What's up???

HUH! So I DO have a blog? I really haven't forgotten about it, we just haven't had time to really sit down or do things people normally do. Everything is starting to get closer to normal, but there's still just SO much to do, and so little time in a normal work day. It is starting to look more like a normal house and less like a storage facility, which is GREAT! (On a side note, of course Blogger isn't taking my photos so I hyperlinked the two I wanted to upload below!)

So, where to even start??? I just want to say the people we bought this house from were DIRTY. And I hope they read this blog, because they need to know. We knew the house was in need of some major TLC, but seriously. Our new neighbors love us. The guy had not mowed the yard ALL YEAR. And in TN, between the heat and rain, you mow once a week starting in April. Brent's been going crazy chopping down random things in the yard, and the neighbors are thrilled. I've been stuck inside going through bottles of cleaner with bleach like most of you guys go through Gu. If they hadn't mowed all year I'm thinking they've never cleaned, swept or vacuumed. They had 2 cats and 1 dog but with the amount of animal hair you'd think they ran a kennel. Between some air fresheners and a lot of cleaner you wouldn't even know they ever lived here.

Pippin is fully adjusted to the new house and totally loving it. We make time to sit on our porch and enjoy our swing every day, if even for just 5 minutes before bed. He loves sitting on the swing with us and he loves stretching out on the front porch and watching cars and people go by. This is a really active urban neighborhood, so there's always people walking, running, biking, and tons of people parading their pampered dogs around every day. He's finally stopped freaking out when we leave, so he has free reign of the house all day once again. Since most of the living area is on one floor, he has multiple couches, chairs and other random spots to snooze all day, and lots of windows within that reach to look out from.

We haven't gotten to really start painting yet, since most of our efforts have just been on massive cleanup and then unpacking. Tonight we finished building a pantry in the kitchen, so once the food is unpacked, the bookshelves are loaded with all our books and Brent finished hooking up the surround sound we should be mostly settled. I am freaking out about the clothes situation right now. I'm pretty anal and keep my clothes organized by color and style, but we're going to completely re-do the closets asap so right now they're just shoved into the guest closet. Ugh. Hopefully this weekend we can tackle that.

As far as running goes.....there hasn't been a ton of time for it. We are starting back on our routine though. We've missed so many long runs I think we're going to skip the Twin Cities Marathon. I just don't think we can be ready by then. We are still going to do the local one here in November, and I'd like to add another marathon in December (maybe Memphis, Huntsville, or Vegas would be cool!!) We did our first run in the hood weekend before last. We ran from our house to the Titans stadium (1.5 miles) across the Woodland St bridge into downtown, down 1st Avenue, and then back across the Shelby Street pedestrian bridge and back home. All that and it was only 6 miles!! The views were awesome, and the bridges really took care of some hill training! I love running in this neighborhood. Saturday we ran 4.25 miles by running through our neighborhood, and circling past the mayor of Nashville's house. He lives in a beautiful 3 story Victorian about 4 blocks from us. Sunday we ran 5.3 miles by running from our house to Shelby Park (.5 miles) and we ran parts of the greenway and nature trails. It was just HOT. Miserably hot. We stopped a few times in the shade just to cool down. Since we can't go home for lunch now I did head over to the company gym one day at lunch and got 4 treadmill miles in. It wasn't too bad - it gave me something to look forward to all morning and then I felt energized all afternoon. I plan on doing that a lot more often now. We don't have any races coming up soon, but I should probably pick one just to stay focused!!

Well, there's just so much more I could say, but I really want to work some more on unpacking our food. We've been cooking (with gas!) for a week now, and just digging through boxes to find ingredients. It's so difficult to pick where you want everything to go when you've had that figured out for so long!

Hopefully I can start finding more time to blog soon. Tomorrow night is a block party in our neighborhood, so I'm looking forward to that. I hope you're all doing well and running strong!

Rachel

Life is good!

Hey guys!! Guess what - this is my very last post about MOVING! And then I'm MOVING ON!! So here's what has gone down over the past week.

