Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Ava rides the SCHOOL BUS to Pizza Hut for her very first field trip. She has a new St. Peters Preschool t-shirt for the occasion, and is as anxious as can be. Tonight they have a "Silly Safari" going on down at the school, and Daddy will attend with said excited child. So will post an update on what exactly the Silly Safari is, and details on the school bus as soon as they come from Ava. It may not make sense as she is pretty excited and tends to give me pieces of information, but we'll do our best to get you the real story.
Today when James and I were on our way out the door to go pick up Ava from school, we grabbed the bread heels and told Ava that we were going to have a surprise. We went down to Lakeside Park and fed the geese and ducks. We played at the playground for about 20 minutes or so after that, so we had a late lunch. On the way home I happened to drive down Florida and saw a realtor sign. I couldn't believe my eyes: it was the for sale by owner one we had gone back and forth on for all that while at the beginning. She had wanted 155k for it, and we really liked it but there wasn't the space for guests, even in the basement. And the kitchen really needed to be done. And we thought it was overpriced. We tried to get her to come down, and she refused to budge. She even said she would raise the price to accomodate paying our realtor. Yikes! We decided we couldn't do it, were afraid about buying a house at the top of the price range for the area, esp in this market (well, everywhere now esp after todays news) and really thought she wasn't that motivated to sell. Well after seeing the sign today of COURSE I sped home and looked it up on the internet to see what they wanted for it. Yes, it's brick. Yes, it's got a nice yard. Yes, it's like 4 or 5 houses down from the park. Yes, it has 3 full baths. Yes, the basement was waterproofed.
$169,900. What do we know?
I want to call our agent. She will have a heart attack when she sees this. We had looked in this area mostly the whole time, and would find houses listed at the 155 and higher. She did not understand how these people thought they were going to get these numbers! Heck, the house 2 doors down from us was listed at 174k (it went for 162k).
Regardless of the other house, I truly like this one. PJ has plans to get the basement framed in with his friend Paul the first week of May. Then he said after the basement is finished, his next project will be the half bath on the first floor. That would mean that we would be another step closer to having a master suite. So by the time we are done, we will have a 4 br 2 1/2 bath, with a finished basement and a remodeled kitchen. Wowsers. We'll see what the market holds for us!