Saturday, June 25, 2011

Our First Week in North Carolina

Bug and I have been in NC for a week now. J got here early Tuesday afternoon after a mad-dash from Oklahoma that started the day before. Making our family whole again and everything in right in the world upon his arrival. It has been a BUUUUUUUUSSSYY week. And a fairly emotional one, too. It has been harder than I thought {{for me}}to adjust to not having our house. Add in to the fact that it is tough for anyone to move, that I am 19 weeks pregnant, and it creates a good amount of stress and hormonal breakdowns.

Bug was definitely discombobulated before J got here, but she seems to be fine as long as he doesn't leave the room. Poor guy. Can't even go to the bathroom in peace. She has always been a Daddy's girl, but being away from him for the week we spent in AZ and then getting on the plane to come here, made it worse by a thousand percent.

The move has also been hard for the dogs. They spent the few weeks before we left OK with a friend. Right before we left, Daisy-Mae got out of the fence some how {{she is our Houdini}}. J checked the pound and asked them to call if they picked her up, but told them he was on his way out. The temps in OK before we left were ten straight days on 105+. It was freakin HOT outside {{probably still is}} and I was concerned for her what the heat would do. Mostly I prayed that if she didn't make it back to our friend's house, it would be because she found a nice loving home with good air conditioning. Luckily, she found her way back, a little worse for wear, by the Sunday afternoon before J left and she got to come to NC to be with the rest of the family. Since the dogs cannot be where we are staying, they stayed with another friend for a few days and now they are having fun 'on vacation' at the dog boarding place until another friend who has agreed to keep them until we close on a house, gets into town. They are being boarded by a flaming older gentleman and I'm positive from circus-amount of animals he had Bo & Daisy are being well cared for.

That brings us to the house hunt. We are using USAA's home-buying service {{ATTENION ALL MILITARY/USAA FAMILIES: If you are moving and buying or selling or selling and buying, please call USAA! This service gives you a USAA approved agent to provide 100% customer satisfaction ((so you don't have *cough, cough* what happened to us)) AND, depending on the closing amount of the home you're buying, you can get up to $3500 back after you close. As a check. To you. In your hand. For doing what you were going to do anyways.}} We started looking at homes in the Cameron area which is on the North West side of post. After seeing the new homes we could get in the $190s the used homes in the $180s just couldnt measure up. Cameron has a plethora of new home sites just waiting for the right buyer to come along and pluck them up. And by plethora, I mean a fat-ton. We spent EIGHT HOURS looking at houses all within about a 10 mile radius.It was good though; we got a feel for the area and found a house that was number one on our list until we went to see more. Yesterday, we met up with our agent for a much less intense few hours of house searching in the Lillington area. Lillington is located on the north east side of post and is a nice middle point between Fayetteville and Raleigh. If you think about the roads coming out of Fayetteville as a "V," with Fayetteville being the bottom point in the roads, Cameron would be the top left side and Lillington the top right. Both are almost the same distance to post, but Lillington is a quicker shot to the Raleigh area. Our wonderful agent found us a nice neighborhood in Lillington with some great buyer incentives and even a nice furniture bonus. Things that might not make the houses absolutely perfect, but when you compare the houses with incentives to the houses without, the incentives are definitely a nice added bonus. I can't wait to shop!!

Baby 2.0 is still doing well. She has been a little pushed aside with everything going on this week and I feel bad we havent had time to really focus on her impending arrival. The truth is that we can't right now. We can't buy stuff until we have our own space and unless we focus on that full time for a bit it wont happen before she gets here. I am looking forward to getting prepared for her though and excited it will be in a brand new house. Bug is doing well with her 'baby sister'. When you ask Bug where she is, she points at my belly {{or my boob which could almost be posible if you could see these puppies}}. I'll be 20 wks in a few days and I'm right at 10Ibs gained. I still fit into my shorts from last summer as long as I use a hair tie and my bump is still small enough to fit into regular shirts. It's definitely not a fat roll anymore, thank goodness.

The last few days have been super busy and we have no plans other then to take Bug to the pool. I'm looking forward to a day of nothing. It should be a nice change. Like getting to North Carolina.

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