Permission to Be Excited

Kevin finally gave me permission to be excited! (After a series of "Can-I-be-excited-yet?-No-not-yet" conversations.) I’ve been trying to contain it but it’s been spilling out for three weeks.

Approximately three weeks ago I told Kevin that, considering all the home-buying options, I would really like to build a new home in X neighborhood. He told me, “Well, Amy, I think those homes are about Y-amount more money than we should spend.”

The very next day a friend who is building in that neighborhood called and said, “You won’t believe it but the home builder dropped their prices by Y-amount for a weekend sale!”

So, we drove to the sales office and got really excited. Then we went home and crunched some more numbers and realized that our monthly payment would still be too much. It was a total death of a vision. I had to give up all my expectations and it was really hard.

Then, at the very end of the sale weekend we got a call from the home builder, stating that the lot we liked was still available and that they would buy down our interest rates so that our monthly payment would be where we want it. (Can we say that they didn’t meet their quota for the week, or what?)

So, at 10:30 p.m., at the very end of the sale weekend, we signed a contract for sale contingent on us (okay, Kevin) being fully comfortable with the financing.

It took about 12 days of intense negotiation. Kevin wanted the builder to pay for an additional rate-lock and he drew his line in the sand about the exact interest rate he was willing to pay.

Last Thursday the builder officially gave us everything we asked for. And Kevin finally gave me permission to be excited. In other words, I could figure out what color I want the cabinets and where the Christmas tree is going to go.

Not that I hadn’t already ordered 27 kitchen decorating books from the library!

This has been a long, hard journey. But I’m already starting to feel all of that fall away and dramatically fade into the distance.