Offer?

Mama said we may be putting in an offer on a house. She and Daddy are going for a second showing of it today. They looked at it yesterday morning and then drove past it again last night. Mama says the outside doesn't have curb appeal at all. It's basically a rectangle. She said it reminds her of the house that she grew up in. Daddy said we can put new siding on it and it will look better, but putting a covered porch on it would be tough. The backyard is already fenced and Mama says it is HUGE! However, the deck has a ton of steps and she said that she knows I would jump the steps and fall, so she will have to walk us around to the backyard until they put steps on another section of the deck that is closer to the ground or they fence the front yard. The kitchen is big and recently remodeled. It only has one bath. They wanted two, but it's been remodeled and looks nice. They said they might enlarge the master bedroom by knocking a wall down from another bedroom.

The inside of the house is pretty nice, but the owners seem to have a problem with finishing projects. Three of the rooms do not have closet doors. There is also trim missing. They painted and took it down and I guess they never put it back up. They also took down outlet covers and haven't put those back up. Why would you list your house before doing those things? The agent said that maybe they ran out of money. Well, outlet covers don't cost much and it's not really safe for kids not having covers on the outlets. The front porch really needs to be painted. We know the people love to paint because they painted the living room orange and the bedrooms are a dark purple, so we are not sure why they didn't paint the porch. Maybe it's good that they didn't. LOL

There is one big concern about the house and Daddy said he will hire an engineer and an inspector to come out. It appears that when the basement was poured 38 years ago that there was a problem and one of the walls isn't square. I guess that's the way you say it. Then, he poured the basement windows crooked. The floors upstairs slant. They used to say that on the show Mad About You. Do you remember that? Mama said I will probably be sliding into the walls if I run too fast in the house. Daddy said the walls are not cracked at all, so it may be okay, but we need to have an engineer check it out before we buy it.

The house is not in a subdivision, so no dues. It's located on a old highway, so there isn't much traffic. It's in the country and we will have chickens living next to us. Mama said the rooster was crowing when they were there. It's close to Grandma and Grandpa, so that's neat, but it's also close to one of Mama's relatives that she wants nothing to do with, so that's not so good. Mama is kind of torn about living there for that reason.

It's a lot to think about and none of us got much sleep last night. Mama's been having migraines for the past week because she's been stressed about finding a house. She told me this morning that she's really having her doubts about this house. She thinks the owners will not accept our offer on it. They've been trying to sell it for over a year, but they take if off the market after a month or two and change agents, so they seem to be impatient. We don't think they are going to like our offer at all and maybe that's a good thing. I guess we will know in a day or two and then we will have to see how the inspections go if we get that far.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Is Confused

Almost Wordless Wednesday - Elephant Rocks State Park

These are pictures taken in 2007 - pre-Scout days. We visited Elephant Rocks State Park with the family. As you can see, there is a lot of climbing that you can do or you can just walk on the trail like us.





Jack
The Greyhound Who Likes Hiking With His Dad

The Hunt Continues

(Scout having sweet dreams in 2007.)

Mama and Daddy stalk the real estate site on the computer. Mama looks at Realtor several times each day to see if any new listings have shown up. She gets emails showing new listings, but those are usually a day after she has already found the new ones. Yesterday, a new listing showed up and Mama got very excited. She said it had everything we wanted and it was in her old hometown which is not far from Grandma & Grandpa. She contacted the agent and he said he would meet Mama and Daddy there. They came home disappointed, again. Mama said the house needs about $70,000 in work. It needs a new roof, gutters, paint on the inside and out as well as new carpet. The kitchen needs to be updated. Those things are not unexpected. The worse part was the basement. It's covered in mildew and Mama said it was hard for her to breathe while in the house. The garage floor also needs to be jacked up because part of it has sunk about 3". Yes, the house needs work. It's a foreclosure. If the bank would clean up the basement and fix that, we would be interested. Mama said the upstairs really wasn't in that bad of shape. They talked to a neighbor who said that they tried to sell the house on the court house steps but no one wanted it.

