It's been awhile...

So it's been awhile since I last posted. We've moved into our house and we LOVE it! We have the inside of the house unpacked, but the garage is still full of stuff that needs to be put away. We both have the first couple days of September off and so we are dedicating those days to getting the garage done so we can be 100% in the house...and then I'll need to decorate...and I have no clue how to do any of the rooms other then the bathrooms. The puppies have finally adjusted to being in the house. They don't bark as much, but they no longer sleep in the bed with us, now they sleep on the couch or recliner.
My little brother drove out here from Texas this past weekend and so I don't have to go to get my china hutch from my mom cause he brought it out for me. I'm way excited to get all the china unpacked and put away cause I love it. It was my grandmother's and is super old and delicate and soooo pretty. Plus, I am excited to have something of my grandmother's in my house.
I have been very proud of myself since moving into our house. I've made the bed everyday...I've kept the house clean...I haven't let the laundry pile up...and I've cooked dinner everynight but once, and except for our date night. My whole life I've been saying that once I had a house of my own I'd keep it clean, and no one believed me. I've been telling Dom for the past few months that I would keep the house clean and that I'd be making dinner every night...and he always laughed at me...and now he's amazed cause I actually have dinner ready when he gets home. He's been working A LOT. The past 3 weeks he's worked over 15 hours of OT...and there have been some nights where he hasn't gotten home until after 8 PM. It's been crazy but the OT is totally helping.
Dominic has 1 class left before he is a college graduate. He also has a week and a half of vacation time he has to use before the end of the year. There wasn't a lot of days available to take vacation, so we are doing what we can with it. He is taking Sept 2-3 off and then he has a day off in October so we can go to the state fair. One of his friends at work is going on a cruise with his wife in December, and Dom has been wanting to go on a cruise for years. I told him I would take him somewhere for his graduation present, and he decided on a cruise! I've been looking at cruises and today we found out from our realtor that we get a free vacation...one of the vacation packages we could choose from was a 2 for 1 cruise...so we decided to do that so that we only have to pay for 1 of us to go on the cruise. I'm now way excited cause that means I'll have a little bit of money to go shopping with! I can't wait to have some vacation time with Dom so that we can relax!

YAY!!!

It finally happened! Dominic and I are homeowners! Now scary real life begins...So yea, we signed the papers last week and we were supposed to close and get the keys on Monday. Dominic packed up all our stuff on Sunday since I was going to have to move by myself on Monday/Tuesday...and I mean he packed EVERYTHING! The only shoes I have are flip flops cause I was wearing them. Monday morning I went and picked up a uhaul to make it easier...and then I waited and waited to get the call that I could get the keys...it didn't come. The lender said they would send the prior to funding conditions by 3...they didn't send them till Tuesday. So we unload the uhaul and take it back...and I sit around and wait all day Tuesday to get the keys. Around noon on Tuesday, we find out that the lender has issued the wire transfer and everything has been sent to the title company...around 4 we find out that everything has been recorded and it's our house, we're homeowners...we still didn't have the keys cause the seller wouldn't give them to us until the funds were in their bank account...so that was another day wasted. Wednesday morning I wake up feeling like crap because Dom packed my meds and so I hadn't been able to take any. I decide I'm going to start work late and at 7:54 AM, I get a text telling me that I can finally have the keys. So I leave the house to go and meet the seller and then go onto the house so that I can turn the power on and turn on the air since we were planning on moving stuff over. After working the rest of the day, Dom and I took 3 loads of stuff over to the house. And we also took the puppies who loved it! They ran all over the place and sniffed everything. They didn't want to come back inside after we showed them the backyard! The funniest thing was when Daisy ran into the closet door. The master closet has the mirrored sliding doors (which I'm getting rid of). The door was open and Patton ran into the closet and Daisy went right into the door. She fell over and was stunned for a minute, but she's fine now. I'm just such a bad mom that I couldn 't stop laughing! Dom and I are going to take a few more loads over tonight and then tomorrow we are going to do some unpacking. Then bright and early Saturday morning, a whole bunch of guys are coming over to help Dom move all the stuff out of the storage unit. Marina and I get to stay at the house and unpack because I have to wait for the DirectTV guy to come...oh darn, I don't get to be out in the heat. Hopefully the move goes smoothly and it doesn't take too long to unpack...but I have the feeling it's going to take forever!

