Stress, Emotions, and Hormones...Oh My!

It has been a super stressful, unbelievably emotional, and definitely hormonal last few weeks (thanks, pregnancy!).  We've been house hunting, and it's a nightmare!  First of all, we live in California where everything is amazingly expensive.  Everything in our price range is either super run down, really tiny, or has an HOA fee that would hike up our monthly payment.  

We decided it was time to start looking into buying because our rent just keeps going up.  We are now at $1570/month for a 1,000 sq ft, 2 bedroom apartment.  RIDICULOUS!!!!!   We don't have enough space, especially with the baby coming in November.  I mean, we are CRAMPED in this apartment!!!!!  I have nowhere for a crib, swing, and everything else a baby requires!  We've looked into 3 bedroom apartments, but they start at over $2,000.  Yeah, we could definitely buy a house for what we'd be paying every month for an apartment!  

So, we got pre-appproved and spent hours and hours online looking for houses.  Jeff's sister is a real estate agent and spent hours looking at her MLS site finding houses.  (Did you know that a lot of those sites like Trulia, Redfin, and Zillow aren't always accurate?  A lot of times, they list houses, but when Jeff's sister looked on her real estate site, they weren't even there!  Lame!)  We finally found a bunch that we wanted to look into, so we made the 1 1/2 hour trip north to look into our potential future home.  We found a few we liked and were even willing to put offers on.  They weren't perfect, but they were in our price range, and we would make them work for now.  

Well, little did we know (because we are totally dumb when it comes to anything real estate related), only certain places accept FHA loans.  (We have to do an FHA loan, because, HELLO, who has $50,000+ to put down for a conventional loan?  Certainly not us!)  We found all of this out AFTER looking at houses and finding a few we liked...only to find out they didn't accept FHA loans.  Talk about disappointment!  Our loan guy didn't tell us this, all of the people we know in real estate didn't tell us this!  Hello, people, this could have saved us A LOT of time!!!!  Someone could easily have said, "Hey, do you guys know that only certain properties accept FHA loans?  You may want to get a list so you don't waste time looking at non-FHA approved homes."  It would have been as simple as that!!!!!!

*sigh*

So, we were back to square one.  It was the most frustrating, most stressful, and most emotional thing I've had to deal with for a while now!  I just want a bigger place to live! We don't need a mansion.  We're not asking for much...just a nice, modest home in descent condition with somewhat of a yard.  And, most importantly, I want to get away from our marijuana smoking neighbors and the smoke that enters our apartment on a regular basis.  Is that too much to ask?!?!   I don't think so.  

So, now, we are still looking.  We found a potential house that we haven't even looked at yet, but we are putting an offer down anyways.  Then, we will go look at it.  It says it's move in ready but being sold "as is", so I'm not sure what that means.  We're getting pretty desperate because our lease is up at the end of the month.  After that, we go monthly ($1745/month).  Yikes!  Fingers and toes crossed that we find something!!!

Ok, enough ranting!!!  Here are some pictures to enjoy.

One of Jackson's favorite shirts because it has a pocket for his rocks...

Collecting treasures... 

Jackson LOVES wearing his stickers.  He had these all over his arms, and when I asked him for a picture, he posed like this.  Silly kid!

He loves to put stickers on his mouth and then try to talk.  It's so funny!

 Despite all of the house stress/drama/annoyances, we managed to have some fun during Jeff's 8 days off.  We went to Santee lakes to ride paddle boats and have a picnic by the lake.  Jackson is eating raisins, hence his weird smile...

We went to the Zoo...

And, most excitingly, we had our ultrasound and found out what we are having.  Jackson stayed with some friends from church.  She sent me a picture of him playing while we were gone to let us know that he was having a ton of fun.  

We are having a BOY!!!!!  We still have to figure out a name.  Jeff and I can't find anything.  Everything is either already in the family or makes us think of someone we know with that name and don't care for.  Suggestions are welcome.  Nothing too crazy, though.  :)