My birthday and our anniversary

For my birthday, we're going to my favorite restaurant (so far) here in Boise called Bardenay and then we're going to Cold Stone (it's an ice cream place kind of like Marble Slab, but better)...or at least I've requested that we go to those places. Then, the following weekend for our anniversary, we've made reservations in Coeur d'Alene, ID. We've been told it's a beautiful place to go and visit--very scenic. Hopefully there's stuff to do there. We'll definitely have pictures. We haven't done much traveling since we've settled here in Boise, but we want to try and do more once Kyle's work schedule evens out (assuming we're still here). Yes, I'm still trying to work in the mindframe of staying here and everything being okay for us.

Checklist for Monday:
-Grocery shopping
-Home inspection at 10am (this is our last chance to possibly get out of the house purchase if we feel we have to)
-call dentist for Kyle and schedule an appointment

Just ignore that last bit...I was just organizing my thoughts. Oh, a sidenote...I was recently thinking of finishing off my ESOL endorsement for my teaching certificate, but I found out that the people running that department basically don't know their butt from a hole in the ground. Needless to say, I'm going to wait a little bit on doing that. Plus, I don't feel comfortable taking all those classes while we try to recover from a house purchase. I wanna let us build up our reserves again before starting another pricey endeavor. In the meantime, I'm going to substitute teach. I figure it'll give me a chance to get familiar with the school systems here and meet people too. I'll get to see which schools would or wouldn't be good for me. Also the reason I decided to hold out was because all these ladies did to me on the phone was give me the runaround...they didn't know what to tell me and then they would keep directing me to people I've already tried to talk to/email or whatever. NOONE knew the ANSWERS! It was just a bit frustrating...OH and get this...the first lady I ever tried to make contact with finally called me the other day (I had left her 2 messages awhile back) and she asked me, "Would you like me to make you an appointment to get your Masters?" UGH...I just said, "No, I'm not doing it now...I'm waiting for later." I had already told her what I wanted and she just acted like I was a totally new person. *whew* I had a lot to say.

Too much stress for our first year of marriage. I had heard that the first year of marriage was the hardest, but I figured it was because of getting used to each other...NOOOO. For us, it was the hurdles that other people/jobs put in front of us. I guess whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger. That saying doesn't really make me feel any better, but oh well.

Tubing down the Boise River

We went tubing today down the Boise river and it was SO much fun! I wish we could've taken pictures but we don't have a water-proof camera. We were each in our own tube. It kept us moving pretty quickly for the most part and we hit some rapids along the way that bounced us and splashed water all over us, which was so cool! It reminded me of the Thunder River ride at Six Flags. The water was FREEZING though. Our feet, hands and bottoms were so numb by the end of the floating ride due to the cold temperature of the water. It was worth it. We've decided that we'll probably buy a raft because rentals are a little expensive if we were to make this a habit over the summer. If we bought our own raft, we could just pay $2 for the shuttle to get us back to our car. Anyway, it was a very good afternoon activity and hopefully we do it more often this summer. Maybe next time, we'll buy a disposable water-proof camera and take pictures of the river and the rapids that we go over.

No word yet as to the status of Kyle's job. He emailed his supervisor and the guy said that he hasn't heard yet if his group will be affected or not. That's probably a good sign. I would hope that they would've already communicated with groups that were going to be affected possibly. The supervisor said that he would call Kyle if he heard anything new. For now, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping/prayin' real hard.

Trying to be positive...

