I feel little need to go back and relive the details of the first trimester. We'll just go ahead and say from about week 6 or 7 to about 14, all I could do was puke and sleep. Literally. Puke, sleep, puke, sleep. I lost about 15 pounds.
We entered the second trimester with much promise and hope. Not only is it nice to get out of the first and onto more stable, reliable ground (baby's chance of survival goes up ten fold once you hit the second trimester) but along with the second usually comes the feeling good. The morning sickness has faded, energy and appetite will return. It took us a little longer into the second than we would have liked, but by about week 14, I was feeling pretty good. I had my moments, there was definitely still plenty of food aversions, but I could move my head without needing to hope I'd already rinsed out my puke bowl. Running to the bathroom made little sense as I never would make it.
Sometime at the end of the first or beginning of the second trimester, Rob was able to get a route back in Spokane. We were very excited for this, as we wanted to raise our family in Spokane, but it did mean a lot of work. Work like packing and cleaning and moving. Oh. And buying a house.
We spent nearly every weekend of November in Spokane with our incredible realtor, April, driving around poking in and out of houses trying to find one that would suit us and our growing family. I did a lot of sitting in the back with a plastic bag up to my face trying to hold in my lunch. But we got through it. April was a star at letting me get out and walk around, taking plenty of bathroom breaks in random places and would cut our drives short if my stomach was revolting.
In our first or second run we found a house we really liked on Gustavus Street. It was a 50s rancher with hardwood floors, three bedrooms, two baths and a full, unfinished basement. 2400 square feet total, a fenced backyard, two car garage and in a nice, well kept neighborhood. Our brains were flooded with houses, so we went home to think over the week and had plans to come back the following weekend.
We were consulting with April on Friday, going over houses we wanted to look at again, both of us still having the Gustavus house on our minds. We knew it was the house for us when re-looking at pictures online, we noticed it has been reduced $10,000 that morning! The next day we walked through it again, this time being sure to open closets and flush toilets, and tried our best to imagine all of our stuff in it. That evening we put in an offer.
The entire process was exciting but nerve wracking. The owners had some, um, shall we say interesting? negotiation strategies, that finally ended after 3 or 4 amendments to the contract with us still feeling like we got an awesome deal on the house, a near new washer and dryer plus a 46" flat screen mounted on the wall above the fireplace and they paid all of our closing costs. Plus, our mortgage is only 50 dollars higher than what we were paying for rent. Not bad, eh?
The house belonged to us as of 4:45PM on December 31st, 2009. We made sure the closing date was in 2009 so we wouldn't have to amend our taxes to get in on the $8,000 first home buyers credit. The timeline couldn't have been more perfect. We certainly did some pushing of the bank to get paperwork done. As it was we closed in less than a month, which is super fast for an FHA loan. But we've known for awhile that we've got the Big Man Upstairs on our side. We feel so blessed.
