Deck & Dogwoods

Our deck is finally screened. And the dogwoods are in bloom.

Bugs Out

With our 2007 tax return already in, I made quick work to hire someone to screen our deck. The project starts today, and David was at our home bright and early at 7:45am. It will probably take David a couple of weeks or more to complete the full deck enclosure, but it will be all worth it in the end, when we can enjoy our deck this summer and not have to worry about the many (ginormous) bugs that frequent our space come warmer weather. Will update and hopefully have pics soon.

Feng Shui

This past weekend was all about cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

Kelly was on call and had to field a lot of patient and hospital calls but otherwise this weekend was devoted to getting our place back in order. After some 5 weeks since we last cleaned (the floors) we decided we had not another minute to lose, and so we got to work.

And so since we were already moving furniture and stuff around to gain access to as much floor surface to clean as possible, I figured I'd go ahead and rearrange the furniture. You know, do a bit of Feng Shui.

What a difference! It always amazes me how much positive energy I receive from viewing (and occupying) our living space with slightly different positioned furniture. Try it!

I started with the living room area and ended up re-positioning all of Noomsie's furniture in his room.

The floors are spic and span, and though not any one method of cleaning floors I find spectacular for the job, I must say the whole "Swiffer" line of products really you should *not* be without. I mean, dust is dust, and sweeping with a broom just does not collect this stuff. You need something that attracts and holds the easily airborne particles. And then a good ol' fashioned mopping is needed. Voila!

And so here's to a safe and happy Holiday Season to all our friends. May the New Year bring you all much blessings.

Jetlagged & Sick

We made it back home! After some 30 hours plus of travel we made it home from Singapore to Blue Ridge. The journey, difficult enough as it is for a single, healthy person, was made that much more daunting for many reasons: (1) Ethan and Kelly were both sick, (2) we lost one seat on the return flights for Ethan and were down to two for the three of us though we paid for three seats, (3) we had 2 huge checked in luggages and 5 (five!) carry-ons (is this even allowed?) plus a stroller, (4) Blue Ridge is still a two hour drive from Atlanta after all those flight hours, and "so on and so forth" :-D

Our colleague, Renea, picked us up from the airport. Luckily she had spoken to our supervisor and colleague, Dr. Tidman, and was told by him that we would be delayed through immigration in Atlanta so to not arrive when our flight arrives but 30 minutes to an hour later. Boy was he right! And we had totally forgotten to remind Renea before we left or even while we were in Singapore that we would be delayed through immigration.

And so, we arrive in Atlanta airport, and are greeted by long lines queueing up for immigration officers. Not surprising, everything takes that much longer in the U.S. and you just can't help but harbour all these negative thoughts and feelings for why the officers take so long to do their job (compared to the many airports we had passed through on this trip in other countries). Lest, finally, it was our turn, and a cue on my passport always signals "special" - for "special registration" that is. And off we were for another hour in a smaller, stuffy room where persons born from certain countries are always detained a bit and screened. Myself, I was born in Iran - probably the *number one* country being flagged these days by the U.S.

But the veteran that I am, now having gone through this NSEERS process half a dozen times or more, I was patient and answered questions briefly and succinctly and in time was granted the stamp I needed to proceed to baggage claim. By the time we had arrived to the carrousels, the place was literally desserted. It had taken that long through immigration for me, that only our lonesomes from our flight of hundreds were left to collect luggage.

And anyone who's flown into Atlanta's Heartsfield-Jackson (??) airport knows how confusing and long the walk from baggage claim to your car can take!!

Alas we meet up with Renea who had been waiting some 30 minutes - though would have been a heck of a lot longer had she not been fortunate enough to speak to Dr. Tidman before picking us up.

Atlanta was 38F, few degrees above freezing. Penang, Malaysia was 32C (90F?). So it was a change to get used to :-P I am the type that enjoys having four seasons. I welcome cool to warm and back, but this was extreme even for my liking.

A 2 hour drive later, and we were home! Lug all our stuff and we were inside our home, but still freezing since we had put our thermostat way down while away. A few hours to warm up the whole house later, then we were fast asleep -- at 4pm! LOL

We awoke at 10:30pm, did some unpacking, ate something, went back to sleep at just past midnight or 1am. Ethan woke up (and so we all did) at 5:30am for good to start our day.

