Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Dodging a Bullet

Roxanne is still not sick (I just knocked on wood). I don't understand, but I won't question. Josh still has a runny nose and a cough. This week I'm keeping Josh and Ben and Roxanne AND Noah, Josh's older brother. He's on spring break. I'm *exhausted* but I figure the week will go by faster this way... No time to think... Roxanne is having a blast though. She loves the big boys. She has started picking a couple of new words every day. I think it's from being around the big kids. Her newest words are "bubbles," "shoes," "stick," "Josh," "Noah," and "baby." None of them are crystal clear except for "bubbles." She says "Josh" pretty clearly, too. She has also started stringing together baby sentences, much to our shock. It's OK if you don't believe me on that one, since I probably wouldn't, but it's pretty neat to hear. When I'm holding her and she wants to get down, she dips her upper body down and says "I wanna walk," but it sounds more like "ah-wan-walK," with lots of emphasis on the "k." Justin heard it the other day, so I'm not totally crazy. We think it could be coming from the fact that I always ask her "do you want to walk?" when I'm carrying her.

In other news, we are going to look at a house tomorrow night. I found a program (Neighborhood Stabilization Program, through Georgia Dream) that allows you to buy a foreclosed home and grants you up to $14,000 for down payment and/or renovations costs. It's really complicated, but the mortgage broker we've been talking to has sent our application to the guy who works with the program and he said we are approved. Not officially of course, since we didn't actually apply for the loan, but on paper, we look like good candidates. The awesome part is that the underlying loan is an FHA loan, and the second loan that is the $14,000 is completely interest and payment free. If you live in the home for 5.5 years, it's forgiven. Between that and the $8,000 tax credit, it would really be a good time for us to buy. It's not going to be easy, since we have pretty much decided that we really want to buy in the City of Decatur (I know, I know, the taxes are CRAZY, but we aren't going to be in a mansion, and the schools and services are worth it). Then we have the whole issue of our lease, which ends at the end of September. We can't afford to break it, and we can't afford to pay rent and a mortgage payment, so it's kind of confusing. At this point, we are just trying to see what types of homes are out there, and what we would be looking at in different price ranges. The home we are going to look at is in Oakhurst, which is City of Decatur, but not the most established area, so it tends to be slightly cheaper. But the house looks like it needs a LOT of work, so it probably would end up being more than we could afford, even though the asking price is pretty low. Regardless, we just want to explore things so that we feel like the decision we end up making is a good and well-thought-out one. We're very very determined to keep a mortgage payment only slightly more a month than our rent, so I've been basically only looking at that number as opposed to the highest amount we would qualify for. I don't even want to know what that would be... OK, I'm rambling. I need sleep. And a spa day. Right.

No comments: