I'm baaaaaaaaaack.

Whoa! Can you believe my last post was January 17?! A lot has happened since then. I'll do my best to fill in the blanks.

When I last posted we were devastated to learn that the closing date for our house had been pushed back. Again. That's right - we were given four different closing dates and we watched each pass by with nothing being done.

It was down right upsetting. We had some complications because our house was a foreclosure, owned by the mega company Freddie Mac. So, of course a lot of the house sale/closing had to take place out of state in Virginia of all places.

Wait. Let me back up. I want to document all of our struggles with the purchase of this house so we can look back and laugh our heads off at everything that went "wrong."

Here's how it all went down:

Back in November I was sitting in my deer stand, having just taken a four-point buck. I was celebrating my victory and texting back and forth with my husband when he wrote "How do you feel about living in _______" (insert small town where he grew up).

I typed back "I don't care where we live as long as it's in a HOUSE."

He made it happen. Two days later we toured the house. Two days after that we wrote up the offer to purchase the house. Three days later we had an accepted offer. A week later we met with a local banker and signed zillions of papers to get the ball rolling on the loan.

See how smoothly things were going at the beginning? Then the shoe fell.

The day after we met with our local loan officer she called Mark to tell him that she couldn't do the loan because the laws regarding foreclosed, manufactured homes had recently changed. Our only hope, she said, was to get our loan directly through a mortgage broker.

Luckily our realtor knew a broker, who was part of her same real estate group. So, Mark set up a meeting with him. In the mean time we had to meat with our realtor two more times to sign additional paper work that the seller, Freddie Mac required.

The day of our meeting with the mortgage guy came and we went to his office only to be told that he wasn't in and his secretary didn't think he was expecting to meet with us since he was at a Christmas party with his girlfriend. Um, excuse me? We had that appointment set for weeks.

Hubby, who does not like to be pushed around, some how got the secretary to give us both his cell phone number and his girlfriend's number. We finally got a hold of him and he simply said "Oh, I must have forgotten."

Soooooooooo we left all the paper work there, with his assurance that he'd get things started and we'd set up another date to meet with him.

At the start of all this we were given a closing date of December 30, 2008. We soon learned that would not be happening and our closing date was pushed back to the first Friday in January.

We had to meet one more time with the realtor so sign more papers for the sale and then we simply had to wait to make sure the title cleared - something we understood our realtor was taking care of. The week we were supposed to close we learned that date was being pushed back to Tuesday of the next week because there were still some issues with the title.

We met with the mortgage guy and signed all the papers for our loan. And we waited. Through all this, Mark hounded these people - calling them 5 to 6 times a day wanting to know what they were doing to make this happen. I'm soooo proud of him for sticking up for us and staying on top of this. We definitley wouldn't have gotten this house if it weren't for him.

Finally, Mark was fed up with getting half answers and he tracked down the numbers for the actual people at Freddie Mac. And he started hounding them.

We learned that the title had been cleared for some time, but Freddie Mac was waiting for paperwork from our mortgage guy before they would finalize the sale! Here we had the mortgage guy telling us that he was waiting on Freddie Mac. Ridiculous.

So Mark yelled some more and we had another closing date set for January 19. In the mean time we had already purchase the new paint and carpeting for the house, had a date set for the carpet install, had a plumber and furnace guy set to come to the house and had movers all lined up for Saturday, January 24.

Then. We got the call. On January 19 we were informed we would not be closing. After Mark had already taken time off work, after I had already informed my new boss that I would need a few hours off to close. We. Were. Not. Closing. Again.

To say the least, I was crushed. It felt like this was never going to happen for us; like we were being punished for some reason.

Mark threatened these people. My husband, the man that has not a mean bone in his body, yelled/screamed/and threatened these people within an inch of their lives if they did not make this happen for us.

We closed on Friday, January 23 at 3:30 p.m. Mark had the keys to our house in hand that morning at 7:30 a.m. as per his agreement to spare the lives of our realtor and mortgage guy.

We closed without hassle and quickly high-tailed it to our new house to begin painting. We worked on the house till 1 a.m. and went back to our apartment to sleep for a few hours. We woke at 5:45 a.m. that Saturday to finish packing some things, then I met my sister-in-law (The Painting Queen) back at the house to work on painting. Our moving helper guys (aka my brother, a couple of Mark's brothers, my dad and my buddy Ryan) showed up at the apartment to load up and 2 trips later we were officially moved in!

It's been a whirl-wind of activity ever since. We painted every wall in the entire house, re-carpeted every room in the house, did some extreme cleaning, changed some light fixtures and all the locks/door knobs in the house, re-wired some stuff, unpacked a lot of stuff, organized still more stuff...and here we are - enjoying our new house.

I must admit at times I was ready to throw in the towel. I simply couldn't believe everything that was happening to us and felt like we had the worst luck ever. Now I see the reason for it all.

We are so happy and I have an even great appreciation for my husband and all that he does to insure my happiness. Amazing.

In the last week or so, I've been worried about financial things as I learned my hours were being cut at my new job. Today I realized (after looking back at all that happened with this house) that I need to let go and know that everything will work out.

Watch for some fun, new house pics in the very near future because I'm baaaaaaaack, blogging buddies!