Home is Where... ?? (Day 77)

Mmm K, so for those of you who've been following more than a minute may know Hubby McHubberson and I bought a house. We were super stoked about this, even as a military couple. Many people didn't understand why on earth we'd do that so our reasoning was as follows:

• The mortgage on the house we bought would be less than renting a house of that size and it would be our house, to do whatever we want with, build equity, etc. etc.
• In the Marine Corps, there aren't as many places you can be sent as in, say, the Army. Theoretically speaking, we could request to stay at Lejeune for a long, long time.
• Although our rental is working for us right now, we are outgrowing our current space. A family of 3 in a 2bedroom, one bath house is a little snug, to say the least.
  
• I don't want to live in on-base housing. They take your BAH away and we're saving by having BAH, as our rent PLUS bills, is still less than BAH. We're making money of Uncle Sam, yo.
• I want to PAINT rooms.
• Our house is brand spankin' new, hasn't even finished being built yet. And it is SO cute.
• Renting is pretty much just throwing money away, month after month...
  

Now, recent events and information have caused us to rethink our decision. Luckily, we have the rethink luxury, as we don't close on the house until it is built - May. We are not currently locked into an interest rate (can't do that until March-ish, 60 days out). So, what may cause us to rethink our cute brand new house, you may ask? Well...

• As I said, our neighborhood is brand new. SO in the event that we did get stationed somewhere else upon reenlistment, resale will be super hard if the neighborhood is not finished yet (Why buy a "used" house for more when you can have a brand new one for less?) and renting is just a total pain, I hear such horror stories from people who have to rent their homes out.
• Mr. P is looking at the option of becoming an instructor at MOS school (where we met) which will be in Virginia by the time that comes around. Instructor = no deployment. I can not argue with that.
• I really don't want to get stuck with a house if the two points above happen and if we get stuck without renters then we will be broke!
• When you own a house, anything that goes wrong is on you (after the one year builder's warranty that comes with our brand new house, of course). So the dishwasher breaks when hubs is deployed, it's on me. It snows, I gotta shovel. I gotta mow. Lots to maintain and upkeep, especially when I'm on my own.

I am so torn. On one hand, I want my house. And I am beginning to fall in love with North Carolina (I mean the beaches... HELLO!) but on the other I really don't want to get stuck with something as permanent as a 30 year mortgage. Oh the decisions of grown-ups (Gag). I've only got a short time to decide too, and I'm mostly making this decision alone as hubby is out playin' in the sand. YIKES.

Speaking of the sandbox, I had written a whole post on the second worst day of the deployment which I had beginning at midnight last night continuing in to today. Basically, if you've been watching the news, you're seeing hubby's unit. I had spent lots of time scouring photos for people I know, friends' spouses... well now, I'll be looking for my own as well. Hubby is now... more in the action than he was before, so to speak. I had a severe nervous breakdown at around 1 o'clock this morning but now I am just pray, pray, praying. I've never prayed this hard in my life. I'm not going to post the whole thing I wrote before because it was just too much of a downer and I need to focus primarily on staying positive, even though it's getting harder.

Ok, back to the task at hand. House. Right. So. We put a $500 Earnest Money Deposit down, which of course I wouldn't want to just throw away but it, honestly wouldn't be the largest amount of money I've "wasted" in my life if we choose to back out. And if the interest rates happen to go above a certain rate then we can get out of the contract and get our EMD back anyway.
So the task to you, fellow blog-ites, is to give me some opinions. Those of you who own, those of you who rent, those of you who are military. All are welcome. I may not agree with what you have to say but I will consider it and use all knowledge in making a decision. Right now we're leaning towards getting out of it, but I still have my heart set on my home. I told hubbers he was crushing my dreams of buying a house he says "We did buy a house, now we're just returning it" hahaha clever monkey.

A Bushy Haircut (Lawn Maitenance)

One of the perks of where we live is lawn care is included. Therefore, my pregnant self will not be stuck mowing our grass if (when) hubs deploys. A downfall of this perk, however, is that the lawn maintenance is not always the... errr greatest.

Our landlords are somewhere in their late 60s, early 70s. For being that, excuse the term, old, they really are still kickin'. They've got a huge garden in front of their house that I often see them outside tending, and Mrs. Landlord is always out riding her fancy little tractor cutting ours and the neighbors' grass. What could be the problem with this? You ask. Well, they never cut our hedges and if you ask my husband they do a not-so-great job at cutting the grass.

I try to refrain from complaining about the not-so-greatness of all of this because, well, it's free (and free is definitely something we take advantage of these days...). However, when the bushes start over growing into the walkway it's time to take action. As we have no tools for lawn maintenance (or really any tools in general) I had hubby head next door to our Landlords to see if they wouldn't mind giving our weeds a lil wacking. Unfortunately they were not home. Yesterday or today.

So, today we took the matter into our own hands! It was definitely an adventure, to say the least. We set out with scissors and Hubby's work knife and had at it. And while our bush now may be a little lopsided, at least he's not creepin into the walkway or in my porch view any more.

We forgot to get a "before" picture, but here is a picture of our neighbors, whose bush wasn't quite as wild as ours had gotten. It's the purplish colored one on the far left side.