I had a good talk with Grandma this afternoon about the whole "layoff" situation. She made me feel a lot better with what she and Grandpa had to say about it all. Thanks, Grandma! I'm just feeling so much stress right now because we're in the middle of closing on a house and now we still don't know for sure as to what to do. Kyle's dad tells us to back out of the transaction as soon as we can, but then others tell us to sit tight and go through with the house (which is what I want to do but I still have a little fear). Kyle says he's about 85% sure that he'll still have a job because he overheard his cubicle mate talking to someone else. This guy said that more than likely they'll target the assembly lines and that's not the area Kyle works in. He works in the research area where they come up with the information and they don't make the stuff to sell. So that tends to give us that sense of security. We've come up with 4 possible situations that could happen:

1. We buy the house, Kyle loses his job.
2. We don't buy the house, Kyle still has his job (and we possibly lose out on a great house)
3. We don't buy the house, Kyle loses his job (we move back to ATL--which would be really expensive also)
4. We buy the house, Kyle keeps his job (this would be the best situation, of course).

Now, we just gotta figure out which situation(s) we could deal with the best besides the obvious number 4. *sigh* I HATE uncertainty. I was feeling so good after talking with Grandma and then Kyle had to get the negative side. :( I wish I were psychic (for this situation anyway). Keep thinkin' about us! Think happy thoughts! Anyone who thinks happy thoughts gets to sleep at our new house! :)

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers

Kyle just got word today that there will be layoffs at his company, Micron. They didn't do so hot in the last quarter so they're having to reduce costs and restructure the company. Hopefully it won't be him because he works in the research areas and we're really hoping they won't cut that area. We'll hopefully hear more detail tomorrow. I mean, we just did get here and our stuff is still in storage, we're working on closing on a house...and it would just be absurd to have to leave now. We're so stressed right now, but Kyle got a feeling tonight as we were walking around and he said, "I have a strong feeling that I'm still going to have my job". Usually when he has those feelings, he's usually right....so let's just hope so. We're trying to be optimistic now. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers and wish us luck as we go through the next day and the next week! Thank you in advance! We love ya'll.

We (almost) got it!

We accepted the counter from the sellers and we're in the process of closing on the house that we wanted!! We spoke to the loan officer tonight and she set things straight for us and the money situation isn't going to be as bad as we thought. It's still chunk of money at closing, but the monthly mortgage payments aren't going to be really bad--actually they're going to be pretty good...AND we don't have to pay anything until September--it just happened to work out that way, I guess. So, at least we'll have several paychecks and have some extra time to try and build up our reserves again. I've gotta call the home inspection guy tomorrow and set up the appointment for either Friday or Monday and then we're almost there--appraisal and title all have to be taken care of and then closing is on 7/24. I'll take pictures of our new home once we have ownership of it on or after the 24th. I can't wait!!

Still some hope...but we still have a bad taste in our mouth

The realtor called me today and she said that after our rejection of the counter offer from the owners, they're now trying to work on something. I think they may be trying to come up with an alternate counter for us. However, I don't know what it is and Tara said she would call us up later when she got word. It had better be a good one because we already kind of have a bad taste in our mouth from the first counter. I really hope it's a good one though. We shall see.

So close...

We made our offer yesterday but then later on that night, our realtor called us and said she had a counter from the sellers...they didn't want to budge on the price of the house because apparently, they're in financial ruins and they actually owe so much on their house still. They couldn't afford to accept below the asking price and actually, they wanted a higher offer....whatever. So, we rejected it last night and I'm still kinda hoping they'll realize what dorks they're being and realize that they almost had a sale if they had budged for $2,000 less. Ugh. It was the best house we had found so far--everything we wanted. What a disappointment. *sigh* oh well...We're going to start looking at other houses tomorrow so that we can move on quickly because we sorta have a time crunch. We only have until August 10th to live in this apartment for free. After that, we'll have to pay. I guess it wouldn't be the end of the world, but we'd like to be able to have our house before then. I think we're willing to take those sellers back if they all of the sudden become reasonable though. Anyway, we'll know probably later on today if they want to make a counter offer again. I'll write more if that happens.

Our temporary address (for another month or so)

I forgot to give ya'll our temporary address for our apartment just in case:

Campbells
1674 S. Loggers Pond Place
1674-32
Boise, ID 83706

We should have this address for the next month or so until our closing of our house (assuming they accept the closing date).

