Hey! Check out this website I just found. It's MyKidsEatFree.com and you can search for restaurants in 40 states! Cool! There aren't many listed in my area but it's a great resource for me to check back into over time to see if more are added! A friend and I are planning on meeting for dinner Tuesday night with the kids.... I know where we're going... where MyKidsEatFree!!! :)
UPDATE:
Ooo!! And here is another one I just found... CouponDivas.com. This has a ton of restaurants listed!!
Hee Hee Hee!!
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The Marzullo House-selling Fiasco
Wow - I was just reading my post from February 18th and it's funny how stressed I was then and how little did I know what an emotional roller coaster we were headed for! God was probably sitting there thinking, "You'd better hold on a little tighter there girly 'cause you're about to learn to lean on me a little more..." Now, I must preface this by saying that I do realize how superficial and unimportant much of this sounds when I go on and on below about our "stresses" considering that we were (thank God) only dealing with house issues rather than serious health or financial issues. Our stresses were more like frustrations and annoyances in the grand scheme of things. It's just that when we were in the middle of it all, it was very, very stressful and trying. So, with that said, here's the update on what's been going on with our house in the last few months.
In late February, John and I both came down with the flu and oh what fun that was with both of us feeling like death-warmed-over at the same time and trying to maintain a house and family with three kids, ages barely-5 and under. We'd felt horrible, rotten and just plain awful all week. Friday morning, February 29th, I had a migraine and could hardly get up off the couch. Late that afternoon I started feeling a little better. Early that evening we got a call from an agent asking to show our house the next morning. John and I thought that since we were feeling a little better, we'd try to straighten the house a bit that night and make the final decision in the morning as to whether we felt up to showing the house the next day. I perked up and did more than I'd expected. We straightened and vacuumed and yes, disinfected the house with lots of Clorox wipes. The next morning, John still felt rotten but I felt ok and so I cleaned around him and then ushered him to the van so we could leave the house just long enough to show it and then come home. The people came, they saw, they loved it! John and I came home and both hit the couch. I started going down hill again and felt rotten by night fall. However, we received a offer that Tuesday night!! We ended up with a really good contract with a closing date in less than 30 days and we were so excited! I kept thinking how this must be a God-blessed thing because of how we'd felt so rotten, then it was like God "parted the waters" so we could feel good enough to get the house cleaned up and then afterwards the waters returned. That following Saturday I went out on a marathon house-hunting trip with our agent and looked at 12-13 houses. I loved the very first one we looked at but didn't really give it much thought because it was out of our price range. Out of all of the houses we looked at that day, that one and one other, which was in a bad traffic location, were the only ones that had even the slightest potential. At first I didn't even tell John about the house I liked other than to say I liked it but it was too expensive. I mentioned it casually again later that evening and John said, "Well, let me see it [online]." He loved it. He agreed with our agent's thought that we could at least make an offer and see how low they'd be willing to drop the price. I thought that there was no way they'd come down that low but sure, ok. So, we went back the next day and looked together and loved it. We made an offer and they actually came down to our price!! I thought God must be blessing this process! We looked at each other with silly grins on our faces realizing that we were about to buy this awesome house, in an awesome location, in an awesome school district, at an awesome price and we were going to LIVE there!! It was going to be ours!! And we could live there for the next 20 years!! It must be God's will!! All went well with the inspection on our house with minor requests for repairs. All went well with the inspection on the new house and the sellers were willing to make all requested repairs minus 1-2 which we could live with. We were set! We got the staging company to come take all of their staging stuff away. For those of you unfamiliar with staging, it means that we had this company come in and decorate the house so as to appeal to buyers with really nice decorations, furniture moved around for the best flow, and most traces of us (photos, personal trinkets and clutter) removed so that the buyer can most easily imagine themselves there. It really gives you an edge over the competition when buyers come into a beautiful haven rather than the cluttered, undecorated mess like MANY houses I've seen on the market and like how our house