10 Months Old

In just a couple of days, Eliana will be 10 months old! And boy, is this kid full of spunk! She's always got a little grin on her face and sometimes a mischevious gleam in her eye. We have learned that when it gets just a bit too quiet, it's time to check on what she's gotten into. Despite the fact that she isn't crawling yet, she can still manage to maneuver herself into something. Also, she has started to "walk" along the furniture. She can't quite pull herself to a standing position yet, but if we let her stand while holding onto something, she will start to shuffle herself along to get at whatever it is she wants. We're waiting for the day that she takes off walking on her own because we're convinced that she will never crawl. :)

This last month has been a busy month for our family. There was yet another inspection on base which required late nights and long weekends for Nick. He was also gone for a week in Colorado Springs for some training (which he actually rather enjoyed - he needed to get away from the base for awhile!). This meant that Ellie has had LOTS of mommy time lately. We have a good time together, but her eyes really shine when daddy gets ahold of her at night. Nick has admitted that he finds her a lot more enjoyable now that she has developed a little personality and their playtime isn't so one-sided. It's fun to just sit back and watch the two of them together now.

We found out some unfortunate news today: Although the dental clinic did great during the inspection, the base as a whole did not pass and so this means more late nights and long weekends for Nick over the next few months. Thankfully he is able to get away for the next 2 weeks for a trip to Korea to visit some friends! He is very excited and we are excited for him as it will be a very enjoyable trip - he deserves it! Stay tuned for photos from his trip...

Sometimes you just gotta have a little faith.

This was our motto when Nick and I decided to go ahead with the purchase of the home we found in Willmar. :) We may or may not regret this decision in the future, but right now we're just going to have faith that the problems with the association are going to be resolved before it comes time for us to sell the house again. We are both in love with the house and decided that this was not something we were going to let stand in our way of the place where we want to call home. So, we're going ahead with the purchase and are now scheduled to close March 15th! Home-ownership, here we come!

Disappointment

Well, we had some disappointing news this last week. Our offer on the house in Minnesota is starting to fall through. We had put a contingency into our purchase agreement stating that the current owners needed to get an ammendment to the bylaws of the association stating that more than 3 people can live in the house we are wanting to buy. They held a vote last week and unfortunately, the ammendment didn't pass - in fact, it missed by 1 vote. So we are very frustrated right now (as are the sellers) and are a bit unsure of where to go from here.

We have the option of going through with the offer and just hoping they will get the vote passed eventually (we were told we could get a waiver in the meantime to have more kids, but they don't want to change the ammendment at this time). The downfall of this, is that if they never end up passing the vote, then we deal with the same issue all over again when it comes time for us to sell. Or we could pull out of our offer completely and start looking for a new house. The third option is that we could keep our offer standing the way it reads with the contingency in hopes that they will pass the vote at their annual association meeting in May. The problem with this option is that if they don't end up passing the vote in May, we lose out on the $8000 tax credit (which let's face it - that's a huge chunk of change).

We really love the house and have said from the beginning that if it weren't for the association, we would have no hesitation towards this house. After this kind of a problem, we wonder whether we should even buy into an association like this. Very frustrating...
If anyone has any advice, we're all ears!