We made an offer!

We're going to make an offer on a house today! We're going to the real estate office at about 1pm (mountain time), 3pm eastern, and we're going to fill out the contract. The owners will have about 24 hours to give us an answer. I hope they accept. We're offering about $2,000 less than the asking price and Kyle seems to think they'll accept it with no problem because the house has been on the market for awhile and they're ready to move onto probably a bigger house for their 2 children. They're really motivated sellers because they said they're willing to negotiate AND they'll give $500 for buyers' incentives. I can't wait. We think it's the perfect house for us--it's got everything we've wanted so far--separate formal sitting room, family room, double vanity in a huge master bathroom, large kitchen space, etc... We would like to close on July 24th, so hopefully that will work for them. I can't wait to move all of our stuff into the new house! Yay!

More later...we'll let ya'll know if they accept!

Close call! What an idiot!

Kyle and I were walking back to our car from dinner downtown when all of a sudden, while we were in a crosswalk, this car came straight for us!! I screamed and other people honked behind her because she had totally cut them off to turn right---onto a ONE WAY street!!! She stopped right at us and even still wanted to keep rolling toward us. Kyle was motioning for her to stop but it was like she didn't want to. Once we got out of her way, she continued on the one way even though people were coming straight for her. She just kept going. Some cars honked and others just tried not to hit her and stopped in their tracks in utter shock. She turned into a side lot. When we were leaving, I looked to see the girl and she just didn't even look phased. She looked like a "I just got my license today and I'm taking my friends out on the town" 16 year old. She wasn't even a tad bit emotional from what she had done....I don't get it. Well, at least we didn't get hit and at least there weren't any accidents, although if she keeps driving that way, it won't be long.

Tomorrow we're probably going to make an offer on a house. We just have to because the last couple of houses that we've really liked have been taken away from us because we dilly-dallied. This house is one we've already gone to see at least 2 times before and each time, we've liked it. I figure that's a pretty good sign. It's in Meridian, but it is just our first house. Once we get some more money years down the road, we can probably afford to pay a little more to live closer and we may be able to afford getting a little bigger of a house for the money too. Anyway, wish us luck!

Dang it...who knew?

The realtor called me this morning and told me that the people who looked at the house after we left already put in an offer....and they want a response from the owners by 7pm tonight. They didn't waste any time, did they? The reason why they put in an offer so quickly? We spent a lot of time in the house....how ridiculous is that? Who knew there was a strategy to this game? We still have hope though. We're going to look at another house this afternoon and there's still a chance that the owners might not accept such a quick offer since their house has only been on the market for about 5 days. They may want to see who else wants it also. I hope this house that we're going to go see today is good or else I'm gonna be heartbroken if that other offer goes through. :(

I think I might go to the pool this afternoon. It's hot today. It's gonna reach 95 degrees and then I think tomorrow it's going to be 97. Yikes. I can't wait until Fall temperatures get here.

A new love...

Last night we went house hunting again with the real estate agent and we found the house could possibly be the one...at least I think so anyway, although I'm starting to think otherwise simply because there's not enough wall space in the living room. The house was beautiful!! The kitchen was huge with so much counter space and cabinet space. The floor in the kitchen was hardwood. The entryway was beautiful also--the door had a nice glass design. The living room was huge and spacious with a fireplace that you could turn on with a switch. The master bedroom had vaulted ceilings and was very open. The bathroom had a nice huge tub and a separate shower. The closet was a walk-in. The other two rooms were on the other side and they were both a very good size--equal space and lots bigger than the other houses we had been looking at. I loved the house and we almost made an instant decision right then and there, but we still wanna see one other house tonight. This other house might also be a definite possibility because I think it has an extra formal living room, which would be just what we need for all of our stuff! We're probably going to go look at that new house and then compare it to the one we liked so much.