had previously looked with my really bad pack-rat tendencies and serious lack of any decorating skill whatsoever! So anyway, we un-staged (if that's a word). We packed up tons of our stuff. We had an appointment to close on our house on Thursday, April 3rd at noon and then turn around and close on the new house at 3pm. Happy days!! (Insert screeching sound of brakes here!) Just 3 days before our closing date, it started falling apart. I won't go into all of the details but the ladies buying our house (an adult woman and her mother) had basically hired some totally amateur and confused lender at "Bob's Mortgage Co" who freaked them out with ever-changing and incorrect numbers, who in turn hired a lazy appraiser from "Bob's Appraisals" who didn't do her job and freaked the ladies with a way wrong appraisal (a later appraisal by a different appraiser showed a price truer to the other houses in the neighborhood and to our agreed on price). We and both agents went back and forth with them for two days trying to explain the errors. Practically every hour, there would be some new twist on the situation. We finally just dropped our price to much lower than our contract just to get them to close. By now it's Wednesday, the day before our closing. It's now too late to get the papers over to the lawyers office for the closing so the ladies agree to close on Friday. We set it up. We continue to pack. Thursday afternoon they call back and say they want out of the deal altogether. We freak. Then after much back and forth and anxious waiting for answers they agree to close on Monday. We pack. The agents are telling us they are sure it will close this time and there's no need to worry! They've never seen one not go to closing. They've seen them delayed but never actually not close. This is our first house which we bought new from the builder so what do we know?!?! Friday night around 6pm, the buyers' agent emails our agent with a request to terminate the contract! We had everything packed!! The only stuff not in boxes was what we figured we needed for the next two days!!!! Our entire house was packed up!!! We had put in orders to stop utilities here and connect utilities at the new house. We'd already put in forwarding orders for our mail. We had paid for inspections and appraisals and connection fees. The people selling us the new house had already moved out and into an apartment!! Needless to say they were a bit stressed at the news because our contract with them was contingent on the sale of our house since we can't afford two mortgages! So we had to cancel that closing and now they're stuck with a mortgage and an apartment rent! So after more back and forth and failed attempts to get these ladies to close, we finally accepted that the deal was indeed dead. We had to unpack and basically move back into our house. We had to make a ton of calls to make sure our utilities didn't get cut off on us leaving us sitting in the dark as well as cancel the new utilities at the other house. We raced to the Post Office to put in a new change of address request routing our mail back here, hoping it wouldn't end up floating around in space for months or getting lost in the confusion. We had to pay to have our house RE-staged. I would like to have avoided that cost but as I said before not only do I NOT have an eye for decorating, I also therefore don't have stuff to decorate with if I wanted to try to do it myself and now we can't even find the few things that we do own because they've been packed somewhere or buried in storage! So we had to pay to re-stage it. (In this market, you need to have something that gives you an edge over the next house so we feel it's in our best interest in order to get this thing sold.) Now, a month and a half later we're still living in our house, back on the market, enjoying our home yet still hoping to sell it soon. We've always loved living here so that's not a problem. We will continue to deal with John's long commute but thankfully it is improved somewhat during summer months. But I am hoping to sell and get settled wherever we end up before school starts in August so that the kids won't have to be moved after they've just gotten used to their new classes, teachers, and friends in the fall.
So, anyway, there it is in a nutshell. It was stressful while we were going through it but we praise God that we still have our health, our safety, our family, and our finances. I was totally confused because I really thought it was a totally God-blessed thing! I didn't feel like we were forcing anything. But I don't know. Either God wanted us to go through this process to learn. Or I need to learn to listen to God better. Or both. Either way, apparently that wasn't the house God wants us to have and we just continue to pray that God will send us the right buyers for this house and that He will send the right house to us when we're ready to buy. We want to do His will and follow His lead.
Oh and on other topics we went on vacation last week to Florida. It was actually for my sister-in-law's wedding but hey, if there's family and a beach then it's a vacation!!! I'll try to send photos of those events later.
