I Have a Confession...

So I have a confession...we've been keeping you (a little) in the dark. As you all know, we've been house hunting for the last 4 months. Well after several houses, several offers, and several let downs, we FINALLY found the PERFECT house for us, put an offer in, and....let me back up a bit.

So two weeks ago, Ronnie, my mom (who was still in town from Josh and Chrissy's wedding), our trusty real estate agent (a good friend of ours, Mike) and I all went to look at a house that had come onto the market that morning. We were the first ones through. We walked in and instantly fell in love with it. It was exactly what we wanted: good-sized, big enough to grow a family into, a great yard, pretty, comfy, inviting, and in our favorite neighborhood. We spent about an hour in it and KNEW the house was for us. We left and made an offer on it that day. After waiting 24 LONG hours, we heard back with a counter offer. We went back and forth a few times, and finally, last Friday, they accepted our offer. Now, I wanted to shout it from the roof tops (and obviously wanted to write my Mandi Monday about it last week) BUT Ronnie told me I had to wait at least until it passed inspection. So last Monday we went down and stroked the check to open escrow and then headed over to the house for the inspection. We were able to spend the whole time with the inspector (which was good because he taught us A LOT) and when it was all said and done he said it was a "peach".

So it's looking like this is ACTUALLY going to be our first place. We are so excited. We just have to get officially approved for our mortgage (should be ok because we were already pre-approved) and we plan to close on April 30th (YUP, ONLY 18 MORE DAYS). I can't wait. Ronnie will conveniently be in the Hole getting a tune up when we close, so it will be my mom (who will be back in town at that point) and I painting and getting the first of our belongings moved in. As you can imagine, I've spent hours online looking at decorating tips, ideas, and inspiration. Once we are all settled in, we will take a few photos to share...but we'll wait for now, just to keep you coming back for more :)

Anywhooo, my apologies for keeping you all in the dark on this one, but Ronnie told me I should "manage my expectations" until it passed inspection. He didn't want me letting the cat out of the bag, getting MORE excited, only to not end up with the house. I will do my best not to lie to you like that in the future ;-)

My Top Ten Most Frequented Websites

So I spend a lot of time on-line. Generally I will be working, but during my night treatment, I'm usually able to stop by some of my favorite sites to see what's going on in the real world! Here are my top ten most frequented site during the past six months:

1saleaday.com- I go to this site every night before I go to bed mostly just to check out the sweet deals on there. I have actually even broke down and bought a few things as well! I've gotten some Wii controllers for my little brother for free (just had to pay shipping) plus I got a Margarita machine for the Melin's that was 150 and I picked it up for 25. Check it out, you may just walk away for something.

Yahoo.com- For whatever reason, I've always like the way Yahoo presented there news, sports, finance, etc..I generally try to stop by at least once a day to check on the national/world news and the stock market.

Espn.com- I love me some sports. I generally read through as many box scores as I can during my last treatment (except for hockey) just so I can stay on top of team records and who's doing what.

WildAboutAZCats.com- I may love sports, but I love Wildcat sports even more! My beloved University of Arizona will always have my heart, especially the basketball team. Basketball isn't even my favorite sport (football is), but I've always felt emotionally invested in our Basket Cats. This site talks all things Arizona sports and is a great resource for what is happening with our teams.

Twitter.com- I'm not on my Twitter account as much as I used to be, but I still find it a very valuable resource for keeping up with what is going on in certain communities. I stay up with many in the CF and running communities through Twitter and I also tweet many of my blogs and CF news.

Facebook.com- I've met many of you through my Facebook page and I'm very thankful for this wonderful site. It's a great way to keep up with some in the CF community as well as flip through photos until your heart is content. There are also a bunch of good groups out there that serve the CF community that have pages on Facebook. One of my favorites is CysticLife's fan page :)

Movoto.com- I've been looking for a house lately and this site is simply one of the best for how much information it has on it. You can find out just about anything and everything about a house that peaks your interest and they generally have good pictures of the property as well.

TinyURL.com- I post a lot of links to interesting articles I find onto Facebook and Twitter. Since I usually don't want to take up a ton of space with a long URL, I'll shorten it with this free service. One thing I like about them is there is no account and no signing in necessary.

RunSickboyRun.com- Yeah, guilty. I spend a lot of time on this site. I probably should be spending more, but I have a little project going on right now that is taking quite a bit of my time, focus and energy. I really enjoy writing for this blog though and I really hope that it can serve as a source of education, inspiration and hope to many of you!

CysticLife.org- Believe it or not, this site has been taking up most of my time the last six months. We launched yesterday, so it feels real good to "release the site to the wolves" (that would be you guys)! If you haven't signed up for a profile yet, please do, over 300 people in the CF community did yesterday!!!

What are your favorite sites? Any that I just need to add to my daily list?

A (1.7 million dollar) House Hunting Sunday

My Sunday started out like every other Sunday which is church and Dunkin Donuts. After church and DD we decided to do a little house hunting. Now, it's not really that I'm looking for a house right now, but if one fell into my lap that was a steal, I'd take it. The prices in Phoenix and in the surrounding valley are incredibly lower and I have a feeling will become even lower yet. The biggest reason we went on a house hunt today is because Mandi and I thoroughly love looking at homes and going into open houses. I find it very interesting when houses are staged and often times you can get great ideas on how to decorate your own home or which walls to paint what color and with what accent. Sorry, my HGTV spirit started to come out. We drove around a lot of Chandler weaving in and out of streets trying to get a feel for what type of homes are in the area. After many zigs and zags in Chandler we decided to switch it up a bit and head 40 miles north.

It's amazing how big Phoenix is. We drove 40 miles to the north of Chandler and were in city the whole time. We ended up looking at some custom homes outside of Phoenix that people ended up not finishing and were letting go at rock bottom prices. The only problem with the area that we were looking is even the nearest grocery store is quite a ways away. One thing that is very cool about the area though are the amazing mountain views, the wide open space, and the proximity to nearby lakes. We started to make our way back to Mandi's parents house by swinging through a "town" called Fountain Hills. We actually stopped about halfway through town and toured an open house. It had great views, but was a little outdated for my taste.

Before we went to Mandi's house we did stop at one more open house on the way. This one was in north Scottsdale in a gated community called Sierra Something or Other. The house was 6277 square feet with 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, a theater, a gorgeous backyard, and about every upgrade you could imagine. It could all be yours for the new low low price of 1.7 million dollars. Here's the crazy part about that, it was recently reduced from 2.7 million dollars. To give you an idea of how impressive this house was though, it was rented out to Kid Rock for $10,ooo a week. VH1 rented it for 50,000 for two months to film the reality show Pick-up Artists 2. It was crazy cause I actually recognized certain parts of that house from the show. I was pretty awestruck my whole time in that house and I had one thing running through my head the whole time: If I bought that house, I would HAVE TO start an orphanage.

The day concluded with a trip to the gym. It was arm day and my arms felt pretty beat up after about two lifts. It was hard to push through at the gym today, but I'm very glad we did. I spent about 30 minutes trying to talk myself out of going until Mandi talked (twisted my arm) into biting the bullet and just going. It proved to be a good workout overall. I'm so lucky to have Mandi! Current Weight: 188 lbs.