Well, Kyle went off to work this morning at about 6:05am and I have the whole day. I better find something more interesting to do...I might go to the pool and maybe I'll meet some people there. I had a hard time last night because I really started missing my friends back in Georgia. I miss being able to call someone and have them come over or I could go over and see them. I'm beginning to feel a little homesick, but not too bad just yet. I just need to start meeting people. Maybe I'll meet a friend at the pool today, who knows? Anyway, I'll write more later and let you know how the house hunt goes tonight if we're able to go.

The road to Idaho City

Here are the promised pictures. These are some of the best ones--they were all pretty good, but these show more color and detail. On the way to Idaho City, there's a park called Lucky Peak Park where a lot of people go to boat on the lake. The day we were passing through (I think it was Saturday) was extremely busy! It was a hot day and we wished we could've been out there on the lake enjoying the water. I think people were taking advantage of the heat that day because Sunday proved to be VERY chilly--it was 74 degrees! Wonderful!

Anyway, nothing really happened today because Kyle was at work, so I don't have much to write about today. I'll give ya'll a break. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Sorry, technical difficulties

Due to technical difficulties this evening with the camera/computer, I'm not able to put up the promised Idaho City pictures. I will try to get them up asap because I know I promised them and I (try to) never break promises. :) On a lighter note...

I met our next door neighbor today only because she got locked out of her apartment. I'm sure we would've met anyways, this was just more convenient. Her name is Phritvi. She has a husband but I haven't met him yet--he was enroute to saving her. She also works at Micron and I believe she said that she works with D-Ram design (don't ask me what that is...I assume it's also about computer memory). You can have Kyle explain it to you sometime if you're so inclined. ;) She seemed like a very nice young woman. Maybe sometime later this week, we'll actually knock on their door and formally introduce ourselves. I'm sure Kyle and she would have a lot in common--although, she may not want to talk about work all the time. Who knows, we may have our first friend couple here in Boise.

Today was long and boring. I waited on the movers to unload our stuff into storage. I arrived at the storage building at 10am but they couldn't start unloading until about 2:30pm. ARGH. Luckily, there was an outlet mall just down the street, so I just went down there to do some browsing/purchasing of summer attire. I went easy on the wallet because there were a lot of good sales there. I ended up getting a variety of tshirts and tanktops for warm weather. I thought it was a good value anyways. To make a long story short, the day was made up of me leaving the building, coming back, leaving and coming back again only to wait a little more until 2:30 when they moved the truck into place and unloaded. Oh well, it's not like I had anything better to do.

We finally got home and we ate dinner and then went rollerblading some more with our NEW and IMPROVED rollerblades. The experience was more enjoyable. There was one thing though...I kept leaving Kyle in the dust when I would rollerblade. I just would go faster and it's not like I was trying to race him either. We were trying to figure out why I went so much faster than him with little effort. Could it have been that I might have a little more momentum than he does? Or is it that I have skill? Or is it just because my legs might be a little stronger than his? My legs are quite defined since my weightlifting this past year--maybe that gave me more strength and I was able to push off the ground with more force. Yeah, we'll go with that...forget having more momentum--that just makes me sound like I weigh 300lbs. Well, I guess it's that time again...time to go to bed! Sweet dreams!

Idaho City--a booming metropolis!

(These charming people were there to great us as we walked up to the visitor center of Idaho City)

(I think this machine thing has to do with gold mining. Idaho City was founded because of the Gold Rush)

(This the town strip. There were a lot of tourists there, including us!)

(The town courthouse)

(The main drag once more)

We went to a small town yesterday just on a whim while we were out driving. The very small town of Idaho city has a population of about 458. These pictures are a taste of what the downtown scene looked like and it was pretty exciting. The town was basically a ghost town. There wasn't that much activity going on, although, we did witness a newlywed couple leaving on their way to their honeymoon. They had their big ol' truck with decorations tied to it and some choice phrases written on the windows complete with the toilet paper and cans tied to the back. What fun! We walked around the town a little and we went in and out of nic-nac stores. We ended up buying a rootbeer float to enjoy on this very warm day. That was about it though. There wasn't very much to see. The best part was driving up there because the scenery was absolutely beautiful. I will post those pictures in the next entry.

