Sheep Guarding Llama

So we own our new house but had to sleep in the apartment tonight.  Hopeful that we can be into the house today and sleeping there tonight.  Got up early so that I could be on the phone with the city’s water authority when they open at seven thirty.

I called in and learned that the city of Carrollton keeps the water off for three days unless you pay an $55 fee to get it in two days.  I asked about public health and safety and they said that health and safety concerns do not apply to new residents moving into the city.  I asked about the water being turned off a day and a half ahead of time and they claimed that the sellers of the house and requested it off when it was turned off and, via direct implication, that the seller’s agent was lying to us about the entire thing.  Fun.

We tried to get a hold of the sellers and find out if they really had kept the water on and ask them to call the city on our behalf so that we could get it turned on for us as a wrongful shutoff but the seller’s agent flatly refused to even discuss the situation.  So, as far as we are concerned, as the city clearly pointed to her for providing false information and her complete refusal to support it in anyway that she obviously was lying and is now attempting to cover it up.  Of course she is from Ebby Halliday, the real estate agency is was “too good” to even return our phone calls and emails when we were first looking for a home in Texas.  Our business didn’t matter to them then and it sure doesn’t matter to them now as we were already unwilling to ever recommend them but this really takes the cake.

So we are screwed. We paid the city’s carefully planned bounty and hope to have water on Thursday.  Of course, no commitment on the time of day so it basically means that we get water at the end of the day.  We are not happy with the City of Carrollton right now and think that the city doesn’t have a very good plan for making a good impression of people moving into the city.  Talk about a good way to tell people that outsiders aren’t really welcome in Carrollton, Texas.  The water authority told us that it was a city ordinance to deny us water, in fact.  That means that the city council actually voted to block newcomers from being able to move in safely and easily just to do so as it costs the city money to not provide services.  It is very expensive to send crews out to turn off water and then turn it back on – especially when in between they can’t charge for water usage!  We sure got the message very clearly.

So no moving in today.  Another day wasted.  We took two car loads of stuff up to the new house today of things that we don’t need in day to day living.  We really can’t take much of anything because we are not at all confident that our water is actually going to get turned on tomorrow.  If we take too much stuff there we could be in a really desperate position.  So we have to be conservative and hold stuff back until we know for sure that it is safe to move.

I am really, really sick today.  Going out into the air to do some of the moving yesterday and today has really taken a toll on my throat.  I’m sure that I have bronchitis.  Dominica and Liesl probably have it too.  We are a hurting family.

Brian and Tara arrived this afternoon.  They made good time coming in from Tennessee.  It is tight quarters in the apartment tonight with so many people here.

We did some packing but basically there just isn’t anything to be done.  We are just waiting out the water and stuff.  We really need to get out of the apartment tomorrow.  Jen is coming up from Houston and there just isn’t going to be any free space at all.  We are moving towards “move panic” at this point.

This evening we went up to Carrollton so that they could see the new house.  There wasn’t much else to do anyway and we were pretty excited to get to see our new home some more – plus it gave us a chance to take another few loads over to get the move started.  We were very happy to see that the dresser which was supposed to be picked up this morning was actually picked up today and is now out of our way.

Since everyone was over helping out, Watson, Souder and I ran over to Angelo & Vito’s on Frankford Road to get pizza.  We were excited to discover that it is actually really good pizza.  One of the big concerns of any new house is that you are going to be in an area that doesn’t actually have good food available.  This is a major find on our first day.

We couldn’t hang out for very long in the house as there was no water.  Washing up and using the bathroom being major issues.  At least we had a fridge in the garage into which we could put our leftover soda.

Today is the day.  Boy have we been looking forward to this.  Time to get out of the apartment.

I am still pretty sick today so working from home again.  Just what  I need when we are about to close on the house.

Brian and Tara left Philadelphia this morning around three in the morning.  We were quite surprised when we learned that they were already in the mountains of Virginia by mid-morning.  We had originally not been expecting them down until the beginning of next week.  At the pace that they are going they are going to be here tomorrow.  We are not going to be ready at all.

The morning was very quiet.  I just worked from home and tried to not get any more sick.