YAY!!!

I get to meet Kailee this weekend! I'm so excited that I finally get to meet the newest little Loosli....cause you can't get much better then being a Loosli. She's going to be 6 months old next week and I can't believe I haven't met her yet, but I finally will. I'm flying up to Boise on Friday morning and then flying back home on Sunday night. So it's just a quick trip, but it will be fun!

Will the day ever come??

So we still haven't closed on our house. Some things came up as the paperwork was getting ready to send to the title company...so needless to say, we are still waiting. Thankfully the sellers gave us another extention, but I think it'll be the last one cause they are just as frustrated as we are about the house not closing. Our new closing date is June 22. We'll see if we actually get to close on time.
Richard and Joe left for Europe this week with Celine and our niece Serena. I'm sure they are having a blast, but while they are gone, Benjamin is having the house redone. We moved all the furniture out of the house on Monday, Tuesday we ripped out the carpet and I got to play with a jack hammer to get tile up. It was a lot of fun and a great stress reliever! Wednesday we had to use a blade on the jack hammer to get all the tile glue up...and the house has been dusty as anything. It was pretty bad on Tuesday, but even worse on Wednesday. The dust has been settling and then Benjamin has been vacuuming it up which just kicks it up more. I swear the dust is everywhere! It got inside the closed cupboard and everything. I've been keeping my door closed but the dust still managed to get into my room through the air conditioner. Finally today there isn't much dust in the air. Yesterday the painters came to paint the downstairs, so it smelled like paint all day. On Monday the tile guys are coming and they should be done by Wednesday afternoon and then we get to move all the furniture back into the house and unpack and clean. Hopefully soon after that, we will be moving all of our own stuff into our own house...

Some News

So Dom and I have been doing a lot of thinking about the options available to us to have a kid. I've always been all for going to a fertility doctor and doing whatever we had to in order to have a kid...but Dom has always been a bit hesitant about that course. About a month and a half ago, he told me that we should just adopt so that we don't spend everything we've been saving on fertility treatments and then if they don't work, we wouldn't have anything left to use towards adoption. I wasn't very happy about that because I've always wanted to be pregnant...but I started thinking about it and I decided that if we can't have a kid that is both of ours, I'd rather adopt a baby that needs all the love and attention and care that we can give it. So, needless to say, Dominic and I are starting the adoption process. I'm actually really excited about it. I'm just starting to research adoption agencies and I want to have our agenct picked out in about a month. I am planning on having all the home visits completed towards the ends of the summer so that we can start waiting for our baby. We are really open to the child we get. As much as I would love a newborn, I'm okay with a child that isn't a newborn, or even a toddler. I know that the older the child is, the more difficult it can be, but Dom and I are willing to put in the work and we are excited about all the possibilites. We are also okay with either a boy or a girl and race doesn't matter in the least. We both get adoption reimbursement from work and so once we get that and have had our child for a while, we are going to work on adopting a second child so that we can have our 2 kids. We've even been playing around with the idea becoming foster parents while we are working on adopting a child and probably even beyond that. Dom is of course scared that with adopting a child, they will someday want to find their birth parents, and I keep telling him that is a possibility, but that no matter what, we'll support our kids and help them in anyway that we can. I think that he is most nervous that no one will pick us, which scares me too, but I know there is a kid out there just waiting for us to be their mommy and daddy.

GRRRR!!!

There has been good and bad news lately. The house appraised above our offer, and the inspection came in fine, and the sellers ended up replacing the carpet in the house. However, we were supposed to close yesterday and we didn't. Apparently, the sellers are idiots and they went under contract with us before they were the owners of record on the house. The didn't close until a week and a half after they accepted our offer...so now our closing has been pushed back and we don't know till when, but it's supposed to be before May 15th...now let's just hope that we do get to close! I'm so sick of this waiting game, it's such a pain!

On a bright, non-housing issue note, Dominic found out this morning that the pay teirs have been changed at his work and he's going to get a $.25 raise. The base has also been doing so good that he's getting a $500 bonus. If for some reason he's already within the new pay range, he get's $1000 instead of the $.25 raise...or maybe it's just an extra $500 so that with the bonus it's a $1000...but either way, I'm okay with it cause it will completely help out with getting a house right now. We're supposed to find out later this week what he'll be getting.

