Father Christmas

We just had our big chapter battle on the 22n and it went so so well.  We had over 100 people at the feast and at least 80 people on the field fighting I am so happy that I got to be out there with everyone.  Ellie had a great time and my parents where so happy to be able to hang with Ellie and watch their daughters have fun.  This event has gotten me even more excited for Ragnarok only have until June 12th not that far away.

Here are some pictures. 

And one more of me squished on the point in a hold the point battle.

Oh I am the one in the Brown and Green with the Sheild that has the three leafs on it, just in cause you don't know what I look like.

The Pain's Of Home Buying

So we are going to be buying a house, and all I want to do is groan.  This is the first house that any of us have every owned and just getting started is daunting.

First off Heather and Rob are going to be the ones doing the actual buying I will just be pitching in with down payment and mortgage payments when we get the house of our dreams (or as close to our dreams as we can with a normal persons paycheck).  My credit is not great, not horrible mind you but now great so they really don't need me on the loan, so the actual house purchase will be them with me just helping out.

Second we have been looking to do this since January of last year but after some discouraging remarks from a lender we got scared off.  Heather has had a credit union since she was young and she went to them to get and idea about a pre-approval amount for a loan so we would know where to start looking.  The bank told her they had another company they went thru for the loans and she dutifully called them to get the info.  The guy she got on the line was a DICK!  He was snotty from the moment she got on the phone and when she told him that we only had about $3000 for a down payment at that moment he just shut her down.  He never asked how much she and Rob made and never gave her a chance to say we planed on putting more in to the down payment in the coming year, he just said there was no way we could get a house with that.  Heather came of the phone very discouraged and uninterested in looking further.  It has taken us all this time to finally get going again, I have been pushing all along but until now they where not interested.  Truth to be told Heather is still not interested in being the driving force I have had to push Rob into doing the work.

So finally this year I was a house for sale near Ellie's daycare and I was thinking how great it would be to live that close.  Plus all of our works are about 10 mins away as well as Heathers parents it would really be a great place to live.  I went online and contacted the realtor to see if we could look at the house and he got back to me the next day. He explained that he would love for us to look at the house but he wanted to know if we had gotten pre-qualified for what we could buy first.  I called him and told him no but that we where very interested in doing so.  He was happy that I was not upset about getting pre-qualified first the homeowner just did not like looky loes who had no intentions of possible buying and could not really afford the house anyways.  So the Realtor gave me the name and number of a lender and Rob finally called him!

So now we have been pre-qualified and we are going to look at the house this weekend.  I am ecstatic, I have been waiting for this for so long.  The next part of our life is finally happening, no more apartments a house all our own.   Living in an apartment with all the rooms we needed and space to store stuff was getting expensive, this should be so much better.  Of course we are going to have to deal with the costs of owing a home but at least it will be our home.

More to come on this subject as it develops! Happiness!!

A Different World

Since Ellie has been born I have been looking at the world differently.  I see things as she would see them for the first time, clean and fresh.  Things I had not taken the time to see or feel have really gotten my attention in the past months.  Like the stickiness of yogurt, how fun it is to paint with.  How the sun looks on the carpet and how warm and interesting it feels on your hand.  The feeling of water as you run your fingers thru it, how fascinating it is to watch the water drops as they come out of the shower head.  I missed these thing while rushing around in my crazy adult world and having Ellie has really given me the chance to look at them again.

Right after I had Ellie I found myself crying over the stupidest things, sappy commercials, songs on the radio, even books that I read to her.  It has slowly started to pass but I find I still cry more often then I ever did before.  At first I thought it was because of lingering hormones but now I think not.  I'm seeing the world and the things that are happening in it in a different way now.  Before when I would see something about a family losing a mother or a child on TV I would be sad but now I cry.  I know why because now I am seeing Ellie in everything, how she would feel if these things happened to her or how I would feel.  Sometimes it is so overwhelming, thinking of losing her makes me tear up even now.  My world is forever altered it can never be the same, I can never see it with the callousness that I did as a single person.  When you are on your own all you really have to worry about is you, if you die yes your family will miss and love you but your impact is still minimal.  But when you have a child your death would take a piece of their world from them.  I hope that my daughter never has to leave without me or Rob in her life.

I also see the joyful things as well, the sharing of food, playing in the grass, talking in the car about her day, watching beloved movies for the first time, showing her books that I hope she will love, seeing what her favorite color is, watching her smile at me for the first time, seeing her hug her father and hearing her tell me that she loves me for the first time.  I never want to live in a world without Ellie.