They are going out today to an open house. It looks to be move-in ready from the pictures on the Internet. It's further away then they would like to be from family, but it's a nice area. It has a fenced yard, so that's a good sign.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Wonders If He Will Ever Have A Yard Again

We Are Definitely Not In Two Greyhound Town Anymore

We used to live in the country. It was a very rural area. There were 2,900 people that lived in our town, which I guess isn't the smallest, but it was a quiet area. We lived on a gravel road for goodness sakes. We had one neighbor that loved to burn things. You can't do that just anywhere. We are now living in the city. It's an "upscale area", but we are finding some surprising things are going on around us. Our hotel is in an office complex. We walk around the office complex every day. The surprising thing is that we find evidence of people having S.E.X. in the parking lots. Yes, you read that correctly. We are thinking it must be teens because we also have found beer bottles laying around. It could be people having affairs. We don't know. Mama was shocked when we first moved here since this area is very nice. Well, today, we were completely shocked. We don't know what we found, but Mama covered our eyes. All I know is that we were walking in a nice grassy area between our hotel and an office parking lot. We saw a box laying on the grass. We walked over to it. The next thing I knew was that my eyes were covered and Mama said "Oh, gross!" Mama walked us away quickly, but she made the comment that she will now be looking at all the male hotel guests and wonder who it belongs to. I looked quick as we were walking away and I saw that the box had a picture of a naked man on it. I don't know what it was all about, but Mama made us get out of there quickly.

Sorry, no pictures today. LOL

Jack
The Greyhound Who Appears To Be Living In A Seedy Area

I Found A Sunbeam

Yesterday was the first time that I have found a sunbeam since we left our house on December 23rd. Yes, I am keeping track of the days.

It only lasted about 15 minutes, but I soaked it in as much as possible. Awwww!

Not much new on the house hunting front. We went out Tuesday afternoon and drove by a house and we liked it. However, it was taken off the market after only being on for a day. We think they must have changed their minds about selling it. Daddy called the listing agent about the log home. He had permission from our agent to do so. Anyway, the listing agent says the house is under contract, but it's still showing available on all the sites. Daddy thinks the deal, if there is one, will fall through if they do an inspection. We do have another house that we may see this weekend. They are having an open house. It has everything we want, but a basement. Daddy thinks it might have a storm shelter, so that might work.

The hotel has been very crowded this week. There are at least four dogs staying here besides us. Oh, last night, we were out walking and all at once this dog came upon us and scared us half to death. No, he was not on a leash. About 30 seconds later his Mom showed up and said "sorrrrry". I guess her dog is special and doesn't need to be on a leash. They are not hotel guests. They must just live around here. Luckily, the dog didn't try to attack us. He just scared us.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Thinks He Is Special, But Still Wears His Leash

Wordless Wednesday - The Good Ole Days

(Jack relaxing in the sun on 05/12/2007. The boy loves his sun.)

Storms

Last night we were sleeping when the tornado sirens woke us up. The next thing I knew, I was wet. No, it's not what you think. The roof did not rip off and let the rain in. Mama spilled her water on me....AGAIN! It's the second time she has done that. She took a drink of water and when she sat it on the table, it fell off and on to my bed. I got up and moved to Scout's bed because Scout had gotten scared due to the storms and moved to Mama and Daddy's bed. I normally do that myself, but I was brave last night and just went back to sleep after the excitement died down. We didn't have any damage here that we know of, but other places did. The storms came though and were moving so fast that they were gone in just a few minutes. It was a lot like the storms that came through on New Year's Eve.

We drove by several homes this weekend, but we didn't find anything we liked. Daddy is still in love with the log cabin and yes, we drove by it again on Sunday. I think he is still going to try and buy it. We are thinking there are personality conflicts between the agents due to some things that we learned on Friday. We will say more at a later time.

Jack
The Greyhound Who May Need To Move His Bed Away From Mama