All this housing crap is totally putting a damper on my excitement about my birthday. Dom and I were going to take Desei camping this weekend, and after finding out all this crap about the house, I just don't feel like it. Now we might take Desi to Vegas, but who knows, we might just stay in town. I'd really like to go to Disneyland since it's the happiest place on earth, but that's too expensive, so I'm not even going to tell Dom that's what I want to do. Oh well...

Update

Most of my blogs lately have been about trying to buy our house because it seems like that is all we are doing, but I promise it isn't! Dominic and I got to celebrate our 5 year wedding anniversary on March 25th. We had decided that we weren't going to buy anything for each other since we were supposed to be closing on a house the next day. Of course Dom didn't listen and he bought be a pair of diamond hoops, they are beautiful and I love them. We went out to dinner on our anniversary and then we went on a date again that weekend. We have been really good about making sure we go out every week and we usually end up going out twice a week.

Work is going well for both of us. Dom is working like crazy, as always. He leaves at 5:45 AM and he usually gets home about 7 PM. I don't like having him gone for so long, but I know it won't be much longer till he is done with school and hopefully he'll be able to get a job with ATF or at one of the prisons in Florence. I'm still working from home. I just had my review today and I got a bigger raise then what I expected. My numbers at work are slowly improving, so hopefully I'll be able to keep improving on them so that I can stay at home. My work has been backed up and so we've been back and forth between voluntary OT and mandatory OT. I've been doing some of the voluntary OT, but not as much as I've wanted to because I've been so sick, but I know that every little bit helps.

We were planning a camping trip for my birthday this year. We usually only get to go for 2 days but we were planning a 5 day trip...however, we are under contract on our 3rd house in the last 6 weeks and we are set to close on April 26th, which means my birthday weekend would be spent moving...so camping got cancelled. I'm perfectly fine with moving for my b-day instead of camping, I'm just not getting my hopes up that this house is going to work out. It would be nice if it did, but who knows what will happen. This house is about 5 minutes down the road from where we are now, which would mean Dom wouldn't really have any extra commute time and I wouldn't have to find all new doctors or anything cause I like all the doctors I see. It would be really nice if this house went through because if it does, we would get the first time home buyer credit and if we get that money, it is all being used for the fertility doctor. I would love to end the year pregnant, but we will just have to wait and see what happens. Even if we don't get that money, we are still going to go to the doc, it'll just be a longer process as I'll have to save the money as we go....but who knows what is in store for us.

Our puppies are still good. We took them in to get shaved this week because they were starting to get too hairy. They look so cute when they are shaved...I love it! Plus they tend to not stink so much. Patton is so low to the ground that any amount of hair gets all nasty everytime she goes for a walk, Daisy doesn't get near as dirty as Patton, but Daisy also tends to avoid any puddles or wet grass while Patton runs right to puddle and wet grass.

BOO!!!!

So yea, we didn't get the house afterall. The appraisal came in super low cause apparently the house was like 200 sq ft smaller then the seller said. Needless to say, the dude won't drop the price down to the appraisal price, which makes no sense because he won't be able to sell it for more then the appraisal. So now we are back to square one. We went out last Saturday and found absolutely NOTHING!!! I was so mad at the lack of choices available to us. So we decided that we are going to raise out price, AGAIN. Now that we've raised our price, there are more options available to us, and they are closer in and not just in East Mesa and Queen Creek. I went out yesterday and looked at some new builds, but they were all small. I'm going out today to look at some more new builds and then a couple of other houses in Queen Creek. Tomorrow I think that I am going to focus on houses in Gilbert. I just hope we find something soon. I am so sick of looking for a house and then getting a house and having my hopes dashed because something happens...it's frustrating. Dominic and I are ready to be in our own house so that we can start working on growing our family. I always thought it would be so much fun to go and look at houses, but it hasn't been fun at all, it's been one really long, drawn out, stressful, painful, and expensive process. AND because of all the stress from the house crap, I've made myself sick and I'm having crazy, crazy dreams. Dom isn't sleeping through the night either. He's falling asleep fine, but then he wakes up around 1 or 2 and then he is in and out of sleep until the alarm goes off at 5:50. We are both so ready for the stress to be over with so that we can have a peaceful nights sleep!