And this patterns has continued for the past couple of days, each getting slightly better and back to our regular cycle though still not right. Two days ago was bed at 6pm instead of 4pm, and waking at 12:30am, back to bed at 2:30am and up at 6am for the day. Last night was bed at 8:30pm, up at 4:00am, and well.. I'm still up and probably will be for the rest of the day today. So sort of getting back to normal, progressing 2 hours a day it seems.

Now it is my turn to be sick. I now have what Ethan and Kelly had the last few days of our trip. Funny, when I am sick and tired, it seems like I just cannot remember the last time I was healthy and without these symptoms. Sniffle, sniffle, cough, cough.

DIY Dad, Family Fun & Feast

I am looking forward to this Friday (and weekend)!!

We are hosting 19-day Feast for the first time since we've moved to Blue Ridge. It will be a particularly special Feast as well, with my parents, sister, nieces and a dear friend from North Carolina, Elyse, visiting us. The house should be abuzz with the kids - the second time the three cousins Carmel, Ellie Nur and Ethan are together - and the presence of familiar faces, should be a fun time.

The last time (which was also the first time) Carmel and Ellie Nur and Ethan were together, we were still living in Durham, and Ethan was around 4 months old. Not very interactive then, I am curious and looking forward to seeing Ethan interact and play with his cousins. Ethan is just starting to walk now, so it should be a test for him to try and keep up to his more mobile relatives. But I am sure he is very much up to the challenge.

We have also made contact with another Baha'i friend who lives in Cheryll Log -- i.e. not that far away from Blue Ridge. So our circle of Baha'i friends (who live nearby) is increasing by one. :-D

In the two days that dad has been with us, he's been put to work (thank God for handy dads, no?). The first day, dad installed "gutter guards" to keep falling leaves from landing and clogging up the gutters. I was actually surprised that such "guards" were not already installed in our gutters - our house being smack in the middle of trees. Nevertheless, my dad did the job better than others who would have less vested interest in doing it, and all in just an hour or so. Other jobs include adding more lighting to the dining area of the house, small odds and ends, storage solutions, yaddi-yaddah. I can only hope to learn and gain some of my dad's knowledge and skill when it comes to maintaininng a household and much much more.

OK back to work..

Pictures As Promised

Finally, my laptop is back in working order and digital camera and blogging may thus commence as before. I took a ton of pictures of all various angles and places in our house in Blue Ridge. They are not in any order and just random, and you can see the mess from our unpacking and such, but if only I had my gadgets working earlier, I could have shown all just how crazy and disorganized we were a week back (i.e. the pictures actually show a much better situation now). I will take some lake pictures next too though we've not had any time at all to go down to the lake (except drive by it on our way to/from the city downtown area). But as promised. Sorry it took so long! Now you can expect entries with more pictures than text hopefully. Love to everyone! And PLEASE come and visit us :-)

Getting Settled A Bit

It has been nearly two weeks now since we relocated to the mountains in Blue Ridge, GA, and we have unpacked nearly all of our things. A few generous house warming gifts from Kelly's parents have meant some extra work for me (assembly work etc..) but the house is looking now more and more personal and soon will feel like home, hopefully.

This past Wednesday, July 25th, was Kelly's birthday. We celebrated with dinner at Longhorns Steakhouse in Ellijay. Dinner was fantastic, but dessert was really really good. Not announcing that it was Kelly's birthday or anything -- just doodling a large "note" that read "Happy Birthday, Honey" on a napkin with some crayons provided for Ethan (subtle hint, I know) -- our server got the message and brought Kelly a huge slice of cake (can't imagine how huge the entire cake must be) with some 7 (no kidding) layers of chocolate. You'd think it was probably too rich (too sweet) or at least I did, but it was heavenly, smooth, and really easy to take in, even after a heavy dinner. It certainly made our cake back home (that we purchased to eat once we got home from the restaurant) pale in comparison.