In late February, John and I both came down with the flu and oh what fun that was with both of us feeling like death-warmed-over at the same time and trying to maintain a house and family with three kids, ages barely-5 and under. We'd felt horrible, rotten and just plain awful all week. Friday morning, February 29th, I had a migraine and could hardly get up off the couch. Late that afternoon I started feeling a little better. Early that evening we got a call from an agent asking to show our house the next morning. John and I thought that since we were feeling a little better, we'd try to straighten the house a bit that night and make the final decision in the morning as to whether we felt up to showing the house the next day. I perked up and did more than I'd expected. We straightened and vacuumed and yes, disinfected the house with lots of Clorox wipes. The next morning, John still felt rotten but I felt ok and so I cleaned around him and then ushered him to the van so we could leave the house just long enough to show it and then come home. The people came, they saw, they loved it! John and I came home and both hit the couch. I started going down hill again and felt rotten by night fall. However, we received a offer that Tuesday night!! We ended up with a really good contract with a closing date in less than 30 days and we were so excited! I kept thinking how this must be a God-blessed thing because of how we'd felt so rotten, then it was like God "parted the waters" so we could feel good enough to get the house cleaned up and then afterwards the waters returned. That following Saturday I went out on a marathon house-hunting trip with our agent and looked at 12-13 houses. I loved the very first one we looked at but didn't really give it much thought because it was out of our price range. Out of all of the houses we looked at that day, that one and one other, which was in a bad traffic location, were the only ones that had even the slightest potential. At first I didn't even tell John about the house I liked other than to say I liked it but it was too expensive. I mentioned it casually again later that evening and John said, "Well, let me see it [online]." He loved it. He agreed with our agent's thought that we could at least make an offer and see how low they'd be willing to drop the price. I thought that there was no way they'd come down that low but sure, ok. So, we went back the next day and looked together and loved it. We made an offer and they actually came down to our price!! I thought God must be blessing this process! We looked at each other with silly grins on our faces realizing that we were about to buy this awesome house, in an awesome location, in an awesome school district, at an awesome price and we were going to LIVE there!! It was going to be ours!! And we could live there for the next 20 years!! It must be God's will!! All went well with the inspection on our house with minor requests for repairs. All went well with the inspection on the new house and the sellers were willing to make all requested repairs minus 1-2 which we could live with. We were set! We got the staging company to come take all of their staging stuff away. For those of you unfamiliar with staging, it means that we had this company come in and decorate the house so as to appeal to buyers with really nice decorations, furniture moved around for the best flow, and most traces of us (photos, personal trinkets and clutter) removed so that the buyer can most easily imagine themselves there. It really gives you an edge over the competition when buyers come into a beautiful haven rather than the cluttered, undecorated mess like MANY houses I've seen on the market and like how our house had previously looked with my really bad pack-rat tendencies and serious lack of any decorating skill whatsoever! So anyway, we un-staged (if that's a word). We packed up tons of our stuff. We had an appointment to close on our house on Thursday, April 3rd at noon and then turn around and close on the new house at 3pm. Happy days!! (Insert screeching sound of brakes here!) Just 3 days before our closing date, it started falling apart. I won't go into all of the details but the ladies buying our house (an adult woman and her mother) had basically hired some totally amateur and confused lender at "Bob's Mortgage Co" who freaked them out with ever-changing and incorrect numbers, who in turn hired a lazy appraiser from "Bob's Appraisals" who didn't do her job and freaked the ladies with a way wrong appraisal (a later appraisal by a different appraiser showed a price truer to the other houses in the neighborhood and to our agreed on price). We and both agents went back and forth with them for two days trying to explain the errors. Practically every hour, there would be some new twist on the situation. We finally just dropped our price to much lower than our contract just to get them to close. By now it's Wednesday, the day before our closing. It's now too late to get the papers over to the lawyers office for the closing so the ladies agree to close on Friday. We set it up. We continue to pack. Thursday afternoon they call back and say they want out of the deal altogether. We freak. Then after much back and