Fly Away  

Posted by Amber

I LOVE getting out with my hubby and doing something!  Not that sitting around and watching movies or playing a game is bad, but I think I've had too much of that with the extended winter weather.  So two weeks ago we went to the aquarium, yes? So much fun!  Well yesterday, we decided to go to the Tracy Aviary.  We initially were going to go to Bird World - I guess it's like a giant pet store with more birds and stuff, but then we found out it is in Bountiful.  (That, and they have quite a lot of bad reviews for the quality of their animals - which makes me sad :( )  Neither of us had ever visited the aviary, so we looked it up online and discovered it was cheaper than either the zoo or the aquarium ($5/adult versus $9).  We called Matt's siblings to see if any of them wanted to go, and Jennifer took us up on the offer. :)

Golden Eagle
We found it pretty easily - I'd never been in Liberty Park in SLC before.  The whole idea of having various attractions within the confines of the park was weird to me, but Matt loved it.  Guess I'm not a city girl :) We wandered the whole park.  Some displays were cooler than others.  Example - the eagles were not behind bars.  (All of them had or have had wing injuries that make it impossible for them to be released into the wild . . because they can't fly . . so they just sit there and stare :) )

Bald Eagle
They also had a wetlands exhibit where you went in the giant caged area with some of the birds. 
Black-necked Stilt in the wetlands exhibit
My favorite though was a little hut area you could go in and be so close to the birds there.

Monk Parakeets in the hut exhibit
Matt's favorite I think was when two trainers brought out Patty, one of three Patagonian Burrowing Parrots.  She was trained to fly back and forth between them.  While she did that, one of the trainers told us about her and her species.

Patty, the Patagonian Burrowing Parrot
About 2:30pm, we headed over to their little amphitheatre for the new bird show (Fly!, just opened this weekend, show times are 11am, 1pm, and 3pm - If anyone is interested.)  I took a survey for them about the show and got 10% off a membership (also much cheaper than the zoo - which we'll be getting tomorrow anyway.  $30/double ($27 with my survey discount) versus $60/couple at the zoo). 

This Lesser Canada Goose was honking like crazy - so we stopped by to visit him.  He stopped.  As soon as we walked away, he started up again.  We discovered that all birds are sort of alike.  (Bhuvan will squak whenever we leave the room, too.)
A little plug for the aviary membership - it's part of a reciprocal membership program.  I guess the zoo's membership does the same type of thing, so some of the perks may overlap) Regardless, the aviary offers more perks within Utah . . and since I don't really go to zoos or aquariums out-of-state . . . . this will do.  The cool thing for us is that, September through May, with the membership, we get half off at the Living Planet Aquarium.  The aquarium is not cool enough for us to visit lots, and definitely not for us to get a membership, but with the reciprocity, we may visit more . . . come September :)  Anyway, visit the websites (Aviary, Zoo) for membership benefits if you're interested.

These Guira Cuckoos were in lots of cages.  I saw them on the website before we came and decided they were my favorite - mostly because they look funny :)
For this outing - I actually remembered my camera (go me!), as if you hadn't noticed...so here are some more highlights:

I love ducks - they make me laugh :)
I knew this guy was familiar . . . Laughing Kookaburra
(Yes, I've been to Australia.)
Turkey Vulture - apparently they do this to keep warm and to kill bacteria on their feathers after eating.  We just thought he was posing. :)

Swainson's Hawk - let's face it, hawks are so cool! This guy was in with three Turkey Vultures.
This is Andy, the Andean Condor - food and a toy were in the present. :)
This was one of the King Vultures.  He was another testament to how alike birds are across species.  He could see Andy getting fed across the way (we were on the back side of Andy's cage, right next to these guys), and we were not paying him much attention.  In order to remedy this (and probably in hopes of getting some food, too), he was antsy.  He tried climbing up the fence, and he would happy dance back and forth.  Just the night before, Bhuvan was doing the same thing in hopes of being let out. :)
Southern Lapwing in the hut exhibit.

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Fishy fun  

Posted by Amber

Hmm, so 30 minutes have elapsed since I posted the condo update, and still no Matt....and he's not responding to text or call. After checking in on some of the private blogs (that are so hard for me to follow because they don't update in my blogger feed), I suppose I will post about the aquarium.

Two weeks ago, I decided we were going to the zoo.  Matt agreed (though I don't think he felt like he had a choice).  We hadn't been in awhile, and it was supposed to be the first nice weekend all year (or so it seemed).  However, Matt gave himself a nasty carpet burn, and didn't feel like going - and we slept in.  Around lunchtime (like maybe 1pm or 2pm?), we decided to make the stupid US Bank card payment (I hate that card - one day it will be paid off and the card will be in a block of ice in the freezer) and go get some lunch.  It was a little bit late for the zoo, but we saw a billboard for the penguins at the aquarium.  So, using my nifty new phone and data plan, I looked it up and found their hours were later than the zoo's (and the price was the same), so we decided to go to Sandy instead.  The only other time we had been was on our honeymoon, and it was kind of lame.  However, we figured 2.5 years later and the addition of the penguins made it worth going again.  This time, it was lots better :)

We arrived in time for the shark feeding.  That part was actually kind of lame, but a nerdy worker was there telling us about the sharks and other fish in the tank with them, so that was fun.  Then said nerdy worker informed us of their rainforest educational thing happening like 15 minutes later, so we headed over there to get seats.  Matt was super excited to see the birds at the aquarium :) He's a total bird-lover.  So we learned about some rainforest creatures (hissing cockroach, tarantula, snake, a green bird that I don't remember its name, an African gray, a blue and gold mackaw, and a scarlet mackaw). 