Ah ha... but how wrong was I again... because the chocolate ice cream cake that we bought was just spot-hitting perfect the-night-after-Kelly's-birthday night celebration night. Yup, we even put a candle and sang Happy Birthday and took pictures. It was fun.

We've been shuttling our trash down to the local dumpster since we don't have any garbage service (to start next Thursday) as of yet. Not many people hire this service either. Many content with simply driving to the dumpsters with a few bags of trash and paying far less than local pick-up service. This is one of a few new things we are having to get used to, living in a rural location.

But after sorting through a mountain of trash from packing material and cardboard boxes and such, we can final see the main floor of our house from our driveway. Words simply do not do justice what work I had to go through to sort it all out. Should've taken some pics. But who takes pics of trash? Right, nevermind.

And we fiiiiiiinally made it out to see some friends. We drove down to Jasper to visit the Teskes. They live about 45 minutes to an hour away from us, and they have two kids (Isabella - 3 and Adib - 1) -- same ages as Carmel and Ellie Nur and Junnoske and Ryunoske!! They know Kelly's parents from serving at the Baha'i World Center in Haifa, Israel, and also know my sister, Sharon, from when she was on pilgrimage in Haifa or one of other visits to the BWC maybe. Small world the Baha'i world. And so we hope to join them for Feast on Wednesday and other activities in the future.

Tomorrow, we are going to the big city (Atlanta) for the first time since we moved here. I have not posted any pictures since we've moved because my laptop (or the power cable for my laptop) needs repair, and the closest Apple Store is in Atlanta (Lennox Place??) and will get this fixed once we are there tomorrow -- likely to leave my laptop for a whole week. So, soon, hopefully, I shall post pictures.

Ethan starts daycare at Kaleidoscope on Monday, when Kelly starts work also. I plan to finish up things in the house and start reading/preparing for my own work (while I can when Ethan is at daycare) and join Kelly at work a week or so later.

We'll see how Ethan does at K. Both Kelly and I are mildly optimistic his first week will go ok, though likely he will have no problems adapting and playing with the other infants and catching an illness from some of them and being asked to be taken home. Yea, that's probably the most likely actually.

Mountain Living

Hi Everyone! It's been exactly a week now -- I can't believe how time flies! -- since we moved to Blue Ridge, Georgia. We have been unpacking all this time, going out of the house a few times, most of those times to go to Home Depot, the others, to buy groceries. Otherwise, we've been cooped up at home organizing our things and throwing boxes and packing material out. We have only managed to take a walk or two around our new "neighborhood" and managed to walk up to the lake briefly. I am sure we will have many more opportunities to truly enjoy our location. But for now, I jokingly tell Kelly, I am getting "cabin fever" from being stuck at home for long periods at a time, but there's just so much to do, and it has not been easy since with Ethan, only either Kelly or myself can really do any of the unpacking. And so I write this entry to say I will be posting another one very soon -- hopefully this coming week -- with pictures of our new house once everything is more or less in place. Tired and exhausted wishing we had family over (more for the extra hands than company to be totally honest) I sign off for now. Love to all!

PS. not sure what happened to the pictures in my previous post, but will try and get those uploaded again

PPS. Ethan is 10-months old today (Yipee!)

One Less Hurdle

What a relief. I had nothing really to worry about, yet the inspection of our house was probably the most nerve wracking 2 hours I've experienced in a while. Just completed a few minutes ago, there were two inspectors, the buyers (husband and wife), my agent, and Ethan and I, in our house while everything that had a switch was turned on, and everything moveable moved, and every dark corner illuminated with a hand-held light device, and all the while instruction on how to upkeep the house being offered to the first-time homebuyers. The buyers receive the official report from the inspectors tomorrow (since they ordered the inspection) and we get a list of things that need to be repaired or replaced. However, I am comforted in knowing that this list may be very short indeed, since the inspectors told us our house was in great shape and very well maintained, and only a window that does not stay up (something to do with a balance needing replacing) and a vinyl siding on the outside that needs to be moved a centimeter or so to "overlap" (currently it has moved and is not overlapping to protect the wall underneath it) were mentioned were things we needed to do. We'll see how the official repair list pans out, but I am relieved it is over with for now. Poor Noomz, fell asleep in my arms, since I could not really put him down anywhere.

