Updates - still haven't heard from the plumber . . . I was going to call the builder today, but I just remembered, and it's 9pm now. Next, even though we've had the gift card, I just picked up paint today. On the plus side, two gallons cost $50.11, so with the gift card, I only had to give her a dime and a penny :) Really by this weekend we should be painted :) I don't think we have anything planned for Saturday :) Oh! I found the mailbox. I'm an idiot . . . . it's pretty much straight out from our building. (In my defense, I'm not used to brown mailboxes, and the construction people for the next building have stuff parked in front of it...) Last, but not least, the bird is officially named Turkleton.
In other exciting news - I got a $1/hr raise :) My boss is gone a lot helping with a new phone center, so I'm getting a lot of her responsibilities here, and that equals more money, which is awesome because we'll need all the help we can get :)
Unpacking is slowly coming along. I have all of the easy stuff done, and now it is down to stuff I have no idea where to put :) or random stuff. I did, however, get all of the blankets out of our storage shed and have found a few to get rid of, which is a plus. I have also repacked most of the rest . . . so now I just need somewhere to put these plastic boxes. It's okay though, because it is still progress :)
And as disconnected and short as this post is, I am done with it. :)
Yeah, I know. I did so well for like a week. But then stuff happened and I didn't want to blog. I wasn't ready to. Then we got busy and didn't have time. Then we didn't have internet, which greatly hinders the blogging process. But now, I find myself with nothing better to do (k, not true, but I don't want to do it right now), a computer, super speedy internet, no husband, and a strong realization I should probably put a post up.
Well, for the bad news... you know, the one that I couldn't blog about for awhile. Our cutest little bundle of feathers, Bhuvan, got sick and passed away . . . goodness, 3.5 weeks ago now.
I believe he contracted psittacosis, after all of my reading after his passing. It was tragic. Bhuvan was Matt and I's first baby together... I still feel horrible. We didn't take him to the vet (it's treatable). You see, birds are super good at hiding their illnesses so predators won't pick them. There were a couple signs, but I didn't think much of it because he'd gone through similar things before and been fine. Another sign that should have been so obvious, I didn't know what it was. After reading all of the symptoms of the common cockatiel illnesses, I found out. I feel horrible that we had at least a day or two that we could have gotten him into the vet and maybe still have our little birdie-boo with us. Friday night (June 11) we knew he wasn't doing well. When we got home from the tattoo, we just hung out with him and tried to keep him warm. Poor little guy. We didn't call the vet at that point because afterhours visits are super expensive. In retrospect, I'm glad we didn't at that point either because I doubt there would have been anything he could have done for our little bird. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, June 12th, our little Bhuvan passed away. I awoke to find our little bird on his back on the bottom of his cage. I bawled and bawled. For like three days. It was hard because we had to leave so early in the morning for the Scottish festival, but in some ways, I think it helped me to still go do something all day. It was hard to come home and not have a little bird squeeking at us, happy dancing to get out of his cage. The next day, I still broke off a corner of my toast for him... it was habit. We sure miss our little guy. He was only about 2 1/2 years old. (Average lifespan of a cockatiel is 12-15 years.) Matt buried him in my dad's garden Sunday afternoon.
Shortly thereafter, we finally got word we would be able to close on our house. Huzzah! The builder let us move some stuff in and paint while we waited for our closing date to be set. The whole mortgage process was a pain. From what I hear, worse than normal. It refused to give up the fight right through to the end, too. Setting a closing date was a pain. Then we finally got that figured, and had to close again. (The papers were dated for the next day - June 25, when we though we were going to have to move the closing date to, but then the title lady was able to meet with us at 8:30 Thursday night . . .so we signed the 24th and had to go back to her office Friday after work to re-sign everything.) However, we finally got it all done and signed and paid for on June 25th. On Tuesday, June 29th, the loan funded, and we were officially homeowners (which was a good thing because we already had most everything moved in and had spent our first night there Saturday, June 26th :))
Already (being about a week since moving in), the kitchen and dining room is put away and clean. Oh how I love having a dishwasher! The living room is mostly done. The office has made good progress. The laundry room is done. The bedroom is pretty good . . . just have to finish finding where I'm putting all of our clothes :) And the storage bedroom doesn't really have a whole lot of stuff in it. The bathrooms are another story. Not looking forward to them. We painted the kitchen/dining, living room, hall, and 3/4 of the master bedroom. I quite like the color. My gift card finally arrived so I can buy the paint for the accent wall in the bedroom and the hall bath color. Those should be painted by the end of next week. It's quite exciting to have our own place.
It's super spacious . . . granted, it's like twice the square footage as our apartment, plus has 2 extra bedrooms, and extra bathroom, and a laundry room. I love being able to do laundry at my own house too. Even better is being able to do dishes, laundry, and shower at the same time :) Or do anything else, really, but we have enough hot water to accommodate all three simulatenously. It's swell. The internet is super fast. We have TV (which I will now insert a complaint about . . . with the HOA, we get the first 2 tiers of programing from PrimeTime Communications . . . and BBC America is in the 3rd tier. I wanted to cry . . not really, but I was super bummed. No Top Gear for Amber . . . oh, that's my new obsession . . especially since Vampire Diaries doesn't start until August :) ) Back to the pros...we have Cinco with us - the laundry room holds all of his necessities so nicely :) We have a fun little patio. We know some of our neighbors, so we have friends in the neighborhood :).
