Just In Time

Nick wrote the last blog and although he did a great job, the post was very short and it didn't included any details about our adventure together so far!

So here goes. The honeymoon was amazing! It was absolutely unforgettable and very relaxing! We left our apartment on Monday morning at around 5:45 to get to the airport with plenty of time to make our 8:10 AM flight from RDU to Atlanta. Going through security at the airport I was a little pissed off at myself when I was told I had to throw away my curly hair gel. I was so mad at myself for not packing it in our check luggage, I knew better! After waiting at our gate for about an hour, we learned that the flight was delayed by 2 hours, we would not leave RDU until 10 AM. We were a little upset upon hearing that news, but we weren't going to let it bother us, we were on our honeymoon! My husband asked the attendant at the counter if we would make our connecting flight in Atlanta to Montego Bay, he was told, "yes. you should have about 40 minutes to make your connecting flight, but there are no more flights on any airline to Montego Bay for the day." Nick came by and told me what he was able to find out from the attendant. We were both immediately panicking, what if we didn't make our connecting flight??! We would have to stay overnight in Atlanta! our flight from RDU to Atlanta took off at 10:30. We landed in Atlanta at 11:45. Our flight to Montego Bay was scheduled to take off at 12:10. We had 25 minutes to catch our flight! Once our feet landed in the Atlanta airport, we checked the computer flight board to see if our flight was on time. We spotted the words "ON TIME" at the same time and we both yelled, "IT'S ON TIME." We started running! Nick had our 2 carry on bags, we were both running! I was about 10 feet in front of Nick the whole time, poor guy was struggling with our carry on bags weighing him down! We literally ran from terminal A to terminal E. The whole time we're running I was saying, "please God let us make this flight!" We arrived at the gate completely out of breath! The lady at the ticket counter said, "I'm sorry. We just closed the doors, we paged you, we waited as long as we could." Feeling completely exhausted from the long distance running we just did, I collapsed on the floor. When then went to the Delta flight/ticket change counter to see if we could change our tickets for a flight that would leave that next morning. I went to buy us bottles of water while Nick handled the ticket change. I turn around from buying the water bottles and I see my husband about 400 feet away, looking frantic, frantically searching for me. I raised my hand and flagged him down. Full of excitement, Nick says, "they're holding the plane for us, if we go now we can get on the plane." My reaction, "WHAT??!" So we run, again! We were able to get on the plane because there was a malfunction with the check luggage latch. We were relieved that we made the flight and that we made it to Jamaica! Our check bag did not make it to Jamaica until the next day around lunch time. We were happy and relieved once our bag made it to Jamaica! I had done all the packing for our honeymoon and I did not pack pants, toiletree items, or sunscreen on our carry on bags. Had our checked luggage not arrived, my husband would have not had any pants!

Since the honeymoon we have been adjusting to married life. We are buying our first house!!! The house that will soon be ours' is 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms on .73 acres! We are super excited about our first house! I am most excited about the extra space the house will offer us, the wonderfully large and relaxing master bath we'll have, and the reality that we will raise our unborn children in this house! Gosh I cannot wait to make this house our home! I have been busy looking at and buying furniture off Craiglist. We have bought 2 couches, a dining room table and chairs, matching hutch, and a matching coffee table and end table all from Craiglist. I am the newest biggest fan of Craiglist! Not only have I been buying, I have been selling items on there as well. I have sold some of our furniture and some left over wedding items. With all of my recent purchases, our apartment is getting smaller and smaller. The lack of space is really bothering Nick and stressing him out. For that reason I have agreed to stop buying large, bulky items, like furniture until after we move. After all, marriage is all about compromises!

So now it's time for me to give some encouragement to our readers and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Literally right after we got back from our honeymoon we started our house hunt. We made our lists of must haves and likes, but negotiable items to have in our house. We saw about 5-10 houses a week for about 4 weeks. We saw one house we liked, but we decided not to pursue it because the upstairs was not permitted and the house had changed owners rather frequently. We keep looking and we found a house that gave us that "feels like home" feeling. We really liked the house, it was warm and inviting, plenty of space, nice backyard, seems like a great neighborhood, etc. We were excited and put in our offer. Up against two other offers we decided to make our offer really good, we wanted the house and we didn't want to risk losing it to someone else. Our offer was accepted, we were under contract. About 2 days after we're under contract we find out that DOT has plans to put in a major interstate within 1/4 mile from the back of our property. We decided not to worry about it because we liked the house. We had the inspection, nothing major was wrong with the house. Put our repair requests into the seller. The seller took more than 3 days to respond to our requests which made us concerned. Beginning of May we both started to feel stressed out about the house, reality set in and we started wondering how we're going to be able to afford this house. The stress builds when we realize that we would always have to be a 2 income family. Then we find out that there was a possible lien on the house, meaning the contractor had not been paid and if he continued to not be paid then he could go in and rip out all the work he had done on the house. We spoke with our realtor and decided it was best for us to back out of the contract and not purchase this house. Our main reason for deciding not to purchase this house was the finances, the numbers were not appealing and as much as we liked the house we did not want to lose sleep at night wondering how we were going to be able to afford the mortgage, groceries, etc. Realizing we were back to the drawing board, back to house hunting, we were not excited. We were trusting that we had made the right decision, but it was hard to convince ourselves of that because backing out meant that we would NOT receive the $8,000 tax credit. I decided we should go back to a house we had liked before but were worried about the un-permitted space. We saw the house for the second time. We loved it. The space was still un-permitted so we decided to keep looking in hopes that we would find a house that we loved more and had no major concerns going into buying. We never found a house we loved more. We went back to visit the house a third time, we still loved it. We put in our offer. Our offer was countered. We countered their counter, they countered our counter and we accepted! Since we've been under contract, the square footage has been updated for tax purposes so no worries. The inspection went well, no major issues. We were nervous about starting the loan process over again, but to our surprise, we got a lower interest rate than before with the previous house and we received money back from our lender from the previous house! I tell you this loooong story to put out that God was looking out for us all along! God knew that there was a better house out there for us and he made sure we were financially taking care of. The house we are buying is 347 square feet bigger and the lot size is .11 of an acre smaller than the other house, so more space inside but slightly smaller lot. We will be saving roughly $38,000 during the lifetime of the loan by picking a house with a lower asking price and smaller loan amount. We have absolutely no hesitations about this house and it feels so good!

We have learned so much within the last 2 months of marriage! Throughout our house hunting and home buying we have had to make major decisions together and because of that we have grown closer together.