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.