Well, we survived the day and are now proud owners of a bigger house. Things didn't start off so smooth though ...
We decided to leave home a little early in hopes that Ben would take a little nap before we had to drop him at the babysitters. So we drove around for a while and ended up on the freeway outside of town. We were trying to time things just right to arrive at the babysitters, drop the kids, and get to the lawyer's office right on time for closing.
I exited the freeway on the highway leading to town, settled into my seat, and set the cruise control for the obligatory 7 MPH above the speed limit (that's the true speed limit right?). Just then, I noticed some man in a green jacket standing in the middle of the road waving at me. I thought of waving back, but then realized he was standing in the middle of my lane, so I decided to slow down. As we approached I saw that his green jacket had a big black word "SHERRIFF". "Strange", I thought, "why would the Sherriff be standing on the highway in the middle of nowhere?" That's when I noticed the collection of other green jackets standing in the bushes to the side of the road - one holding what could only have been a radar gun. I realized I had driven right into a speed trap. "Great - we're going to be late to closing" I thought.
Well, the good news is that he made quick work of issuing the citation. The bad news is that I learned the speed limit really wasn't 55 MPH there, but 45 MPH. He says I was 19 MPH over the speed limit. I'm sure there is no sign between the freeway exit and where we were stopped and it was only a few hundred more feet to a sign that said "55 MPH" but apparently that didn't matter. Realizing I didn't really have time to argue my case (and also realizing that I was speeding even if it were 55) we accepted the ticket and went on. [Just so you don't get the wrong impression - I'm not too bad of a driver ... this is only my second ticket ever]. By the way, our neighbor across the street happened to be stopped in the same speed trap just two cars ahead of us ... it's a small world.
Well, we made it to the closing barely on time only to find out that the buyers of our house had gotten a flat tire on their way in. So they ended up about 15 minutes late and our lawyer was 25 minutes late. We were beginning to recognize bad omens all about us.
Fortunately, from there things began to look up. The people that bought our house seem really nice. We were happy for our neighbors (and for our house) that good people will be moving here. Everything with that closing went very smoothly. Then we headed downtown for the closing on our new house. When we arrived there was a whole herd of people crowded into a small conference room. "Great," we thought, "what are we walking into here?" It turned out to be a kind of sad situation. The people we were buying the house from were in their mid to late 40's. Unfortunately, I don't think they've learned to manage there money well. They owed about $30,000 more on the house than we ended up paying for it. Some of the other people in the room included his elderly parents who were cosigners on some of the loans they had against the house. He, as we've mentioned before, is wheel-chair bound (result of a swimming accident). We wonder if some of their financial troubles are related to his handicap. They were friendly enough, we just felt really sorry for them.
In the end, though, we signed all the papers and they gave us the keys so we are officially more heavily in debt (in a good way). Tonight we are staying in the Orozco's new house (our old house) and tomorrow is the big move. If we get things hooked up tomorrow evening and if we still have strength in our sore muscles, we'll post an update on how the move went.
By the way, our phone number is staying the same, just the address is changing.