Cons, aside from the lack of BBC America: The kitchen cabinets and the dishwasher are a bit small. They look normal, but the cabinets are just a bit skinny. Oh well, we've managed to put everything away. Tiny tiny coat closet. Build issues that have to be taken care of... we had to have the heating guy come put a valve on at the dryer so we could use it already. Stan had to fix the door to the lazy susan cabinet so we could actually open it enough to put things in it. We are missing 7 pegs for various shelves through the house's cabinets. We are missing 15 dots that go on the corners of the cabinet doors and drawers. The plumber still needs to come fix the shower head in the hall bath so it doesn't just drizzle on you. And I need to ask the plumber or builder about the sprayer at the kitchen sink. Oh! and we have no idea where the mailbox is..... we finally got the keys to it (funny story), but don't know where to put the key to get our mail. I did drive around today when I got home and found some mailboxes, but they were for the first five buildings....ours is number 6 . . . so I still don't know what to do about our mail.
Anyway, back to the keys.... we went, I think Saturday, to the post office to change our address and pick up the keys. We changed our address just fine, but they couldn't give us the mailbox key without some proof we were moving into the unit...... We had to bring the HUD back that had our name and the address on it before we could get the keys. We thought it amusing that we could get our mail sent there with no problem, but we couldn't get keys to access said mail without proof of moving there. :) Matt found it even more interesting that neither transaction required any ID. Ah, the government :)
Sorry this is long. You're not obligated to read it :) Last week, after missing having a feathered baby, Matt got me to consent to get a budgie. We purchased him at Petco in Orem. He/she/it is awfully cute, and quite a little stinker now that he has gotten comfortable with our bedroom. He wasn't hand-fed, so we had to work a bit to tame him to come to our hand, but he does a pretty good job now. We are accepting applications for names.... I think he looks like a half and half dipped Easter egg, but we haven't found anything to go with that idea that would work for a name. We though of calling him Squirt (like from Nemo), and today, Matt is set on Turkleton (from Scrubs) because he is turquoise, and that's like Turkleton. Then when we get a second, it will be white, and we will name it JD. (He was begging me via text today to let us name it Turkleton...sigh).
So, if you read this far, here are couple of pictures (yeah, not good, I know) of our new family member. Feel free to comment and let us know what you think it should be named.
I have a dilemma. I want to get Cinco a collar, but I can't decide between these two:
So please comment and let me know which you prefer. Keep in mind a couple of things. Cinco has gray long fur. Cinco is also a boy. (Believe me, finding stuff I liked that worked with both of these criteria was tough, but I'm down to these two.)
Thanks everyone for your input!
Just ask Matt - I've been dying to go to the zoo for weeks, mostly since the weather has been good enough to go really. Yay for holiday weekends! Memorial Day weekend was awesome. You already know we went to the aviary Saturday. Sunday we actually made it to church (I hate 9am church) and had a nice day relaxing with family (It was good to see you Kevin and Karrie!). Then Monday, we went to the ZOO!
Even more fun was we took Devan, Michelle, Jennifer, and McKade. :) It was a long day, but we had fun :) We took most of the usual route, but McKade helped give us direction. (He really wanted to see the elephants and penguins). It was a super crowded day with the holiday, so there were lines for the bird show and the Nature's Nightmares exhibit, but we ended up hitting both.
It apparently had been awhile since I'd visited the zoo (not quite a year actually) because some things had changed. The old capuchin monkey wasn't there anymore. The black bears are at another zoo while they begin building the new bear area. Most of the African animals (zebras and such) were gone, presumably in preparation for the new build as well. The crocodiles had moved indoors (they're going to be laying eggs soon! I love animal babies!) The cougar was missing and instead, there was a bobcat sign at that exhibit . . . but no bobcat was visible. The ugly pig-like things were replace by an aldabra tortoise. See? lots of changes. Oh! and the penguins were much fewer, and I'm pretty sure a different breed... (Does this make me a complete zoo nerd to have noticed all of these things? Well, it's only going to get worse because we got our MEMBERSHIP! Woot!)
Anyway, now for the fun part - pictures!
McKade and the elephants
Mama Christie and baby Zuri
I was so excited to finally see Zuri! She was either about to be born or just recently born when we last went, so she wasn't out for people to see.
The red panda was actually awake! However, he promptly found a comfy branch to take a nap on.
McKade at Asian Highlands
Waiting in line to go through Nature's Nightmares
McKade as an orangutan
Jennifer as an orangutan
As we were leaving, we decided Devan was a monkey, then we had to figure out which he was....
Fingers are too short to be a gorilla...
McKade as a gorilla
Then again, maybe Devan is a gorilla. :)
So we ended up taking the back path up to the south entrance, which spits you out at Asian Highlands (again).
Devan at Asian Highlands
Waiting in line for the bird show
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.
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.
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....