"Under Contract"

Well dear friends and family, thank you so much for all your prayers, today we've accepted an offer and our house is officially "under contract". With two offers late yesterday, Kelly and I decided on action (2) (read previous blog entry) and asked both agents and their respective clients to better their initial offer since the two were very similar. Today, both parties increased their offers by the same amount, making our decision more or less a "toss up". We went with the slightly higher offer, as obvious as that may seem, though both Kelly and I feel the loss for our sentimental choice - our home would have been their first. But we rationalized that the market has been very difficult for us, and we have worked so terribly hard the past few months! Ethan can vouch :-P And with the market being a "buyer's market" I have no doubt at all that the young couple whose offer we did not select in the end will find a wonderful home very soon.

Closing date: July 16th 2007

Moving date: July 17th 2007

Great Offers

What a long day it has been! Kelly and I have two great offers on our house! Likely the product of two competing agents and their respective clients, we now have a difficult decision to make: (1) accept the slightly better offer (both being very similar/both slightly higher than our asking price) or (2) give one final chance for both parties to better their offer by tomorrow P.M. (either party not knowing the other's offer/but risk offending and having original offer withdrawn)?? Hmm... I think I know what we'll do. Pray tonight. Much more tomorrow!!!!! :-D Sorry for the suspense...

And the lightning incident in Blue Ridge? Our home and water pipes seem to be unharmed. No damages. At least as far as the company knew by this morning when I spoke to one person. Lucky break!

And come to think of it, we have more house showings lined up for tomorrow. What do I say? "Sorry, we already have offers on our house." ?? Or how about, "Unless you are willing to offer more than (this) then just forget about it!" :-P

It's great finally being in the driver's seat after months of agony on this house and the sluggish real estate market. (though we're still not home free and nothing is nearly final yet, so not to jinx our offers!)

I'm going to miss 801 Turmeric Lane -- my first house. (thanks, Dad!)

Lightning Strike

Apparently, lightning struck a tree in Fern Valley (our home in Blue Ridge) and the jolt managed to travel down to the ground and damaged water pipes running from the neighborhood well (shared by three households) to the meters. As of yet, we don't know if any damage was incurred on the water pipes running from the meter to our house. Thank God for home insurance. And though the news of this made me feel terribly down as if nothing could get any worse, things are slowly looking up with our Durham house for sale.

A host of emails and phone calls have flooded my computer and cell phone on interest in our Durham home, with two possible offers being made as early as tomorrow. I pray tomorrow will be a successful day.

This afternoon, we had two showings - originally just one, though the reator rescheduled a second showing just an hour after the first for his clients wanted to see our house again. The second visit/showing lasting twice as long as the first (nearly half an hour), the agent later told me his clients wish to put in an offer some time tomorrow. And with my realtor also showing our home to some other clients for another "second showing", they too apparently are hopeful in putting in an offer by 3pm tomorrow.

What a turn of events!

I am thrilled but cautious - "guardedly optimistic" as Kelly mentioned this past weekend.

We've been doing the house selling thing for a while now to know nothing is set until a contract is signed by all parties.

God-willing, tomorrow will be a great day.

Weekend Warriors

The title of this blog entry seems awfully appropriate. What a weekend we had. Just when I felt down in the dumps with regards to all the effort and little interest in our house showings, God restored a bit of hope this weekend. Without knowing really where to begin, I will just say, it was nice to have had friends around this weekend when there was just so much going on.

Saturday morning was an early start. I received a call at around 8:30am requesting a house showing at 10am. Of course, from the disappointment of Friday's "no-show" and Kelly and I being far too pooped to clean up after dinner, I had a lot on my plate to get the house ready (yes, yet again, so tiring!) for 10am on Saturday. Kelly had to work, so I called her, angry and upset at the state we left the kitchen in, not necessarily anticipating such an early request for a showing (though we should know better by now that at any given time some agent may want to show our home to potential buyers).

