It has been lots of fun shopping this year. I love it when you find exactly what you are looking for, and feel like you are really getting your loved ones something they will like and enjoy. And it is even better if it is something they won't expect. And even better than that is if it is something they like, something unexpected, and something on SALE!
Of course there is always the downside to that...I received an email yesterday informing me that my gift for Eric was out of stock and it would not arrive by Christmas. So that left me in a lurch, scrambling desperately to figure something else out for Eric in time for Christmas. His Christmas gift will become his birthday gift, I guess. That's one benefit of a January birthday.
On top of all the Christmas hustle, we noticed that a home we've been watching for some time went down in price. We decided to go and look at it. We have no idea why we were so compelled to go look at it because we both knew it was most likely impossible that we'd ever be able to afford such a house. But we fell in love...it is the perfect house, perfect neighborhood...it needs some cosmetic updates, but after the overhaul we did of our current home, a few cosmetic things is trivial.
Unfortunately the home is in short sale (what happens sometimes prior to it foreclosing) so because of that we cannot place a contingency on the sale of our home, and also cannot "close" the deal until the actual sales papers are signed. Typically when you make an offer on a home, the seller accepts your offer and then it is legally binding and to back out there is a penalty. Not so in this case. It remains open until the actual closing. So if the seller receives a better offer, we could potentially lose the house. So we really have no idea if we'll get the house, or sell ours, and at this point we don't even have an accepted offer from the seller, although we're in negotiations. So tons of prayer would be appreciated! We really want this house to work out, but if it doesn't then obviously God has something different in mind for us. All we can do now is wait, and pray, and wait, and pray...you get the picture.
This weekend we are going to try and "complete" our home. We want to refinish the floors and finish putting some trim around some windows. Things that we've been wanting to do for some time now. Not what we'd like to be doing at Christmas, but we're hoping that there will be some interest in our home starting in January, so we'd like it to be finished by that time.
Well, the clutter is calling for me to clean it up, so I had better get to that. I'll leave you with a picture of the girls at Christmas. In our opinion, there isn't much more precious than that.