forth and anxious waiting for answers they agree to close on Monday. We pack. The agents are telling us they are sure it will close this time and there's no need to worry! They've never seen one not go to closing. They've seen them delayed but never actually not close. This is our first house which we bought new from the builder so what do we know?!?! Friday night around 6pm, the buyers' agent emails our agent with a request to terminate the contract! We had everything packed!! The only stuff not in boxes was what we figured we needed for the next two days!!!! Our entire house was packed up!!! We had put in orders to stop utilities here and connect utilities at the new house. We'd already put in forwarding orders for our mail. We had paid for inspections and appraisals and connection fees. The people selling us the new house had already moved out and into an apartment!! Needless to say they were a bit stressed at the news because our contract with them was contingent on the sale of our house since we can't afford two mortgages! So we had to cancel that closing and now they're stuck with a mortgage and an apartment rent! So after more back and forth and failed attempts to get these ladies to close, we finally accepted that the deal was indeed dead. We had to unpack and basically move back into our house. We had to make a ton of calls to make sure our utilities didn't get cut off on us leaving us sitting in the dark as well as cancel the new utilities at the other house. We raced to the Post Office to put in a new change of address request routing our mail back here, hoping it wouldn't end up floating around in space for months or getting lost in the confusion. We had to pay to have our house RE-staged. I would like to have avoided that cost but as I said before not only do I NOT have an eye for decorating, I also therefore don't have stuff to decorate with if I wanted to try to do it myself and now we can't even find the few things that we do own because they've been packed somewhere or buried in storage! So we had to pay to re-stage it. (In this market, you need to have something that gives you an edge over the next house so we feel it's in our best interest in order to get this thing sold.) Now, a month and a half later we're still living in our house, back on the market, enjoying our home yet still hoping to sell it soon. We've always loved living here so that's not a problem. We will continue to deal with John's long commute but thankfully it is improved somewhat during summer months. But I am hoping to sell and get settled wherever we end up before school starts in August so that the kids won't have to be moved after they've just gotten used to their new classes, teachers, and friends in the fall.
So, anyway, there it is in a nutshell. It was stressful while we were going through it but we praise God that we still have our health, our safety, our family, and our finances. I was totally confused because I really thought it was a totally God-blessed thing! I didn't feel like we were forcing anything. But I don't know. Either God wanted us to go through this process to learn. Or I need to learn to listen to God better. Or both. Either way, apparently that wasn't the house God wants us to have and we just continue to pray that God will send us the right buyers for this house and that He will send the right house to us when we're ready to buy. We want to do His will and follow His lead.
Oh and on other topics we went on vacation last week to Florida. It was actually for my sister-in-law's wedding but hey, if there's family and a beach then it's a vacation!!! I'll try to send photos of those events later.
Friday, May 9, 2008
I Have Been Blessed With BEAUTY!!!
Yes, that’s what I said. But no, I’m not arrogant or full of pride. Well, yes, pride… I have been blessed with the indescribable beauty of a husband’s true love. He loves me, needs me and misses me when we’re apart. He makes me feel important, desirable and worthy.
I have been blessed with the heart-swelling beauty of three healthy, happy children who ask for mommy when someone else steps in to give me a much needed break. As much as I may worry about the negative impact left by my latest tirade over disobedience or messes made, they still want my snuggles, my attention and my love.
I have been blessed with the beauty of having my own loving, supportive parents always there for me at the drop of a hat, no matter what I may need, loving me and encouraging me. I have the beauty of a sister who is my best friend.
Yes, I have been abundantly blessed with BEAUTY!!!
I have been blessed with the heart-swelling beauty of three healthy, happy children who ask for mommy when someone else steps in to give me a much needed break. As much as I may worry about the negative impact left by my latest tirade over disobedience or messes made, they still want my snuggles, my attention and my love.
I have been blessed with the beauty of having my own loving, supportive parents always there for me at the drop of a hat, no matter what I may need, loving me and encouraging me. I have the beauty of a sister who is my best friend.
Yes, I have been abundantly blessed with BEAUTY!!!
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