Kelly called Krishelle. Krishelle was on-call last night and very tired. She came straight over, in her work outfit (scrubs) from being in the hospital all last night, and helped with looking after Ethan while I got the house in order. In one hour, I had the house glowing. And ready for 10am. Now, if only the clients would stay true to their word and show up this time. Or else this would seriously be the straw that broke my back. Thankfully, an agent and a couple showed up precisely around 10am to find our house vacated and in glorious order for them to view. (Krishelle, Ethan and I went for a walk around the neighborhood -- totally spying on these people of course -- and taking Noomz out on his Radio Flyer/wagon). The folks spent a good 10-12 minutes in the house, and a couple minutes outside, and I even noticed that the man was taking some photos (as I did when we were shopping around for a house in Blue Ridge). So it would seem that all was good and that they actually really had interest in our house - though I did not speak to them, but I am pretty sure they also 'knew' who we were - owners of the house. We were not exactly hiding our identity or anything.

Krishelle hung around and helped with keeping Ethan entertained and Kelly got home fairly early to have lunch with us and chit chat. Not long after, I had an appointment to go pick up some furniture that I had found on Craig's List online. The seller was only just minutes away, and so I was able to responed and go to the person's house and view the piece first hand in a matter of minutes (the posting on CL was only a couple hours old!). And I was able to get a really great deal on some fantastic storage pieces we need for when we move to Blue Ridge. I got this 3-piece wall unit (central mission-style armoire with two side units) all for $175! What a steal, no? My neighbors helped me move the furniture back to our place, and I have agreed to help them find some good furniture deals on CL, though this particular deal does not come all the time, I explained to them.

And so with one great showing, and one fantastic furniture find, my weekend was golden, though still had Sunday! We started making sushi Saturday night with J and K (see previous post) and went to the morning program at the Baha'i Center on Sunday (previous post). Sunday afternoon, I got another call from a person who saw my house ad for sale on CL, and called to see if it was already sold. We agreed on a showing that evening at 6pm. That time arrived, and the person was not here. I called, of course worried and skeptical about the person's motives. (can you blame me?) But only a few minutes late, she arrives. The showing went great, and she told me she was looking precisely for a home not too big, single level, because her elderly mom will be living with her, and stairs are out of the question! She even fell in love with my elephant ears and general gardening/landscaping design. But we shall see if this interest truly manifests in an offer or not.

We hung out with J and K (again) late Sunday evening and the girls (Kelly, Jessica, Krishelle) went on a baking rampage, making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, regular chocolate chip cookies, and a banana bread loaf! Hahaha... seriously, it was a bit much, especially since they started the whole process around 8pm, and you know how Sundays generally have a certain lull and quietness about it since the work week starts the following day. So the house was filled with warm oven-baked doughy goodness. And with tall glasses of cold milk, the weekend wrapped up all the more sweet.

This morning I got an email from my realtor/agent saying the Saturday showing (the couple) are really interested and have our house in their 'top 3' :-D Yay!!!! I don't know if it will win out of course, but they are supposed to give it some thought and put in an offer some time by the end of this week. I hope they do put in an offer, and that it is reasonable, so that we can make a deal and move on.

Oh!!! And how could I forget, yes, no longer the weekend, this morning (Monday) a gentleman came to pick up a flyer from our front yard, to whom I got his attention from down the street (Ethan and I were out early for a walk) and asked if he would like to see the house now. Of course he obliged and was totally interested and said would have his agent call mine right away. I sure hope so, because the more interest, the better the offers. But I just want one good offer of course :-D

And before this all happened, the moment Ethan and I took the wagon out for a spin, we found a turtle "out in the sunshine feeling fine" (a la Ethan's "Jungle Tumble" book) :-D I have the cute little shelled critter in some water in a pail. Don't know what I will do with it, but perhaps just have Ethan play and look at it for a bit longer and I will let it go. You know you live in the "tropics" when instead of rabbits or squirrels you find turtles in your yard!

:-D

While I Sit & Wait...