YAY!!!

Our house passed the inspection!! There is hardly anything that needs to be fixed. There is ONE lose tile and ONE flashing missing! The last house had a ton of problems with the roof so I was really happy when we found out this roof was good! The front door frame needs to be sanded down in one corner, some more insulation needs to be added to the attic, and we need to add some rocks to the front yard so that water doesn't collect next to the foundation. I'm so excited because I LOVE this house. It's so cute. I've had a lot of fun buying stuff for the house...and I can't wait to move in. Thankfully we don't have to wait too long because we close on March 26th and we get to start moving that day!

Once again...

We are once again under contract. This house came on the market late Friday afternoon, we went and looked first thing Saturday morning and I fell in love. We found out yesterday afternoon that our offer was accepted! We have the inspection in Saturday morning and I'm hoping that everything is good. This house is beautiful. The inside was just redone and everything is brand new and ungraded. It's a little smaller then the other house, and it's a little farther away, but I like it a TON more. I'm feeling really good about this one. The builder of this house has a much better reputation then the builder of the last house, so that's a positive sign. I've actually never even heard anything bad about this builder. As long as everything goes good on Saturday, we will be closing March 26th, the day after our 5 year wedding anniversary. I can't believe that we've been married for almost 5 years, it's crazy! Fingers are crossed that everything goes well and I'm in my own house by the end of the month. Oh, and since I'll have a house, I'm going to Texas with Marina and Desi for Easter so that I can get the rest of my stuff from my parents house before they move. Well, everything but the hutch...I'm too scared to move that cause I might break it...

Sad day...

It was too good to be true. We got the inspection done on the house yesterday and the roof was put on incorrectly when the house was built. We would have to replace the entire roof and add stuff that should have been put there in the first place. We would also have to have some of the tresses replaced and others secured correctly because they weren't put in right either! And the electrical system is screwed up. The previous owner apparently did some work himself and didn't do it correctly, and there are several wires that are fire hazards in the attic. So now the search begins all over again. I'm really not looking forward to it and I'm almost tempted to say forget it and go back to renting...

Patton Update

Patton had her surgery yesterday and everything went well. She was completely out of it when we picked her up and she was walking around like she didn't know what was going on. I accidentally hurt her when I went to pick her up so that I could put her in the car, I felt so bad cause she cried the entire way home...and then she kept crying when we got home. She was hardly moving, she wasn't my normal baby. She ended up doing really well last night and slept through the night, which I wasn't expecting. She is already feeling better this morning, but I think that she's outdone herself already. She jumped off the bed this morning and then back on, but now she doesn't even want to walk up and down the stairs...so I think the bed jumping wore her out! I'll have to post a picture of her from last night because the bandage on her arm was camo, which made Dom smile!

Totally avoiding schoolwork....

I totally don't want to write my psych paper right now, so I'll write another blog instead! Dom and I signed all the paperwork for our house on Saturday and we are officially under contract!! I'm so excited, I can't believe that we are actually getting our house! Our closing date with the bank is 4/6/10, but our broker said that we should be able to close sooner then that. He wants to make sure that we close in 30 days, which would put us at March 14. I just want to be in our house before our anniversary on March 25. We took Dom's parents over to see the house today and so that I could make a list of all the stuff that I am going to need to get. I need a washer/dryer, fridge, blinds, shower rods, and I need to paint the family room, the hallway, and the porch beams. I also need to have someone come out and put a doggie door in the master bedroom for Patton, she has the tendency to like going outside in the middle of the night, and Dom doesn't like to sleep with the bedroom door open, so a doggie door in the bedroom is a must. I also forgot how big my closet is going to be, it's HUGE!!!! And I have a lemon tree, orange tree, and rose bushes in the backyard already, we're just gonna have to start watering the grass cause it's all dead and dry. I'm really excited to be getting our house. Neither one of us can wait to move in and begin to make it ours. Dom is most excited about the 3 car garage and that the house is pre-wired for surround sound. I'm most excited to have my own kitchen again!

Could it really be????

