The last few weeks have been filled with all sorts of crapola and it’s made us grumpy at times but we are glad to have gotten so much accomplished. Here is a recap complete with links in case you missed something or a bored and want to read our drama.

We got our taxes filed and our returns are on the way, we got our February rent check mystery solved with the bank, we got our march rent paid and sent off in this certified letter that still hasn’t been picked up!

We looked at so many home options, decided on and bought Tater’s nursery bedding, we rescued a bird from the wall of this house, delt with and remedied the broken garbage disposal, we finished Boners homemade cage but he managed to mate with Maybelle anyway and we are expecting baby bunnies in a few weeks now!

In the next two weeks I’ve got 2 prenatal appointments (one at The Farm with Pamela and one with the local OBGYN), I have a chiropractor appointment and my 27th birthday is March 20th.

Then we have the end of March and all of April to pack and move, again. In May I’ll be nesting and unpacking and then I am off to The Farm to have Tater in June! Time is just flying these days, unbelievable…

Oh wait, I skipped over the big news… We found our home!

Saturday we entered a verbal agreement and hashed out all the terms, now we are going back and fourth drafting up a contract. On April 1st we are making a down payment, moving in to the house and will have 12 months to take over ownership of it.

We are super happy and also pretty excited about it all. The place is just what we need right now! It doesn’t need major work to be ready for Tater’s arrival, it is in our price range and it is a pretty good investment for us. Here are some more photos of it from the weekend:

I think we will be very happy there and it is something we can call our own. After 5 years we’ve finally managed to find the right house at the right price and terms. I’ve always wanted to be in our own home before we brought home a baby too. It’s funny how it all works out in the strangest of ways!

Like I’ve said before the last six months have been quite the roller coaster ride for us! We went from making no life progress over several years to making tons of progress all at once within like 6 months. When it rains, it pours!

Oh and I am entering to win a Bumgenius over at http://hotbellymama.blogspot.com/, you can too. Here is how:

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I had N get me up early today so I could get busy taking care of some Custom Gifts by Talina duties… Things like bookkeeping, taxes, order processing and all that fun stuff. While I was in business owner mode N was dealing with our February rent check saga on the phone.

You probably can recall all the ridiculous landlord drama I’ve already shared here but I am pretty sure this latest development takes the cake. It requires a little back story though… Feel free to skip the back story if you already know it.

When we first signed the lease with our landlords we were provided with their mailing address for the rent payment. The lease also stipulates that we can make payments directly to the landlords checking accounts and it lists the banks they use. We were also provided with several deposit slips from their bank for depositing the rent checks.

Up until November the address and banking information they provided us with was correct. In November we sent out that certified letter detailing our issues with the safety of the home and we also included our December rent payment. Well, the certified letter was never picked up by them and was eventually returned to us.

Conveniently enough the landlord showed up at our door while our certified letter was in limbo land. She had new bank deposit slips and a letter explaining that they moved residences and also banks… Now our payments should go to their new address or deposited to their new bank account, more deposit slips were provided.

We also discussed our issues with the leaking basement/ the mold and were assured they would come out to take a look at it all after the holidays and make necessary repairs (it’s February now and no landlord has been here to inspect or repair anything).

We paid our December and also January’s rent with one check that was handed over to the landlord the day she stopped by to give us a dehumidifier for the basement after our discussion. We refused to make out another rent check until the first one was actually returned to us… That is the back story in a nutshell.

Well we just attempted to pay our February rent via electronic bill payment and have been waiting since the beginning of the month for the funds to leave our account. At first we thought it was an issue with our own banking facility as they did not process the payment electronically, they sent a paper check instead…

We’ve been worrying that our check is lost in the mail or stolen and have been upset that our bank didn’t process the payment electronically as we had requested.

I was just sure we were going to have to pay about a month in late rent penalties to the landlords and have been waiting to find out exactly what happen to our rent payment.

Today after more digging N found out that our landlords account was closed before our rent payment even went out. We’ve not been notified of a third new account or a new address to send payments to, the info they (the landlords) have most recently supplied was the info we were trying to use.

When N called their bank to try and figure out where our rent check is today the bank representative said she wasn’t allowed to say more about their account but that it had been closed and that our rent payment would have been returned to our bank…

So now we are waiting for our bank to provide some sort of documentation of the check being returned to them as a result of the payees account being closed.

