Well, Hello!

It's been a while, hasn't it?

In my last post, I described the day I was told I had to move.  Things since then have been a bit crazy.  I began a thorough search of every home for sale and for rent in this city.  I went to open houses, I went to private showings with my realtor, I looked up information on the county assessor's website, I met with a mortgage broker, I made an offer (followed by several counter-offers), and I did a lot of praying.

In the midst of all of this, I had two nights of parent-teacher conferences, more meetings than I care to count, and a minor pet emergency which involved an a trip to vet and a week of prescription food and pills.

I thoroughly believe that this whole ordeal is a God thing, and He has really come through for me, just as He always does.  I met my realtor through a girl in my Sunday school class - it's her boyfriend.  He has been great to work with, and has been so flexible and understanding given my timeline.  I submitted my mortgage paperwork online, and God sent me to Noelle, a wonderful woman at WellsFargo.  She stayed after hours one Wednesday night to answer all of my questions and to go over in detail with me all that a mortgage would entail.

After all of the searching and paperwork and meetings, I am finally a homeowner!  Joe, my realtor, brought the paperwork to church this morning for me to sign.  I don't know of many people who sign their home ownership paperwork in church, but I can't think of a better place for it to have been done.

That was the easy part, I'm afraid.  Now, I have to order an inspection, wait for an appraisor to visit, complete all of the mortgage paperwork, and beg Angie, the manager of my apartment complex, to let me and Harper stay here an extra two weeks.  Apparently, banks don't think it's possible to close on a home in fourteen days.

Whatever.

Then, after all of that, I have to actually do the moving.  I hate moving, and I'm not very good at it.  And, since I won't be able to close before my Spring Break, I'll probably have to take some time off of work in order to get it done.  Unfortunately, April is a big testing month, so the timing on all of this is going to have to be just right.  And I trust that it will be.

So, that was the chaos update of my life.  Luckily, I have wonderful friends who have kept my spirits up in the midst of all of this.

Harper is doing better with potty training, and she loves visits from her Aunt Ashley and Uncle Jeremy.

Harper looks so small in these pictures!  She must be growing.  Which means I must start taking more pictures of her.

~~~

Saturday night was a bit of an adventure.  My friend Kelli called at 5:30 to see what I was doing at 6:00.  I thought maybe she wanted to go to dinner.

Nope.  Her nephew got into some trouble, so she inherited his tickets to the "Blizzard Tour," which was a concert featuring artists Cali Swag District, Sick Puppies, 3OH!3, and Nelly.  So, I agreed to go with her, despite the fact that my grad school homework wasn't done and I hadn't yet showered for the day.

There were tons of people there, and it wasn't really my type of crowd.  This kind of music isn't what I typically listen to, but it was free entertainment.  These people were loving it, though:

It was general admission seating, so we decided to sit fairly high up and out of the way.  Once we found some open seats, I realized that I was sitting next to a girl who I used to babysit.  She's fifteen years old now, which makes me feel old.  At one point, she and her friend decided to go to the bathroom and asked if I would save their seats.  I agreed, but in doing so, I had to shoo away a herd of former students who asked if they could have the seats.

Awkward.

Attention, former students:  Please don't judge me for having gone to this concert.  I assure you, I am not nearly cool enough to have done so.  Also, this music is far too inappropriate for you (and me) to be listening to.  Let's just keep listening to Bieber, who won't corrupt us.  Furthermore, I hope you didn't inhale too deeply where you were sitting.  And I hope you're too naive to know what that smell actually was.

Kelli was mostly interested in seeing Cali Swag District because she is a huge fan of "The Dougie."  In fact, she referred to this event as the Cali Swag District concert, even though they were the least well-known earliest performance of the night.

Can you see how excited she was?

Sick Puppies performed next, but I only knew one of their songs from the radio.  Also, they swore an awful lot, so I was ready for them to be done.

Then came 3OH!3, who had a few songs that I recognized.  They, too, swore a lot, which I didn't think was necessary.

Finally, at nearly 10:00 (way past my bedtime), Nelly came on with his St. Lounatics.

He was actually a pretty good performer.  I recognized most of his songs from the radio... he's been performing since I was in middle school.

By 11:30, Kelli and I were yawning pretty heavily, so we left.  Also, we wanted to beat the crowd out of downtown.  All-in-all, it was a pretty fun night!  Much better than grading papers, which I should have done.

Sigh.