For us, there were three main things that dominated our December, so I'll focus on those.
First, of course, was the house. Omigosh. I already updated you on a lot of that, so I won't have to do a full run down now. Which is good, quite frankly, because I don't think I have the energy for it (and I don't think you want to hear me complain anymore, either!)!
We were told we absolutely would be able to close the week of Christmas. And we almost did. We actually went to the title company Christmas Eve morning to sign the paperwork, hoping to get access to the house that day (the office, by the way, is pretty far south in Mesa, so it was an hour drive. Not a huge deal, but not exactly convenient either). When we started going over paperwork with the escrow officer, I noticed that our bank (who else?) had the property address wrong. I mentioned it, not sure whether it was really that important.
It was.
The escrow officer (poor dear. It wasn't even her file; she was just filling in for someone else who was already on vacation) called Wells Fargo just to check, and they said that they would have to print out all new documents. The biggest problem? Travis's dad is cosigning the loan, and he has to sign the same documents that we do. Which meant that instead of getting everything done that day, we had to overnight them to him in Iowa again, and he would have to send them right back (again). And with the holidays, that wouldn't all be finished up until Monday or Tuesday (another four or five days).
The bank made new documents right away and emailed them to the escrow officer, so we could at least sign them since we were already there. When the new documents came through, they had Travis's dad listed on the deed as well, which he wasn't supposed to be on. When we called the bank again, they said he had to be on it (...but he hadn't been on it the first time around!). Wow. So we were calling everyone we could think of (at 11:45 on Christmas Eve morning...when everyone was either already closed down, or 15 minutes away from it) trying to get this figured out before the holidays.
Eventually, we did. And we signed our part and went home and tried to not worry about it so that we could have our little Christmas.
Which, by the way, was wonderful! We decided that our Christmas Eve tradition was going to be making homemade pizza (we thought it would be nice to actually have the whole family cooking together, rather than the mom slaving away in the kitchen all day!).
So we made one regular pizza and one lobster pizza (see above). I know it sounds strange, but Red Lobster makes it, and we've always been intrigued, so we decided to make our own. And it was fabulous! We'll definitely be making it again (we also made an apple dessert pizza later that evening). Yum. All in all, I'd call the evening a wonderful success!
It was fun for us to be able to have Christmas in our own home too (even if we didn't make it into the house in time). Our biggest present this year was the television (which is amazing, by the way!), but we still got a few things from family. We had a great day just playing games and watching Christmas shows! Hooray!
Three days later, of course, we celebrated another momentous occasion - our two year wedding anniversary! On December 28, 2007, we got married in the Mount Timpanogos temple at 11:00 a.m.
It's certainly been a whirlwind two years for us, but we wouldn't trade it for anything! I love my man, and he still treats me like a queen!
We were hoping that we'd get to move into the house that day (what an anniversary present, huh?), but no dice. We did get to go out to a nice dinner, though, at Cheesecake Factory, which was amazing.
Neither of us had ever been there before, and were totally surprised by the atmosphere, but we love it! It is now, hands down, my favorite place to eat. If you haven't been before, go. If it's been a while, go back (fyi, their pineapple upside down cheesecake is to die for!)!
The next day, we were really, seriously, major league hoping to get the house. We were told there should be no problem (is it sad that we were still believing them?), and so we went ahead and loaded up the Uhaul in the morning (scary, I know!), and huzzah! at 2:00 p.m., we got the call! It was officially recorded at county, and we were homeowners! And we drove right to the house to start unloading.
It was exhausting moving in, but who cares? We have a house! It's so beautiful, and having our things in it has made it even more so. We're really settling in, and we could not be happier here. We're down to just the little things that need to be unpacked now, and we're going to take that slow...
Oh, and I can't forget one more exciting thing that happened this month. We booked our tickets to New York City this summer (and yes, I'm very excited)!
This is going to be Travis's last summer off, and it's also going to be the last time he can take any vacation for, oh, about ten years, so we wanted to make sure we did something special. We both love the city (me more than Travis, but he still really wants to go), and we are soooo excited. We leave the day before Memorial Day, and have five days and four nights there. Aah!
There'll be plenty more updates on that event in the coming months, I'm sure.
We can't wait to see what January brings!
Happy 2010!