The documentation is important proof of our attempt to pay rent on time and in a timely manner (so we aren’t evicted or charged penalty fees for late payment). We’ve never had a landlord who was so difficult to pay rent to!

The even better part is the landlords are delinquent on the property tax owed to the city on this place, they have been since July 2008 and also have penalty fees and money owed from 2007 on this property (it is public information) and also on all the other 40 properties they owe…

The thing with property taxes here is that if you get severely behind on them the city/ sheriff can auction your property to recoup the owed money… So we are particularly interested in finding out more about the tax situation as it could result in us having nowhere to live. We are also wondering if they are even making the mortgage payments on this property, if it is foreclosed we’ll also be out on our ass so to speak…

Good times huh? Isn’t it amazing how all this randomness and drama just finds us (or do we find it? Never mind don’t answer that…)

In other news, I saw a prenatal chiropractor on Saturday because my pelvic pain was getting so bad I couldn’t sit or stand for longer than 30 minutes. Turns out my tailbone/ right pelvic bone was jacked up. It was stuck between a standing and sitting position which is why only laying on my side made me comfortable.

I’ve got followup appointments scheduled with the chiropractor to check my pelvic alignment and to keep me in check, since the insurance covers 80% of it. We figured it couldn’t hurt to relieve my pain and to keep my back and pelvis in proper position especially since I’ll be having Tater in about 4 months!

For those of you (who have commented) who are also pregnant and having tailbone, pelvic or back pain I would strongly recommend finding a prenatal chiropractor and having them take a look at you.

It made a huge difference for me! I thought I was having circulation issues, possibly getting hemorrhoids and having back pain as a result of the weight of my growing uterus. Turns out all my complaints were resolved once the Doc got my right pelvic bone back in correct position. Amazing!

Oh, and look what just arrived in the mail. It is even cuter than we thought!

We love it even more than we thought we would. The green and blue are so vivid and cheerful and the fabric is super soft with adorable designs and fun textures. Happy day! We even found the perfect way to include just a splash of pink in the room, see:

We also heard back from the mortgage lady today and got the news we expected. Once the disputed items on the credit report are resolved and once the student loan status is changed from derogatory to “in good standing” (in 2 months) we’ll be approved for a mortgage. It is just a matter of going up 18 points credit score wise…

In the meantime N is going to get more answers from his employer about the future of his on air career. Buying a home might not even be something we want to do in this particular city, especially if N’s career growth is limited. Once he knows more about the employers plans for him we’ll be able to decide about our home buying saga.

Basically we’ll either stay here through the remainder of our lease (late august 2009, if the house isn’t auctioned out from under us before that) then we’ll buy something or we’ll move from here ASAP and get in a nicer rental home that we can STAY in for the remaining 2 years left in N’s contract.

*sigh* explaining all this has sure made me tired, are you tired after reading it? I guess that means it is time to move from the office desk to the bed and resume my pregnancy slackerific ways for the rest of the day. Ooo, here are some belly pics (one in undies and bra and one in clothes) since so many are asking. These were taken 3 days ago. Now go place your baby weight bet okay? You could win cash!

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Wanted to take some time to give you the weeks highlights… For starters, we found Boner in Maybelle’s section of the rabbit cage earlier this week. Boner + Maybelle = little rabbit babies= craptastic!

Somehow he managed to dislodge the wire cage separator that is his floor and he squeezed down there to “hug” and cuddle with her. Now we are watching for rabbit pregnancy signs and Boner has been migrated to his own homemade rabbit hutch.

She is surely pregnant since female bunnies “release an egg after being exposed to the male” unlike a human woman’s ovulation cycle. Additionally she may even be carrying multiple litters since they were together for so long and we didn’t know about it.

Looks like she’ll have those babies in about 30-34 days if she is indeed pregnant and we can expect anywhere from 1-16 babies depending on her actual breed and size (which we aren’t sure about) and we’ll have to keep each of those babies separate from each other (since sexing young bunnies is difficult) shortly after birth to avoid more unwanted pregnancies. They can start to breed as early as 12 week old! Like I said, super craptastic huh?

Our Eureka Altima Vacuum (that we got a little over a year ago) melted itself this week rendering it completely useless now. We’ve contacted Eureka about the apparent product defect and are awaiting a response. We may have to buy a new vacuum soon…

The packing and home hunting madness has begun! Still have not heard from the mortgage people about our application but we are looking at both rentals and possible purchases right now to cover all bases.