We were supposed to close last Thursday (the 13th) but as I mentioned that didn't happen. Our genius lender didn't stay on top of the appraisal, and our idiot buyer didn't stay on top of her lender completing paperwork. No worries, said everyone, it will all be taken care of asap on Friday. Uh yeah, right. In the world of real estate there is no asap. The guy we bought our house from told us we could go ahead and move in on Friday, since it should all be wrapped up sometime that day. Our movers came at 8 am and promptly started their move one item-sit down on the truck for 15 minutes routine. One guy was really booking it, but the other two were in no hurry, of course. And it was HOT. Upper 90's, of course. Throughout the morning calls to our agents and title people really didn't provide a lot of info. Our lender got her act today and had all our paperwork ready by 10 am - but that really didn't matter since our buyer still didn't have her paperwork. She was using a lender in California - a family friend - who just wasn't sure when the paperwork would be ready. WTF???? SHE picked the closing date and time 6 weeks ago in June!! It was really insane. So Friday went by with no resolution and we basically ended up moving everything we own into a house we didn't own. Brent's parents were nice and came up to help us out, and his brother came by after work to take a load of our junk. We finished moving everything out of our house Saturday, but since we didn't have a clue what was going to happen we decided not to unpack anything. Pippin spent ALL weekend freaking out. I really should have gotten him some sedatives. I kept him in his crate while the movers were there, and he was really, really upset and throwing a fit in there. The first few times we left him at the new house (in his crate) he also got really upset. The whole weekend was incredibly stressful. Monday didn't really provide any additional resolution - and we gave our buyer a deadline of Tuesday to get her junk together or we were walking and relisting the house. We spoke with our lendor and got approved to buy this house without selling ours, but we really didn't want to do that. Finally late on Tuesday their lendor woke up and started working. They faxed their paperwork Tuesday night and finished it up Wednesday afternoon. We finally closed Wed afternoon at 5 - SIX days after the original time. That's just so rude - the lendor has no financial stake in this, so they just do whatever they want. Anyway, last night we went over and said goodbye to the house. It was really weird to walk out of there one last time - that was our first house and we lived there for nearly 7 years. On my way out I stopped in the flower gardens I've slaved over and picked some daisy seeds to plant here. All five dogs from the neighbor behind us ran up to their fence and started their nonstop yapping. It was sort of a fitting end.

We LOVE the new house. We have our work cut out for us but it's everything we wanted. We've tried out so many cool neighborhood restaurants and last night we FINALLY had our pizza party and walked down to the little pizzeria a block down from us. Our neighbors are so nice and we just feel so comfy here. Brent's already spent several hours in the yard and made some MAJOR improvements that lots of people have already noticed! He's taken pics, so I need to start doing some before and afters.

Our bed is still on the floor, we haven't put legs back on any of the tables and we still eat on paper plates but it's already starting to feel very cozy. In time it will all work itself out. I haven't run in ages but I plan to get back on track Saturday.

It's still SUPER hot here in East Nashville. Yesterday was 104 degrees!!! Today was somewhere between 99-101, depending on who you ask.

Well, it's time for me to get some sleep. Every night before bed we sit out on our porch swing for a few minutes. We totally belong on a postcard.

TGIF everyone!

Rae, no longer a suburbanite!!!!!!!!!

WOOOO HOOOO!!

FINALLY, it's all over, signed and legal. The house we were supposed to sell last Thursday at 4pm - we finally closed at 5 pm TODAY. Yeah, seriously. All because our stupid, stupid buyer used a really terrible lender out of California who was totally unresponsive and on no sort of deadline whatsoever. Really, it was ridiculous. But anyway, it's all FINALLY done. I'll write more about the wretched events of the past few days and the move tomorrow, but for now we FINALLY just had our pizza party with our friends that had been postponed indefinately since last Thursday and we now own a house in the city and DON'T own suburban real estate! YEAHHHHH!

Rae

Keep 'em crossed!

What a mess. I need everyone to KEEP THEIR FINGERS CROSSED until 5 pm. Seriously, I swear I will never move again.

What's that line from Annie????