This is the second time I have been "stood up" by the same (potential) buyer requesting to see our house. Every person who has ever bought or sold a house - no, actually, just anyone and everyone - knows how much time it takes to keep a house in order, let alone perfectly (I mean totally perfectly) spic-and-span for showing to sell. And making the situation all the more harder of course is also having to feed and care for and provide attention to and interact with an infant (and the mess that one so tender in age inevitably produces). So, all I ask is that people stay true to their word and just show up :-D What, it takes all of 5 minutes to "tour" our cozy home? No, less, 3. Common courtesy is just lost these days it seems. And displayed now on at least two occasions by this same person. But what is one who is trying to sell their home supposed to do? You can hardly pick and choose who to show and sell your home to - after all this is not the West Coast real estate market where buyers "compete" to out bid each other for any particular house. And last night was so hard. No justice in this, is there? Oh, Noomz just woke...



cont...

Amani helped us in a big way to repaint the dark colours into neutrals (pictured above). THANKS, AMANI! And here are a couple pictures of the front view of our Durham house for sale. The garden is looking very colourful these days with canas, roses, verbena, morning glory and alliums all blooming (or just starting to bloom).

Slate Floor Cont...

... the builder and designer of our Blue Ridge home just sent me updated pictures after the first sealing of the floor work.. grouting and a final sealing is still to be done but already it looks nice and shiny!






today has been a rough one.. busy busy busy.. the aquarium is gone (sold it) and have a showing of our home (Durham) tomorrow morning.. will sign off for tonight but will update y'all again soon..

Slate Update

Here are some updated pictures on the slate flooring project in our home in Blue Ridge. All that is left, I believe, is sealing the entire floor, which also makes it really shine and polished. Those pictures to come...

In Pictures: Garden & Wagon

Slate Project

New slate flooring is being put down on the ground floor of our home in Blue Ridge. The project is expected to be complete June 9th. Will upload finished picture then.

Prudential Realty

No, our house is not sold yet. But we've finally just bit the bullet and hired a realtor to sell our house in Durham. Still a popular time for the housing market, we've decided enough is enough, and simply trying to do everything ourselves was not working out and way too much work (especially with a little one) and so hiring a professional to do the job just finally made sense and worth the money.

We hired Micki Stewart from Prudential realty who is supposed to be very good in this area. We'll see. No pressure on her since we could have made everyone's job a little easier by hiring sooner when the market was truly at it's peak (end of April for closing). But I have faith that she will do a good job, and at the very least, I will have more time to focus on Noomz instead of worrying about our listing getting old and not enough interest and buyers etc.. etc..

One recommendation was made, however, and that was to paint some bold colours to neutral. We have a couple accent walls painted a navy blue, when placed adjacent to the creamy warm beige really looks awesome, but not everyone has the same taste and to be as attractive to most peoples' liking we have to tone things down some.

Thankfully, Micki thinks the soft colours of our other rooms can remain the same since they are pleasing and not dark or intense. Ethan's room is yellow with stensil work on one wall (of ferns, leaves) and our study is a desert green and the small hallway joining these rooms a Carolina blue (boo!) -- joking! Duke all the way!

And so I've called on the help of some friends this weekend to paint the house, with pizza dinner provided in the end of course. We'll see who's in town and who's not and who can help us. :-)

Closing Day Woes

It's official! We have purchased our home in Blue Ridge, Georgia. Actually, I don't know how official it is quite yet. All I know is that yesterday -- closing day -- was the most difficult day I've had to overcome in a very long time. The documents are all signed by us and at the closing attorney's office as I write this entry, being signed by the sellers and witnessed by the attorneys.

Closing day started bright and early for me. Ethan usually dictates how your morning starts, which, on this particular day was around 7am. And so my day went:

6:55am - blurry-eyed while Kelly leaves house for work
7:00am - wash face, brush teeth
7:04am - Ethan's first diaper change (pee)
7:05am - morning prayers with Ethan
7:20am - play and read with Ethan
7:45am - Ethan's first feed (solid - carrots & rice cereal)
8:15am - Ethan's second diaper change (poop)
8:50am - leave house for bank to meet with mortgage lender
9:01am - arrive at bank as they are opening, mortgage lender still on his way to work
9:10am - lender arrives at work, we're waiting
9:25am - still waiting to see lender, I decide to call closing attorney's office in Blue Ridge
9:27am - I am told not all information has been received, waiting on lender for some escrow details
9:35am - I convey message to lender, checks with closing department to ensure escrow details sent to Blue Ridge
9:55am - lender tells me this may take a while and just go home and that I will be called when ready
10:05am - we go home, not for any reason but Ethan was cranky having waited over one hour
10:20am - back at home
10:25am - Ethan's second feed (breastmilk - 3 ounces)
10:45am - quick stroll around the house and street
11:00am - Ethan's third diaper change (poop #2)
11:45am - I call lender to see what's taking so long -- reply, still waiting
12:00pm - I call Blue Ridge to see what's taking so long -- reply, none (voice messge)
12:10pm - second stroll around the neighborhood
12:30pm - Ethan's third feed (breastmilk - only 2.5 ounces)
12:45pm - play with Ethan and listen to songs
1:00pm - realized had not eaten lunch, ate cold noodles (leftovers)
1:45pm - lender calls, documents are ready, come to bank and sign
1:55pm - went in to my bank to get certified check for funds
2:15pm - arrived at lender's bank (again) and signed 100 pages or so of documents
2:18pm - attorney's fees for preparation of documents triple what was estimated, I literally go bonkers, so upset
2:25pm - soaking head to toe in sweat, Ethan hot, sweaty and cranky and crying, no more mr. nice baby
2:55pm - leave lender's office to go find Kelly to sign documents (Kelly was working so could not sign at office with me)
3:00pm - driving through traffic of north Durham trying to find Durham Regional Hospital (Kelly not at her usual Duke work)
3:20pm - meet Kelly at front of DRH, Kelly signs all docs in car while engine running
3:30pm - leave DRH to go back to my bank to get another certified check for difference of unaccounted funds needed
4:00pm - arrive back at lender's bank office with signed documents, and two certified bank checks, Ethan asleep
4:15pm - arrive at home, Ethan awake, no down time for daddy
4:20pm - Ethan's fourth feed (nearly four hours from last, breastmilk - 5 ounces)
4:45pm - Ethan's fourth diaper change (poop #3!! -- he hasn't had three poopies in a day since around 2-3months old)
5:00pm - third stroll around the neighborhood
5:30pm - Kelly home from work
6:00pm - cook dinner (boiled corn-on-the-cob), and leftover noodles
6:45pm - some dessert, blueberry pie
7:10pm - bathe Ethan
7:35pm - night-time prayers with Ethan
8:00pm - last feed of night, Kelly breastfed
8:35pm - noomie asleep at last
8:55pm - watch some TV - Dancing with the Stars
9:45pm - brush teeth, too tired to shower, go to bed

It was really the most arduous day ever, and compounded by so many ugly feelings of hate by how the whole closing process was dealt with by others -- it just infuriated me. And what added insult to it all, was the fact that, although I felt the handling of our closing was carried out so poorly for us, the fees demanded were astronimcally more than what was estimated, and since it was the day of closing (i.e. not a day or two before or a week before) we had no other option but to pay the fees or risk losing the purchase agreement or start all over with a new closing attorney/firm and wait another month (which we were not willing to do either).

Oh well. But I did learn a lot. Every lesson sure comes at a high price for me though. So if y'all are buying a house any time soon, talk to me for some pointers. To start with:

(1) find a good lender who offers a very competitive mortgage/rate with at least 3 weeks to time of closing
(2) own a fax machine AND scanner in order to expedite all the documentation required for credit history checking that will be required you provide
(3) shop around for the following: a closing attorney, appraiser, building inspector, title company
(4) appraisal is ordered by the lender and so have him/her shop around for you for cheapest appraiser/fee
(5) closing attorney have their own ideas of how much to charge, and so find a good, reputable and economical one
(6) title company also is decided by the lender/closing attorneys and so have them do some work to get a good rate and not their usual "go to" title people who charge an arm and a leg
(7) most imporant of course for last: have rates/fees quoted to you in writing so that on closing, any estimated fees will be precisely your agreed upon quoted fees, and not a penny more!

Ok, rant is over. Utterly, utterly exhausting. But you can bet this is not over, as I will aim to recoop some of the costs.