Next month is my birthday and we are celebrating by taking another trip to Tennessee to see our midwife, Pamela, at The Farm. I am so obviously pregnant now and can’t really believe I could deliver Tater in as little as 18 weeks. I’ve got some major tailbone pain and also some major pelvic pressure from my growing bump, other than the growing pains I feel good.

Oh, if you are interested in reading more about home birth stuff let me know, I just read two really great articles in Mothering magazine that I scanned and can email you if you want!

Tater is still as active as usual, I even got a cool video of my belly jiggling around as a result of her kicks and punches for the sake of memories, fun!

Our bedding set for Tater just shipped so we are anxiously waiting for it to arrive via UPS and can’t wait to see it! We got our wishlists updated for everyone who has been hounding us (see the links on the side bar of this page under the baby widget), now we just really need to get busy with moving before she comes!

Oh and nope, we still have no name ideas.

We are looking at more rental and contract purchase homes this weekend in addition to doing our grocery shopping and Wii Playing, we also plan to pack, clean and organize like crazy!

What does your weekend have in store?

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N insisted that we go for a nice drive before the party started, you know one last calm time together before the chaos of it all. So we head up the San Francisco peaks, N said it was his favorite drive and it is very pretty. So we are driving along and enjoying the scenery. When we get to the lodge we see that the ski lift is running. We have never skied or been on the ski lift so we get tickets and embark on the ride up to the top of the mountain for  one last look at flagstaff before we move away.

He brought the camera and tripod so we could get some photos of the amazing view from the top of the mountain. We posed for a few photos with the view behind the two of us then he says “lets take on last photo”. He sets the camera timer, comes around to pose for the photo and gets down on one knee…

He proposed right there on the mountain and said

“I’ve viewed this mountain, the highest peak in Arizona, as a symbol of our relationship together.  Over the last six years together, we’ve climbed the highest and achieved the most here in our home state together.  There’s many more peaks out there for us to explore and I want to continue doing it together.  Talina, will you marry me?”

Now it is time for us to really to move on to the next phase in life with an engagement and a new beginning. The ring is beautiful and the moment was so thoughtful and special. I got to proudly wear my ring at our going away party and share the news with our pals. It was a very special day for us.

Now we are getting a handle on the fact that we are moving in 7 days. We need to get busy now but we just wanted to share the news with everyone. We are engaged!

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I usually dye my hair with the intent of covering the gray I have tons of hair so I usually need 2 boxes of dye. Unfortunately, dye is expensive and these days we are scrounging every penny we have for our $10,000 move. Lately this has prevented me from enjoying the luxury that is coloring my hair…

When I do color my hair it is a treat and I usually feel all good about myself for a few days after, plus my hair just feels better and less coarse after dying it.

While browsing the local discount store  a few weeks back I saw a bunch of hair dye that was marked down. N and I thought buying a lighter color might be fun for the summer so I grabbed some “excellence cream” dye for a great price.

This weekend I thought I wold spent some one on one time with my hair thanks to the discount dye. I was super excited at the prospects and when I entered the bathroom to begin the project I was greeted by an usually squishy rug.

First reaction was “ewe, did the cat pee on it?” so I grabbed it to check the overall wetness and odor but this wetness was not cat pee. Did 30 cats pee on it all within the same time frame cause this rug was completely drenched. I am talking soaked sponge like wetness!

I call to N, did you get the rug really wet when you showered? He claims he did not and we ponder the drenched rug. He was on the way back to playing X box when I commented that the mystery soaking was probably NOT a good thing to ignore.

So he goes in to the laundry room to find that the washer’s drain hose was disconnected from the wall and emptying water on to the floor. Apparently the water oozed UNDER the wall and right in to the bathroom where our trusty round bathmat soaked it all up.

Freaking awesome, water leaked under our wall. I don’t think that is normal but N assures me it is for a manufactured house. So we sopped up the water and went about our business but not before capturing it for the bloggosphere.

Like I said before, right about moving time (every time) we have some sort of domestic drama that is rental house related.

I don’t know if we are especially needy tenants or if we just have terrible luck with rental homes. Either way we always seem to have some craziness right before our lease I about to expire as I have mentioned in earlier posts.

You may recall the recent the kitchen flood we had then the stove fire and way back in the day we even had a psycho neighbor who was set on making us crazy. I could actually find drama for every rental we have lived in if I felt like going back through my 500+ blog entries. Every place we have ever rented has left us with a drama filled story. It seems the flooding is just the drama for this rental I guess.

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