So today was not the best day ever. We've been packing like mad people for the past week and just staying focused on being ready to move today. Too bad mortgage lenders don't have the same work ethic. Even though I sent my lender an email Monday and received a response back from her (in writing) assuring me that everything was finished and in line she called me yesterday afternoon to let me know the appraisal had not been done yet. WTF??? I just don't understand people. I know as a whole Americans suck, they have no work ethic (in general), and I rarely expect above and beyond from anyone, but I do (crazily) expect people to JUST do their job. That's a pretty big "oversight". So a very rude appraiser headed out there yesterday evening, was late (of course), and I had been assured he would have his stuff by 10 am this morning. Of course that didn't happen. So, long story short, and I swear to God I'm sick of talking about it, we didn't buy a house today. On the flip side, our buyer is using some ridiculous lender out of California and they are "running behind" on their paperwork so that didn't happen today either. I am so incredibly sick of people. Supposedly we are going to close on everything at 1 tomorrow but I no longer believe what anyone except Brent and our real estate agent (who says she is our new best friend) say. People are rotten. End of story.

I think we should just move into our car! It's huge, has two air conditioners and is paid for.

Oh well, we'll keep you posted.

New House Pics!

Hey!! Happy 4th of July to all of my US readers! To all of the non-US readers happy 4th of July anyway! I think I would be a bigger fan of the 4th of July if fireworks weren't involved. All of our redneck neighbors have been shooting off firecrackers every night for about the last two weeks. Since we're in the suburbs fireworks are allowed. I can't wait to move to the city!!! Our subdivision looks like a war zone every morning when Pippin and I walk. There is crap EVERYWHERE! It's such a waste of money. There's a fireworks stand on every corner here, and tonight one a few blocks from our house has a big spotlight going!

So, everything with our house sale and purchase is still going great. Last Friday we had our home inspector inspect the house we're buying. Everything went really well and we had no major surprises. The inspector has a few minor things, but he said the foundation and all the important things looked awesome. All of the rafters and floor supports are oak! He said they haven't moved at all over the last 95 years and the house is probably stronger than any new home built today. Sweet. I've uploaded the pics we took Friday to my Flickr account here. There's 30-something pics in the set, so it was just easier to link to there. I've put notes on what each room is and all the changes we are going to make. We are so excited and just ready to MOVE! And start working!! We changed just about everything on this house, and it's been finished for a couple of years now and we're just itching to get going on the new house. Today I've talked to mover, mortgage agents, insurance agents, our agents!! Everything is in high gear now. Moving date is July 14th, 10 days from tomorrow!!! I can't wait!

Saturday we went to my parent's 2nd annual July "4th" BBQ. My brother and his family were there, along with Brent's entire family, and some other cousins, aunts and uncles. It's very strange to see them all getting older. Our "little" flower girl, ring bearer, and jr groomsmen were there and they are not junior at all anymore!!! The ring bearer is now 14 and much larger than I am, my flower girl is now 12 and enormous! We've been married 7.5 years now, so these things happen, but it's still strange to see! I'll try to post some pics from the BBQ later this week.

Sunday we mostly packed and took care of some home errands, but we did do our long run of 12 miles. OMG, what a MISERABLE run! Brent took some great pics with his camera phone so I'll try to get them up soon as well. Here's the Cliff Notes version: very hard, super hot, we've really got to quit doing this stuff when it's so warm! It was NINETY-FOUR degrees when we finished!!! Something is seriously wrong with that!!!

Anyway, we worked today and I am sleepy so it's time for bed so we can get up for an early 6-miler and do more packing! Brent's parent's drove up tonight to take some old furniture of theirs we've been using for the last 7 years and to take my broken elliptical. I was going to sell it at the yard sale we're having this weekend, but I'm more than happy to trade it out to a family member. It just wasn't worth paying to have fixed and it took up too much space. I'd rather use the treadmill and do other exercises on my cross training days anyway.

Anyway, have a great 4th you guys! I picked up some steaks today for us to grill out tomorrow. I wonder if these will be our last steaks at this house???? Crazy!!!!

Rae