Dairy Days in Meridian, ID

Kyle and I just got back from the Dairy Days parade in Meridian, ID. It was definitely a different thing to do here. The parade lasted probably about 45-50 minutes--we left right before it was over because it was HOTT!!! The sun doesn't set here until about 10pm so the sun was beating down on us at 7:30pm still. We also wanted to leave before the crowd decided to leave...I do believe the whole population of Meridian and Boise was out there on the street to watch this parade. The theme, of course, was dairy and so all the cars and floats had cow creations on them--tails on the back of the vehicles and black/white splotches. I would post pictures but they aren't very good mainly because I couldn't get a very close shot. We stood near the back. Oh well. The parade wasn't as exciting as we thought it would but I think it's because it's not a major holiday--it's probably just a yearly tradition that they must have. Tomorrow night, we'll go to the carnival hopefully and have some fun. I haven't been to a fair in FOREVER. My family and I used to go to the Fayette county fair every once in awhile when Chris and I were young. Those were so fun!! Now, the fair is probably all ghetto and whatnot (if it even happens anymore).

Gotta go now...we're gonna go rollerblading before it gets dark!

New form of exercising

We bought rollerblades yesterday. I wanted to buy them so that we could blade around the town possibly and around the greenbelt for as long as we live in that area (probably about 2 months until we buy our house). Hopefully we don't fall down a lot. I haven't rollerbladed since I fell down a steep hill on the golfcart path in PTC. Believe me, that was not a fun day. I'm getting my courage up to try again though.

Mourning a loss

I called my dad today just to update him on the house-hunting and then he told me the sad news...

Peaches, my cat of 13-14 years, had been ill for a few weeks now and my parents noticed she wasn't eating hardly. Even when I was last home, I picked her up and she felt a little skinny but I had no idea what was going to happen. I guess it was Tuesday when Dad said that he couldn't find her and he noticed that she was hiding in weird places--places where she usually didn't go. Then, yesterday he found her up on the grill (which was unusual --how the heck did she jump up there if she was looking really weak). Dad saw a puddle of wet and saw that it was blood. He then wiped Peaches' mouth and the blood had been coming out of her mouth. He took her to the vet this morning and the vet looked and said that it looked to be an infection in her mouth--possibly impacted teeth or cancer. Antibiotics were a solution to the infection, but if it were cancer, the vet said that he probably wouldn't do anything since she was already so old. So, the vet said he would do a blood test to find out what the problem was and Dad left the office after signing the papers for a possible euthanization. The vet called later today and said that her kidneys had failed and that there was no hope for her. My dad gave the ok for them to put her down. My dad said that he got tears in his eyes while he was leaving the vet earlier today.

Peaches was such a good-spirited cat. She was so nice and she let us do just about anything to her (i.e. drag her around, wrap her in a blanket and whatnot)...she was my baby. I'm going to miss her terribly. I will always remember her.

House hunting again

We went house-hunting again today but it wasn't nearly as long as the first trip we took. We only went to 3 houses--2 were ones that we had already seen and wanted to see again. We looked at the 2 houses for imperfections that might make our decision a little easier. There were some things that we saw today that we didn't see the last time. Unfortunately we saw more things wrong with the house that I really liked originally. Oh well...that was made up for when we went to another house that we hadn't seen yet.

We walked into the new house and it had a better layout of rooms than the previous one. The downstairs was really spacious than the other one. The outside of the house was a little plainer than the other one and Kyle said it looked like a rollerskate (don't ask me what that means, cuz I have no idea). There was a place for a formal living/sitting area in the entrance of the house and it was separated from the kitchen by a wall. The kitchen was really open and nice and it had an open eating area. Then, there was a HUGE family room. It was HUMONGOUS! I liked that--plenty of room for our STUFF. The backyard was beautiful--they had already landscaped it so all we would have to do is add more plants or flowers as we see fit. The stairs were to the left of the front door and they went straight up to a guest bath with guestrooms to the left and the master bed to the right. The master bed was big with its own bathroom and closet. So all in all, I think this house made up for the imperfections we found in the previous house that I loved.