Us before the rainforest lecture
(Don't blow it up - it's super fuzzy)
Dusty, the African Gray

After that, we decided to actually do the walkthrough of the aquarium, starting with the boring Utah fish.  I wanted to get Matt's picture with the frog statue, but every time it would free up for a millisecond, some other little kid was playing on it or getting their picture taken.  We gave up and moved on.  The jellies and seahorses are still probably my favorites, aside from the ray pool :). 

These have NOT been enhanced - just straight from the phone.

We hung out at the ray pool for awhile until I'd had my fill of the soft, squishy creatures.  Then we moved over to the other touchy-feely creatures, where nerdy worker had moved to - he was so funny! So I got to touch a sea star and some other stuff that I don't remember :) 

Then it was on to the new South American portion - with a giant anaconda to greet you. :p  The penguins were so much fun to watch.  Matt's favorite was watching them poop underwater because it would sort of create a cloud.  He laughed every time.  I took some video on my phone, but the format (mpg4) doesn't like me :p, so I can only play it on my phone.  (I had forgotten my camera entirely, so all of my pics are with my phone, but it's not too shabby for being a camera phone :))  Then we made the stop at the gift shop, where we didn't buy anything (as per usual), checked out the penguins again (less crowd), and headed back home.  It was a pretty fun day.

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Back  

Posted by Amber

It is okay, we did not die, fall in a hole, get lost, take an exotic vacation, or anything else nearly as exciting.  We have, however, had quite a ride on the emotional rollercoaster of life. :)

Condo - done. Finished. Pretty. For ages.

Loan - fail.

New loan - should hear back this week *crosses fingers*

So, some of you are probably confused now. That is because I've not felt like posting this to the world for awhile.  I've been meaning to post for a week or two now, but haven't found time since I lately only get on the computer during breakfast.  Since I'm always late to work anyway, I thought it wise not to make things worse by trying to blog during that time.  (The days I try to catch up on the blogs I read usually put me an extra 5-10 minutes behind - I'm horrible, I know.)

Okay, so we got to do our final walkthrough of the condo at the end of April.  They were then going to do the touchups/fixes and clean - and it would be ready as soon as we closed. :)  Well, then we had loan issues.  A - Chase is stupid.  With the rural housing loan, we had to include a portion of our student loans, even the deferred ones.  Between that and the way they figured our income (a three year average for two 20 somethings who have worked little hours while going to school or changed jobs and so have had varying pay rates doesn't work out so well), our debt to income ratio was too high - no loan.  Not that it mattered anyway because apparently rural housing was out of money about that time too.  So much for that.

Next - FHA loan.  Matt was quite resistant. Finally I found out why (umm, he dropped two classes during the semester without telling me, leaving him like 7 credits - and he was pretty sure he failed a class - leaving 4 credits, which is not half time - the required amount to keep your loans deferred), so we still had to include student loans.  Oh the joy.  Well, we figured, "What's the point?"  Especially if our income was figured in the same way.  So we didn't do anything for a week or two.  We started looking for pet-friendly apartments instead. :(  We (I) decided to still give it a shot though, because you never know.  Before doing that, we wanted to ask some questions of the mortgage guy so we knew if it was worth attempting . . . but we couldn't get ahold of him.

We decided to look at some apartments, and that very day I was going to call on some, low and behold, mortgage guy finally calls back.  He answers my questions sufficiently, so we signed the FHA papers and got him the necessary documentation for everything - again.  Needless to say, we didn't look at apartments.

THEN, since Matt's student loans are in grace after this semester, we needed to get the estimated payment amounts for his loans from each lender.  Wells Fargo was easy enough.  UHEAA sent a fax in a timely manner.  FedLoan, on the other hand, sure struggled with sending a simple email.  Matt called a couple days later, and it was in "verification" and they said we should have the email within 24 hours.  We didn't.  The next day, Matt was going to call again, but the email finally showed up.  So everything was in.  We thought.

My pay had dramatically increased, so I needed to explain why (I graduated, therefore freeing up my life to be able to work 40 hours a week - shoot me now) and I also had to show when I graduated.  Did that - mortgage guy wanted it revised. :p Yay for my smart phone - because I had to get my email with the attachment on the road (we went to the aquarium - perhaps that will be the next post), open it, retype the letter (good thing it was short), and send it back.  I wouldn't want to do that frequently, but it sure was handy to have that capability on my phone.  All done!

Okay, not really (I'm never buying a house again...) One last thing - they needed to pull our credit again showing the cars were paid off.  That, or show documentation for Matt's parents paying off his car to add to our first credit pull.  Matt opted to just pull it again because it was easier and we don't anticipate needing to use our score for anything in the near future after this.  So we did that - and then had to sign the credit disclosure (my score is pretty dang good :) - Matt's . . . . is okay.  I know it's not your fault, hun :) ) and we had to sign the FHA addendum to the purchase contract.  So we did all that yesterday and it went to the underwriter.  Now we are just waiting to hear.  Asked loan guy today, said he'd see what he could find out . . . and we heard nothing back.  He's getting another text tomorrow :)  And that is where we're at. 

It's late, and Matt's still not home from band. Maybe I'll post about the aquarium now....

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