Realized I haven't updated in a while...

At least aside my twitter feed!

I headed to IL on Friday, June 27 to do my househunting and a few days vacation. Mom, Elphaba and I arrived in Normal around 9pm that night. Hotel was a DUMP! I knew it wasn't going to be luxury because for some reason (which we found out later was a Jehovah's Witness convention)it was the only place which would allow dogs I get could a room at. I dropped a load of stuff in the room, and ran down to get more from mom who was watching it - because the hotel had no elevator and she couldn't carry stuff up the stairs. Got back upstairs..and keys didn't work. Went to front desk, they made 3 more keys. None of THEM worked. Went back to front desk, made 3 more keys. Clerk came back up with us. None of THEM worked. Master key DID work. Mom went in with stuff, Elphaba and I went outside. Room next door hadn't been checked into yet so clerk decided to move us next door. While waiting, mom finds none of the lights work in the first room. Get upstairs, mom's in the new room. None of THOSE lights work. Call front desk. While waiting for someone to come up I start fishing around...most of the lights were unplugged..desk light didn't work. We said okay. Overall cleanliness wasn't stellar..but I've seen worse. And the beds looked clean and newer so thats more important. Well...Miss Elphaba runs around 10 minutes and finds a dirty fast food sandwich wrapper someplace. YUCK! Again, not much to be done with no other hotel rooms available. Complained, had my rate reduced. I tell you this part so you'll understand why Saturday was the way it was...we were motivated to not have to stay in the hotel a second night - even if I did get stuck PAYING for the second night.

Saturday, realtor pics us up at 9am. We have 30 houses to see. She thinks we'll see most Saturday...has a couple lined up for Sunday. Many houses are in the neighborhood I really wanted to see...cute exteriors, beautiful porches, nice big sidewalks, garages in back. Adorable neighborhood. Well...every house we saw there was a dump. And we saw like 10 houses. Plus we cut out 6 we didn't look at because they were the same model as a unit I decided was way to small. There were some for sale by owner homes in the development I wanted to see that my realtor did NOT line up...I was a bit peeved about that..but overall...I decided that if all the homeowners were as careless as the ones I'd seen..I probably didn't want to live in that neighborhood afterall. Anyway...all in all we ended up seeing about 23 houses Saturday. There were really only 2 possibilities in my opinion...so we went back for second looks on both homes between 3pm and 4:30pm. The first choice was obvious for me...as it had the biggest finished square footage...including a already finished basement. Unfortunately, we'd been following the SAME realtor with some other out of town buyers ALL day..and he was coming back for a second look as well. We decided to make an offer..and because of the interest from the other buyer (and the fact that I think the sellers had priced REALLY low intending to sell fast) I offered slightly over list price while requesting appliances and a home warranty. While we were writing the offer, the sellers agent called my realtor to ask if we were making and offer and said to hurry and get it in (hinting that if we got our offer in first we'd get accepted). We did the paperwork, mom and I hit the road back to Naperville. 30 minutes down the road my realtor called and my offer was accepted!!!

Pics of the new house!

To be continued.....