We were going to look at a townhouse today but we decided against it because we drove out last night to where that house was located and it looked HORRIBLE. The area almost looked like Norcross but less "ethnic" and not as dense. There were rundown houses everywhere and we just were like...NO. Kyle still wants to check out some stuff closer to Micron but I'm afraid we won't find many houses over 1100-1200 sqft. We had a little disagreement about living in townhomes. I don't want to because I don't want to share any walls with anyone anymore--I'm tired of apartment style living! Anyway, I think my reasoning is working on him. I mean, I don't even think townhomes are easy to resell. Does anyone have any experience with that? I would think that more people would want houses than townhomes. Oh well...we're still hunting and we'll see what happens.

We're here finally...

We arrived around 11:15pm on Sunday evening after a pretty emotional send-off from my parents. Although, we weren't as bad as I thought we would do in the airport. Just a few tears. We got to the rental car counter and tried to pick up our car. The lady said there wasn't any reservation under Kyle's name. We tried to look up the email on Kyle's laptop that said that there was a car available, but of course, the laptop died and wouldn't start up correctly. We finally just rented the car from our own pocket in hopes that Micron would either take over the charges or reimburse us--which they did (take over the charges). We get our personal cars tomorrow at some point in the afternoon. Hertz rented us a pimp car...the dodge magnum. It's a horrible car to drive in--SOOO many blindspots and poor Kyle can't hardly park the thing. It's a monstrous beast.

We're living in a furnished apartment for now until we can cough up the money for a down payment on a house. The apartment is actually really nice (pictures to come later). It's located on the greenbelt in town and it's beautiful. We're only a hop, skip and a jump from the Boise river. I want to go floating on it sometime soon. OOH! Today we saw the most hilarious thing! This guy in a business suit had a CAT on a LEASH!! I thought I was going to die of laughter. The cat seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole leash idea, although the owner said that at the beginning it was a bit of a struggle. I want to train a cat to walk on a leash! The cat's name is Rendy--just in case you wanted to know. And it was a fat cat. lol.

Anyway, things are going good so far for us except for a little bit of arguing with each other at the start of the trip. We've reconciled. It's ok now. I think it was a result of all the moving stress. We're so exhausted--maybe it's because of the time difference of 2 hours? I dunno. Oh well, Kyle starts work on Monday so I've gotta figure out what I'm going to do with myself for all of that time. We'll see if I go crazy or not. I'm going to try and meet people somehow through the weightwatchers meetings that I'm planning on attending because all of this stress has gone to my waistline and I don't like it. Enough about weight. Bring on the adventures of summer vacation!

This is the weekend

So, the apartment was packed up on Wednesday and loaded on the truck on Thursday. We checked out of it this morning and we were so relieved to finally be out of our place of misery--no more vacuuming and stomping, annoying children!! Now we're just mentally preparing ourselves for the final move (us getting onto the plane and flying away). We're so tired right now that we can't hardly stand it. There is so much stress related to moving, as most of you may already know. We've been going nonstop and it's taking a toll on our physical and emotional health, I think. I know I've gained weight. Kyle says he's gained weight (yeah right). We just aren't eating the right things like we used to and it's showing. Once we get out there, hopefully everything will balance out and get back to almost normal.

Sunday is the day. It's going to be an interesting day for us all. Kyle's parents are coming down and going to church with us and then we're going to eat lunch together at my parents' house until time for the airport. I can just see us now...tears flowing and lots of hugging. It's going to be an emotional day and everyone at the airport will be watching us pour our emotions out.

*sigh* here we go...we can do it.