Could it possibly have happened? Dom and I started looking for a house in September. We've gotten very aggressive about it the past couple of months and have submitted countless offers, only to never get the house. Last night, our realtor called me and told me that we got a house!!! It's a super cute house that we both really love and we're really excited about it. So now we just have to get all the paperwork done and the house is ours! There is very little that has to be done to the house, just paint in the main room, paint on the porch, and a big ole tree in the middle of the backyard that will have to be pulled up. I can't believe that Dom and I are FINALLY going to be on our own again. I'm so excited to have some privacy with my hubby again. And the puppies are very excited about having their very own backyard and being able to sit on any furniture in the house they want! I'm very excited to have my own kitchen again and to be able to cook whatever I want. I'm just excited. So fingers are crossed that everything goes through and we are in our house before our 5 yr anniversary!

The New Jersey Sloppy Joe

This is one of the BEST sandwiches EVER!!! If you have ever been to a deli in Northern New Jersey, you will see sloppy joe's on the menu, and this is what you will get! My dad grew up in New Jersey and he used to eat these all the time. When we moved to PA and started visiting NJ, we would always get platters of these and take them back home. I even had them at my wedding brunch...I just totally love them. We went to numerous deli's and tried to have them recreate them...and it never worked. Finally this past summer, my mom was thinking about it and we figured out what all needed to go into them and we started making them. I just made a TON of them for Superbowl and Dom couldn't be happier cause he loves them too! I even made an extra one just for him to take in his lunch tomorrow. Sloppy Joe's are probably the BEST thing to come out New Jersey!

My little baby...

So about 2 weeks ago, I was laying in bed with my little baby Patton, rubbing her tummy like she demands, and I noticed that she had some small, squishy lumps in her lower tummy. I pointed them out to Dom, freaking out, and he said she has always had them and not to worry about it. So I calmed down and kept an eye on them. Last week, anytime we touched her lower tummy, she whined and cried...which I don't like to hear. I started feeling around for the lumps, and they were bigger and harder then they had been and they obviously hurt her, so I started freaking out again and called the vet to have her checked out and to get her current on all her shots. We took her in yesterday and the lumps are smaller and softer then they were, but she was freaking out when the vet was feeling them. They decided that they needed to stick a needle in them and pull out fluid to see if they could tell what they were. They had to take her in the back and when they stuck the needle in her, I could hear her cry, I almost lost it! They brought her back in, scared out of her mind after being stuck with 5 needles, and said that the lumps were so sensitive that they couldn't get very much fluid out of them, so they didn't know if they would be able to get a good idea of what it was. They came back in and said that the red blood cells are all inflammed and so they want to treat it as an infection and see if antibiotics will take care of it. The vet said if the antibiotics don't work, we can have a biopsy done, which scares me! After hearing all this, Dom and I decided that it was time to get her fixed, we've been meaning to for a while, we just haven't done it. She also needs to get her teeth cleaned, so we decided to schedule her for those two procedures since they can be done at the same time and it's just time. So now, my little baby girl is going to have surgery in a week and a half. If the lumps aren't gone, I'm going to tell them to just take them out. Having my puppies in surgery scares the crap out of me. I was a nervous wreck when Daisy had surgery. My baby is going to be gone all day...I have to drop her off at like 7:30 AM and I don't get her back till around 5:30 PM. It also scares me because I know that things can go wrong and I don't want anything to happen to my baby. I also don't want her to be in pain. So now, for the next 2 weeks or so, I'm going to be a worried mama.

Good News!

So Dom got some good news at work today. He has worked for Corporate Express since shortly after we got married and last summer, Corporate Express was bought by Staples. Since then, things have been kinda up in the air and from Sept-Dec of last year, Dom was required to take a day off every week...and he was told the drivers at Staples had to as well...only they didn't. So in December, Dom started getting sent to Staples to work since they were so busy. They really liked him over there and last week, 3 positions became available at Staples. Dom wasn't going to put in for the jobs because he didn't want to lose his $.50 back-up driver pay. Well, today when he got back to base, the HR guy called him into the office and told him that the Staples supervisor has requested that Dom be transferred. So Dom is now officially at the Staples hub starting tomorrow. I'm not worried about him not getting his hours, but his schedule is going to be weird. He is going to work Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. They told him that even though he is only working 4 days a week, the route he is assigned to averages 50 hours a week, which is good. And if they have a lot of stuff on Tuesday's, he'll get called in...which means even more hours. I know that Dom is gonna be super tired, but it will be nice for him to get some really good paychecks again, especially with STILL trying to buy a house!