House Update

Yesterday afternoon - stone almost finished.

I fully intended to post an entry last night detailing our trip to Nova Scotia but then I had a really hard time waking up from my evening nap so I just said forget it and went to bed for the night at a reasonable hour.  You would think that my mind would be clear as I came down the stairs this morning at 6:22 (still dark here in Florida) with Brady in one arm and my phone and a cup of water in the other.  Instead, I completely forgot that we still had the chair blocking the stairs (a cheap baby gate) and I proceeded to fall over it.  My phone and cup went flying but thank the good Lord, Brady did not.  He did fall to the floor as I did but my arm mostly protected his head from banging off the wood floor with any kind of velocity.  I, however, will be bruised up in no time and I'm feeling quite sore.  But Brady is fine...that is all that matters.

This is just a quick post with the hopes that tonight I'll be able to recap our trip.  We are having problems with our loan process and I really don't know when we will be moving into our house.  The plan had been that we would do our walk-through on 8//15, which we did, and we would close on 8/22 but the chances of that happening look to be very remote.  The main issue is that, for whatever reason, Quicken Loans went and did an appraisal of our house in June, when it was far from finished, and appraised it at a significantly lower price than what we are paying for it.  Obviously, that isn't good.  We have been thinking that when they go an appraise it again, all will be well because there are things that they clearly did not include the first time around.  Well, Quicken Loans has been incredibly stubborn and had refused to do another appraisal until the house was completely finished.  We thought it would be finished at the end of July but then there was a big mix-up with the stone for our exterior.  It was finally finished yesterday.  An appraiser did go out on Wednesday but then all indications we got from Quicken Loans was that it wasn't a re-appraisal but just an outing to make sure the house was complete (which it wasn't) so the appraiser could stamp "completed" on the original appraisal.  There has been so much confusion and most of it I put on Quicken Loans plate (talking to the loan specialist makes me want to bang my head against the wall).  Both the builder and our realtor say they've never had to be so involved with the lender side of things and that this is just ridiculous.  We do have hope that Quicken Loans has finally realized they need to do a re-appraisal  and we'll get it early next week.  Now we just have to pray that it comes out where we need it to or we will be homeless.  Yes, we did get renters and they are set to move in 8/31.  So whether we have a new house or not, we are out of here.  Incidentally, if the appraisal comes in low, then our alternative is to start all over again with another lender but that process can take any where from 30 - 45 days.

Needless to say, I was feeling a little stressed both Wednesday and Thursday as this all unfolded.  Then, Thursday night as I was having my quiet/nap time after the kids were in bed, I was flipping through stories on my Flipboard app on my phone and I came across a video that a 28-year old man had filmed.  It was called "Eric's Confessions - Final."  He was diagnosed with cancer 10 years ago and has been in and out of remission.  Along the way, he has made like 100 videos of his progress to share with family and friends.  Well, the cancer is back again, really bad, and this was his last video.  After watching that 8-minute tearjerker, it put things back into perspective for me.  Yes, I may end up having to live in a hotel for a few weeks out of suitcases, and we may have to move two times instead of once, and be inconvenienced in some other ways with the whole thing but really, that is just a blip on an otherwise amazing life.  Thank you, Lord, for calming me down and helping me see things in a different light.  We are truly blessed.

Have a Happy Sabbath!