Monday, August 07, 2006

Successful Evaluation and More!

After reading my comments and a couple e-mails, I am now quite sure that Pennsylvania would indeed be too cold for this wimpy Florida girl. It is a beautiful state, but I think it will continue to be one that I enjoy only on an occasional basis.
My loving and anxious parents offered over the weekend to add some more to our offer for that brick house. We scoured the internet this weekend looking for other new homes, while at the same time Hoping to hear from the realtor that the brick house sellers had relented and would accept our offer, but neither of these avenues proved fruitful. Today at noon was the deadline for Ed’s assertion that the sellers would accept our offer. Rarely have I so wanted him to be right! Noon came and went, but no call from the realtor. Ed went to an appointment with a neurosurgeon. Still no call. I continued to work at neatly organizing my records to T.’s evaluation and wait for the call. Ed came home and I reminded him to get his math and piano stuff together for the evaluation, and we waited for the call. Finally, it was time to take T. and our mountain of materials (nothing says “I’m providing my child with a quality education” like a huge stack of binders and neatly printed schedules, right?) to the evaluator. I told Ed that it was probably time to take my parents up on their kind offer and see if one final offer would get us that brick house. We left, and enjoyed a very pleasant and confidence building evaluation (we got high marks, with special praise given for doing lots of writing – can you tell that I’m just tickled pink to have gotten an “atta-girl?”), and Ed waited. We got home, and I suggested to Ed that Now might be a good time to up that offer and see what happened. We agreed that, if this offer was declined, we would definitely move on to another prospect. Ed even proposed that, should this offer be declined, we might look for another home in this town, and I could (would have to) keep working full time, but I demurred. Anyway, he called and explained to the realtor that This was our Last Offer – we could do no more. The realtor called us back after dinner – right after some our smaller family members had a disagreement during which a large glass of milk was tossed all over the floor and wall – to say that the sellers were amenable to our final offer and would sell us their house! Hooray!!! Certain small people who were well on their way to being sent to bed early and without dessert were instead invited to join in celebratory ice cream sundaes for all!

The realtor is going to FAX us the contract, and then we will get busy arranging for inspections, title searches, and all that other fun stuff. Please feel free to comment with reminders of house buying trivia which we might forget in our excitement/frantic haste. Barring any nasty surprises, we have a house!!!! Strangely enough, Ed is actually happier about buying the house now that the sellers have proved that they were not desperate to unload it. He was completely sure that they would take Any offer they could get, and finding that they apparently don’t think it is a valueless pile of junk has raised it considerably in Ed’s estimation. Since the call from the realtor, we have been happily discussing What should be done first to fix the place up, and How we will do it. The actual painting, plumbing, and weed wacking won’t be all that enjoyable, but the planning part, especially in the heady phase when costs are still a little vague, is fun!

I told T. to comb his hair so I could take his picture as a third grader. He put on a suit and moussed. He’s a funny kid.

5 comments:

CeCe said...

Well, congratulations! NOW GET PACKING!!!

Melora said...

But Cece, we're still floating around on our little cloud of happiness! Packing is So not fun. I shared your comment with Ed, though, and he says you are right and we really will have to get going on that now!

Amy said...

After you move and get settled we will have to get together. Several times a year we go near there on our way to the mountains.

Congratulations!!

Amy in Apex

Melora said...

Sound great, Amy! Just let me know when you will be in the area and we will make plans.

hornblower said...

Phew! Congratulations! And yes, what cece said - get packing. Get thee to a liquor store and pick up boxes, boxes and more boxes. Nobody who's moving has ever had too many boxes.