More Nami

Our new addition

Say hello to Nami!

Fusion

We bought a new (well new to us) car in September! Its a '08 Ford Fusion, V6, automatic, and we absolutely LOVE it! Its not really fair to compare it to our old, yet reliable '93 Escort wagon, but it sure blows it out of the water. The only down side is we have to share it, and let me tell you its HARD to drive the escort after driving the fusion. We are very, very happy!

Broncos Game

We did go on some amazing family vacations this summer, but sadly all those pictures on on my computer which recently decided to bite the dust. So I'm going to give you an update since August.

For our 4 year anniversary we went to the see a Broncos pre-season game. Mile High Stadium is the coolest stadium I've ever seen, and its HUGE! We had a great time watching grown up men beat each other up over and over again! They even had a real horse mascot that would run down the side of the field ever time they scored!

Yes, we are still alive!

We haven't been posting much lately. Sorry to those of you who still read our blog, hopefully we can gain your trust back someday. We have just been SO busy! I think I'll summarize what we've been up to with a bullet list, then post about each one.
-House projects: buying furniture, maintaining yard, organizing
-Pickup family vacation
-Black family vacation
-Broncos game
-Green Day/ AFI concert
-New car

And I'm sure I'm leaving out somethings. Stay tuned for the picture updates on each event!

We're here!

We moved in! Instead of posting a million pics I just decided to give you all a tour.

Home Owners

That's right Home Owners!!! Its official, we own a house! Its going to be such a fun adventure!! Pics to follow.

One week...then we're HOME OWNERS!!

Less than 7 days left until we own our home! Everything is squared away at the bank, and we have a time set for the closing at the title company. Next Friday at 10:00!! I think I'm going to go back to work that day with a writers hand, or at least a very sore right hand. Maybe I should practice my signature so its not so long. We've started packing up our apartment and are planning on moving into our home on May 15th!!! Scary, exciting, stressful...but TOTALLY worth it in the end (I hope). ;)

16 days and counting....

A little over 2 weeks left until we are home owners! We got a great bargain on home insurance last week, we realized that our insurance payments will only be slightly higher than they are now becuase I guess we've been paying WAY to much for our car insurance. So now our car insurance AND our home insurance payments will be what we're paying for JUST our car at the moment. hehe The house was appraised for quite a bit more than we're paying for it so that feels GREAT! We feel like we are battling the bank to get our loan approved. WHY? well they are SO PICKY!! We have given them so many copies of our paychecks and bank statements i can't even remember them all. I really don't understand why they need so many, but as long as they give us the money inn the end, I guess I really don't care. We did find out that our apartment managers will let us leave our contract early if they can find someone to replace us, that means we could move into our new home as soon as MAY 15th!!! That also increases my stress because that means I need to be more diligent about packing than I am right now (meaning I haven't even gotten the boxes out). Thank you for everyone's support and prayers, we are SO EXCITED!!

Home Update

This last Monday we had the home inspection done, and NOTHING serious was wrong! HURRAY!!! The house does need a new coat of paint our inspector said, but that'll be a fun project to do this summer! Its such a relief to be done with that. We have a few small requests from the seller, like replacing a couple of the smoke detectors that were not working, and having the furnace professionally cleaned. But all in all the house is in GREAT shape! We're still working on getting our bank loan, but our mortgage broker says we shouldn't have any problems b/c we have really, really good credit (mines higher than Jeffs....hehe). During the inspection one of the owners came home early and we got to meet her, it wasn't really awkward b/c she left after a minute or so. But I think it would have been weird if we started talking about her house in front of her. She seemed nice enough though. Jeff and I have already started talking about being in our home this summer and grilling on our deck and reading in the shade of the trees in our own backyard...ah I can't wait!

Some pictures for those who haven't seen yet

House Found!

We found our home!!! Just this past week we have gone under contract for our first home! We are going through all the steps to getting our home: loan application, inspections, signing paper after paper after paper and we haven't even gone to closing yet and I feel like my hand will cramp up at any minute! We are SOOO EXCITED and LOVE our new this home. Some basics about it: 1591 sq feet, 3 bed, 2 1/2 bath, deck, yard w/trees & grass, shed, 2 car garage, wash & dryer (new GE front loaders!), 9ft ceilings in kitchen, central heat & air....and much much more! Will post pictures as soon as we can get a camera working. Our lives are about to change dramatically and we can't wait! We close on April 30th if all goes well! Stay posted for updates!

