We've moved, but we won't have the internet at the new home until Saturday. Be on the lookout for updates then.

It's the final countdown! doodle-do-do, doodle-do-do-do, doodle-do-do, doodle-do-do-do.

We are able to start moving-in in less than six hours. I need to get Greg up here in a second because we can pick up our U-haul moving van a 7. There will be trips to Starbucks and Jack-in-the-Box on the way. We will try to post towards the end of the weekend once we live more there than here. My plan is to try to take lots of pictures. We have to make up for the first 8 years of our relationship, where there are very few pictures of us.
Oh, on a side note-the lion has a name. We decided to name him Ted Kennedy, after the late, great, liberal Lion himself.

It's a done deal. We have a key to prove it.

So after several months of looking at houses in person and on the computer, 2 inspections, applying for a mortgage and much waiting, we own a house. It's really sort of crazy, and I don't believe it, especially since we don't get to move in until next Friday. The old owners (since we now own it, and they are our tenents) have 42 years worth of stuff they have to clear out of the house before we can move in. It's a lot of stuff. (Seriously.) And this being said given that we have ungodly piles of boxes in our apartment, and we've only been here 4 years.
So what do the Sabrownins do after they sign over their lives to a house? Go to Disneyworld you ask. No. Eat an affordable lunch out? No. We bought a car. We've been cruising around St. Louis in my 1993 Nissan Sentra for the last several months because the Mazda 626 died an unfortunate death in May (darn you Layfeyette exit ramp), right before we started looking for a house. We've actually been doing really well at driving one car, but since I've gone back to school it's made things a wee bit more complicated. (School loan is loan #3 in the last month, might I add. I asked Greg today if he wanted to start a business so we could collect all four-house, car, school and small business. He said no; that's probably wise.) So we went directly from our realtor's office to the Mazda dealership. Unfortunately, much like the house, we have to wait before we get a our car. Lou Fusz (or Fuzz as my mom calls him) did not have a Celestial Blue Mazda 3-5 door with cloth interior on the lot. It will be in Monday or Tuesday.
However, we did enjoy a fantastic lunch at LuLu Chinese food on Olive St. on the way home, and it was by far one of the least expensive things we've purchased all day. And we got it when we ordered it.
So the lesson of the day is patience is rewarded in 3-7 days.
-Elena

crunch time

It's getting down to crunch time. One week till close and two weeks till we can move (the sellers asked to stay in the house a week after close to make their move smoother, so they are going to rent it from us from that week). The only snag has been the late notification that a window needed to be fixed for our appraisal to go through. It has been fixed but we have to make sure they get out there before Friday to confirm so we can get the loan. Not a big deal, but not really something we wanted to deal with.
Elena and I have been pouring over our collection of design mags trying to figure out what we want to do with the new house (yeah I subscribe to Dwell and Metropolitan Home, you wanna fight about it?). I am really looking forward to that part, even if pulling up carpet and pulling down wallpaper and drop ceilings is not going to be a whole lot of fun.
The apartment is probably about 1/3 boxed up now, so we have been concentrating on the drudgery of packing when we are not messing around writing blogs. I wish we had more pictures of this apartment when it was still put together, it really has been a great place to live.


Greg