And our newly groomed bush at our house

Not bad for a scissors and pocket knife deal, eh?

Makes me feel so happy that it is now nice and neat. It was making me feel a bit clausterphobic before as it had begun to creep up onto the porch and the walkway, slowly taking over our house!

Also, don't let the picture make you think that's the extent of our house, looking at it makes it seem so small, but there's a-whole-nother window and some more wall over to the left haha.

In other news:
We have been enjoying getting our home cleaned up for our guests this weekend. Having guests come always makes me a little psychotic when it comes to my house, but Mr. P goes along with it well and helps clean up. It's just fun for me to have someone to present our house to, we live so far away that barely anyone comes over!

We still do not have a deployment date, the Battalion Commander told us to be prepared for a tasking this month, but it is not definite and we are still waiting for word. It is now at a presidential level (this made me laugh at the meeting... oops) and whether or not my husband goes off to war is basically in the hands of Mr. Obama now... (Very weird to think the president's decision directly affects my family... wow)

Baby P is doing great as far as I know. My next appointment is next Wednesday. But she continues to kick the poop out of me everyday so I can only assume that things are going swimmingly. I just have to work on getting my water intake (A GALLON DAY?!)

And that is about all I have to share on this lovely Thursday. O crap it's THURSDAY I missed Wishful Wednesday AGAIN!! I'll have to go back and do one later tonight, so be on the lookout for that! I've got such pregnant brain these days (at least pregnant brain isn't as bad as the dumb... a long story for a totally separate post).

Organization (It's Such a Rarity in My Life)

I spent the whole day organizing and now I feel wonderful! Let's get one thing straight, first. I'm a messy person. I meet so many women who are organization freaks, and while I do have some OCD tendencies (re-checking the door a certain way before I leave being one of them), organization is not my thing. Never has been. In fact, I got in trouble all through elementary school for having such a messy desk. Oops.

Anyway, as my mom (who, along with my dad, have decided to buy our crib for us) has set an ultimatum (No crib til that room is empty!) we have begun emptying "that room." That room is our "spare" bedroom, soon to be nursery (I hate having only 2 bedrooms, but that is a whole nother post). Spare meaning anything in the house we don't use often or that is still in a box is in. Ha. So it was pretty cluttered, especially since I am the world's biggest pack rat. Ok, maybe not the world's biggest, but I do hate throwing things away. So basically, we've had quite the task ahead of us. We got the majority of the crap out, and we decided it's ok if I leave my craft stuff in there. The task set for me then, was making my craft stuff a nice little corner and not a heaping pile of crafty junk.

So I set forth on my journey today to organize my craft corner and SUCCEEDED - Hooray! Now I've got little labeled drawers - painting stuff, scrapbooking stuff, fabric stuff, and photo stuff. I'm so proud!

Then I proceeded to clean the rest of the day (and night, seeing as how it's 10.25pm and husband still isn't home from work... yet another post...) And then I relaxed by finishing my animal series for baby girl's room, introducing to you The Last Edition of the Animal Series, Giraffe:

Don't tell the other animals, but he's my fave.

I Want to Shout from the Rooftops (OpSec Prevents That)

I just want to shout that I will be seeing my husband soonish and I am more than excited about that. Because of OpSec (Operational Security) I don't want to say too much, as even though they aren't coming home from a deployment it can still put our unit at some level of danger (there are Terrorist Cells in the US...), so I will just say that soon can't come soon enough!

I feel kinda like a ding-dong and have no idea how I'm going to survive deployment when (not even) 2 weeks has been tough enough for me. I will admit, though, that I was beginning to get into a routine and I would imagine it may get easier once a routine is established and you're up on your own two feet. I can only imagine though, as our deployment has not arrived... yet.

As for my day, I will spend it cleaning our house so that when the husband arrives it won't look like such a sty! I had a problem, when I got home from MD I just kinda... put the stuff I brought home with me in the middle of the living room floor. And since, it has kind of, well... spread. Oops! But that's what Sundays are for (besides going to church, if you can get your lazy - and now, guilty - butt out of bed)! I don't even want to look in my kitchen. I was actually good with the dishes (usually my biggest downfall, piles of dishes) and kept them in the dishwasher and actually ran it like I wasn't the only person needing dishes (big accomplishment), but my scrapbooking has taken over the dining table! Half of me wants to clean that up first... but what if I want to do some more scrappin' later today?! It is a mess though, maybe I can half put it away. Check it out...
Yeah, when I scrapbook, I like to spread out. And pile. And well... make a mess.

Speaking of cleaning and organizing my house, I have an appointment to go look at a house (FOR SALE) today! We're debating buying a house. A big part of me wants to. I want to paint my walls, have a dog, hang things permanently, change what I want to change when I want to change it. But a small portion (the reasonable part) is thinking WHAT ARE YOU THINKING WOMAN?! I do not want to get stuck here and who knows how long we will even be here... So it's something we're considering but not set on. In the meantime I will enjoy looking and dreaming ad pretending we're people who don't move every couple years :)

I suppose I should quit my procrastinating and begin the cleaning festivities.