Day 4

The home search begins. We headed out at about 9:30 with Justin, our real estate agent. We saw about 15 houses, some were awful, some were okay, and some were downright ridiculous. You'll see why later. We stumbled across 3 that we were happy with. We made offers on all 3. 2 are in the same neighborhood, and one is a little ways away. Meet the contenders...

Contender 1:



This house was okay, new carpet, new paint. The bank put the carpet in and painted, so it wasn't good carpet and paint. It was a steal of a price, so we put in our full-price offer.



Contender 2:
Cute, right? This one even has a pool that was in really good shape. The neighborhood was clean, the houses were well kept and very good looking. There was something rather interesting about this one. It is a foreclosure, so it brought some very unique missing pieces.

Doors? Gone.

Blinds? Gone.

Light fixtures? Gone.

Faucets? Gone.

Kitchen sink? Gone.

Appliances? Gone.

Toilets? Gone.

The place was stripped. We still put an offer on it because the house is way cute and has a pool.

Contender 3:

Meet Manzanita. This one had the same floor plan as Contender 1. They are in the same neighborhood. This one had a good floor plan, and really only needed a fresh coat of paint and some new floors.

At the end of the day, our realtor helped us put in 3 offers, and we made a visit to our mortgage guy. We really have had a great experience in all of this. Our realtor was in the same ward as Matt's aunt and uncle, and the mortgage guy, Tim, is the brother-in-law of the realtor. Tim also recommended a State Farm agent--his old Bishop. At the end of the day, all we had to do was wait and see which of the offers we'd get a response on.

Day 5

Drive to California and fax our acceptance of the counter offer to our agent. The Manzanita house is ours!

Day 6

We've purchased a house and now we're going to Disneyland! We all got up early and spent the day in Disneyland.

Our visit was complete with:

Monsters, Inc.

Cars
Pineapple Ice Cream
Chicken Skewers

and the new ride--Toy Story Midway Mania. My score is green, Matt's is yellow. Yes, with only 24% accuracy, I was able to beat Matt. I also won the Beaver Prize. Don't ask me what that is, I just won it. : )

Day 7

Baseball game. We drove to downtown San Diego and watched the Padres play the Diamondbacks. Unfortunately, I didn't know which team to root for.

Usually, during games, the team has people throw items into the crowd, items like baseballs, shirts, etc. Well, there was one special lady who decided that she was going to throw stuff into the crowd too. She was sitting about 10 rows in front of us, and stands up and starts throwing things. First she threw some chips, then a capri sun. Next came a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She was not throwing prizes into the crowd, she was throwing her lunch. Somehow she ended up with a whole bag of sandwiches, and we were able to snag a few.

Day 8

Barbeque on the beach. Matt and his brothers played frisbee for a while, then we served up some Nathan's Hotdogs. Unlike Kobiayshi or Joey Chestnut, we were only able to eat a few, and we didn't dunk ours in lemonade.

Day 9

One more visit to Disneyland. Beat Matt again on Toy Story Mania. 140,000 to 150,000.

Day 10

Drive 9 hours back to Provo.

Wisdom Teeth

For the past few months Stacy has been complaining how her teeth have been hurting and that she thinks that her wisdom teeth are coming through. Well, a couple of weeks ago the teeth broke the through the gums and Stacy has been able to chew through leafy green foods like a cow eats grass. Her extra set of chompers have come in handy, but they say that you are supposed to get them out at some point in your youth. I don’t really know who ‘they’ are, but ‘they’ are making a lot of money. I don’t think that Charles Darwin would be happy to find out that we are taking everyone’s wisdom teeth out. Nature has selected us to have wisdom teeth and we should probably keep them. It is our sense of human nature that has sustained us as a people for the past 5 thousand years (7 thousand years – even better).

Anyway, they took them out and they must have not been that bad, because the oral surgeon was in there for about 10 minutes yanking them out (so lets see, 1400 dollars for maybe a total of 20 minutes of work, that equals 4200 bucks an hour, I would like to see a lawyer bill that much an hour). She was loopy for the first day and pretty out of it. After sleeping until 10 o’clock the next morning she woke up to a swollen left cheek, she came to call herself, Quasimodo, aka the hunch back of Notre Dame (because of the lopsidedness of his face). I will let you be the judge. But she is doing much better, the pain is subsiding, and the swelling is going down. She can’t wait to start eating normal foods again; her diet has consisted of instant potatoes, pudding, jello, and ice cream. Before the surgery she was pretty excited to be on this diet for a whole week, but at this point I don’t think that she could eat another spoonful of Idahoan instant spuds.