their offer on Thursday. It was good enough for us to accept,which meant that our house was under contract.
I think it is also worth mentioning that at this point we were already under a contingent contract. Some acquaintances of ours had already made an offer on our house, subject to the sale of their house. When the new offer came in they signed-off pretty quickly, indicating that they were releasing their contract.
So now it was time for us to make a move. We had had our eyes on a house, Clive I, for a while. In fact, seeing this house was what spurred me to put our house on the market. We knew they had a contingent offer on that house. We made an offer right away, hoping that their contingent offer would be released. Our Realtor, Sharon, told us that the people with a contingent offer on that house could perform without actually selling their house, so we were not very optimistic. The house was in a weird circumstance and their Realtor was going to meet with the decider at 10:30 on Friday morning.
At 9:05 on Friday morning, when I was getting settled in at guitar lessons, Sharon called and said that she was at another house she wanted us to come see. At 9:35 I picked up Susan, the kids, and Adrienne, who was in town visiting. We all headed over to the house and immediately loved it. It was right down the street from Clive I and it has a finished basement where Susan could operate her program. It had just gone on the market two days ago. We immediately knew we wanted it and made a good offer. By dinnertime we heard back from the buyers with a small counter offer, which we accepted.
Lucia’s First Words
Lucia has been making sounds for a while. Today we decided that her official first words are ‘Mama’ and ‘Baby’, for which she says ‘Baba’.
Elliot’s Lost Tooth
Elliot lost his first tooth today. He has had a few teeth pulled already, but this was the first one that has officially fallen out.
Cincinnati Visit
This older kids and I headed to Cincinnati last week to visit family and so I could hit some meetings at work. The kids stayed with Mar-Mar during the day while I went to work. A quick recap:
Tuesday: Leave Des Moines at 9:45. Meet my family at Skyline in Monfort Heights at 7:15.
Wednesday: I leave for work. The kids go to the aquarium with Mar-Mar, Holly, Henry, and Elsie. I go to Tom & Chee for lunch with Simon; the kids go to a different Tom & Chee with their clan. My parents drive to kids to Xavier. We eat dinner in the caf, have to leave early because of a fire alarm, and then go to the Xavier vs Georgetown basketball game, where Xavier goes from 17 points down 5 minutes into the second half to winning by 13.
Thursday: I go to work. The kids hang out at the house all day. The Donley’s and Beinkempers meet up for dinner.
Friday: I don’t go into work until lunch time. The kids hang out with Mar-Mar. We go to Holly’s for dinner, where we are joined by my family, Ruth Ann, and the Herrels, including new baby Leah, who is still new to us. Also on Friday I learn that there is snow moving in on Saturday, so I decide to delay departure by a day.
Saturday: We spent the day hanging out at my parents. The kids went sledding and played in the creek. The Donleys and Beinkempers came over for dinner. We played Apples to Apples.
Good times.
Selling Our House
In Mid-December we decided to sell our house and look for something a little different. We spent the last couple of weeks getting everything ready and tomorrow we sign with a Realtor. We contemplated FSBO, but decided we have enough going on and would like some help this time around. We actually had a showing today to a potential FSBO buyer, but they were not interested, so we are back to the Realtor.
New Year’s Eve 2014
Last night we hit the Reagens’ for our annual New Year’s Eve celebration. As usual we were joined by the O’Hallorans and a lot of food. The kids convinced us to let them stay up until midnight.
Hope had gone to bed at around 11:30. Just as everyone else was getting into bed Hope threw-up all over her bed and everything was thrown into disarray. At that point we decided to call it a year, and headed home.
Liess Christmas
Yesterday we celebrated Christmas with the Liess clan. It was fun, as always.
As part of the gift exchange we are all obligated to write a song/poem/something about the person whose name we picked. Erin and Nate picked both me and Susan and put together a great song:
December Spring
It is nice and warm today (46° F), so after our afternoon walk the kids made some snowmen in the front yard. Mari helped with Lucia’s.
Christmas 2013
We had a great Christmas yesterday. The kids were up at around 7 to open presents. Then we had our traditional chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. After lunch we headed to Perkins Elementary for some sledding. We stayed there until it was time to go to the Reagens’ for Nate’s birthday. Fun day!
Frigid Outdoor Fun
Today was very cold here in Des Moines, with a high of around 5 and a little wind. That didn’t stop Elliot and Mari from getting outside this afternoon. Elliot loves going outside and wanted me to make Mari go outside with him (Andrew was not home). I declined, but eventually he got her to come out and play.
The Game Closet
This evening Susan decided it was time to clean out the game closet. The game closet is in Andrew’s room and is a fairly large closet. Good thing – because we have about 85 games. We managed to get rid of a few, but the kids convinced us to keep the rest.