It's that time....

Some people laugh, others cry, I make money. That's what this time of the year is - tax season. If you're especially happy because you got a huge refund - talk to me because you probably shouldn't be because most likely you just gave the government an interest free loan. I know, it's great.

Anyway, I have not blogged basically at all during this time because I've been working pretty decent hours and the first thing I want to do when I come home does not happen to be the blog. I know, I should be ashamed.

Despite the somewhat longer hours, I really enjoy being busy - the time seems to fly by and guess what - I actually enjoy doing tax work. :P

Somehow among the work, we have managed to do some house hunting, get through the mortgage loan pre-approval process, etc etc. We're excited at the aspect of moving out of an apartment and into an actual home we can call our own. We've seen some nice places at fairly reasonable prices, so maybe in the near future we'll have something really good to blog about.

Don't give up on us - those of you who still read every now and then! :)

Update for March

Wow...is it just me or is life just flying by?? So here's an update from us in CO sorry it took so long. Returning from an amazing Christmas vacation, Jeff started the dreaded tax season! He seems to be going into work earlier and coming home later every day, but he loves what he's doing so I can't complain.
I returned to my job at the preschool (oh yeah I don't think we blogged about that either...I got a job at Busy Little Hands Early Learning Center as a teacher/classroom leader for 2 year olds in November). Just a couple weeks after returning the position for the infant room leader became available and I asked my director if I could give it a whirl. Well they put me in there one day and I haven't been back to my toddler room since! I do love taking care of babies all day even though I think I've changed enough diapers and made enough bottles to call myself a pro (even though I'm not a mom yet).
ANYWAY, so both me a Jeff returned to working full-time and relaxing when we get home in the evenings. For my birthday Jeff bought me a beautiful dress and necklace and took me to one of our favorite Italian restaurants for dinner, Maggianos (so GOOD!) We came home and relaxed a little b/c we both had to work the next morning.
The following weekend my best friend Emily visited from WA and we go to go out for my "birthday" dinner at Macaroni Grill, and for birthdays they have a singer come out and sing "Happy Birthday" in Italian to me. He was pretty good and it sounded so beautiful in Italian (much better than the embarrassing "Happy, happy birthday" song).
Two weeks after Emily came, my younger siblings came out from UT for Presidents Day weekend. Sean fixed up our car that was having oil leaking issues and we headed to 16th St. Mall for the afternoon on Saturday. While at 16th St Mall we found those cool Chess tables, saw a guy paint a beautiful picture of the Egyptian Pyramids (with nothing but spray paint, paper, and tape), and met a Transformer dude who thought Sean looked like Anikan Skywalker and Jeff looked like the Verizon Wireless "Can you hear me now" guy (which he does with his new glasses). We mostly window shopped, and enjoyed the feel of the city. Afterwards we headed to Red Robin for dinner and then just relaxed the rest of the weekend until they had to head home Monday morning. Thanks for coming Jennifer, Jessica and Sean!!! We love to have visitors!
We have been planning on buying a home before April to take advantage of the Home Credit this year and met with a Realtor we really, really like and who seems to know what he's doing (since we don't!). This last weekend we got to go look and some houses in our price range and I was surprised at how big and nice a home we could get. We saw about 8 houses and I found one I liked a lot, but after doing some more research on returning home realized that there were plenty more homes like the one I liked out there. We are planning another venture with our Relator a week from Saturday, and who knows maybe we'll find our first home then!
Well, that's pretty much it for us, our lives are pretty great I'd say and we have so much to look forward to in the near future!!

Christmas

It's been a while since either of us posted anything - so I'll try my best to give a good update. We spent a good chunk of last month in Washington - I was there for ten days and Sharee was there for about 18 days. We had a fun time visiting with the family and doing lots of stuff for Christmas. We went and saw some Christmas lights:



Some of the members of the family participated in a re-enactment of the nativity (Sharee was an angel):



We got some fun gifts from some awesome family members:



And of course had a great feast!



We also got to hang out with our good friends, Brigg and Havalah Turner at Burgerville and got in some games of Scum and Hearts! It was great to see you guys!

Jeff went home earlier than Sharee as he had to get back to work. He helped someone move and got this as a nice bonus!!! (They wanted to get rid of it...)



Hope you all had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!