At just after noon we received the total amount of money that we were going to have to pay today and were told, without any warning, that we needed a cashier’s check.  What!?!  It is a little late to be telling us that now.  All along we were told that we would just need a check.  Over and over again this was said.  I’m very aware that it was said because I was surprised that that would be enough but was thrilled because getting anything else is a major problem.

So now, obviously, we have a major problem.  Not only do I not have a local bank from which to draw funds for the closing but even if I was already standing in the bank when they told me I probably would not have enough time to get a cashier’s check cut and get to the closing in time.  I was pretty much getting ready to head out to the closing when the email arrived.  Not good.

So we panicked for a bit.  We figured out that a wire transfer would work but they waited so long to tell me about the cashier’s check that the wire transfers were closed for the day already!  I pleaded with my bank in New York and they said that they would see what they could do to manually get the wire done before the actual transmission went through but we were almost a full hour after the close of wire for the day so we were likely screwed there.

I didn’t even know if the money would go once I was on the road and driving to the closing so I was just taking my chances.  Dominica emailed me while I was en route to let me know that the money had gone through.  Pheww.  Thankfully we use ESL Federal Credit Union back home who were able to maneuver things for me.  Had we been with a normal bank, we would have been screwed.

I got to the closing to discover that because of Texas Homesteading laws, of which we know nothing, Dominica has to be present at the closing even though she is not on any of the paperwork.  That’s not very convenient.  So now we have to figure out how to get her down here for the closing paperwork since she is at home with a sleeping Liesl and I have the BMW with the car seat.

We decided to proceed with the closing and have Dominica jump in later.  So we did the closing which went smoothly and we were done before three thirty.  Maybe even by three.

What is exciting is that the mortgage cost of the new house is only about 64% the cost of our current rent on the apartment that we don’t even like all that much!  The house is at least 50% larger than the apartment too plus has a garage.  Overall, a major win.  Even after taxes and insurance the house is a little cheaper than the apartment.

I ran over to 7-Eleven and grabbed a snack and then drove back down to the apartment to pick up the girls.  We got them loaded then drove back up to the title company and Dominica did her signing and we were done.  Now, it turns out, that the sellers are not able to get to the closing until after work so even though we did all of our portion we have to wait a while for everything to wrap up.  They are scheduled to do their portion of the closing at four thirty.

We went back to the apartment and I did some work for the office and we loaded up the BMW to get ready for when we would be able to go up to the house.  At around five thirty we received the email that the money had cleared and everything had been signed and the house was now ours!  We would be finding out about the keys in a little while.

It took a little bit before we heard that we would be getting the keys around seven.  The former owners were still in the house doing last minute cleaning and wanted a little time to wrap up before we headed on over there.  The bad news, though, was that while they were cleaning the water had been shut off.  Apparently in Carrollton they just turn off the water when a house is sold.  News to us.  We had no idea.  Electric we had already switched over.  Internet is set to be turned on on Thursday.  But water?  We figured that the city would either contact us or just switch over to the new owners since the city knew that we were swapping over.  Nope, not the case.

Our real estate agent told us that the other real estate agent told her that the sellers had told her that they had set the water to be on for one more day and were very surprised and angry to find it turned off this afternoon.  We were not too happy either.  We have been waiting to do laundry and to move into the house and had already planned to have been moved in several hours ago and now a major snag this late in the process is not fun.

It took a while to even track down who we were supposed to contact about the water and when we did it turned out that the office had been closed for eight minutes.  Again, had the closing been on time this wouldn’t have been an issue.  Now we lost a day in the house.

So at seven we drove up to the new house with the one car load of stuff including some folding chairs.  We had some issues finding the key that they had hid outside and it probably took us thirty minutes poking around in the yard in the complete dark and several phone calls to track the thing down.

Once we got into the house there was really pretty much nothing for us to do so we just set up our folding chairs in the living room and sat there for about an hour or so taking it all in.  Our first “day” in our new house.

We were pretty bored by the time that we were done as there is literally nothing to do in the house.  Without water you can’t even clean and using the bathroom is a bit risky.  Without Internet we can’t really do anything entertainment wise.  Without a truck we can’t really move anything real into the house.  We are pretty much stuck.

More information tomorrow.  We are very hopeful that we can get moved in and start living in the new house.  Brian and Tara made it to Nashville tonight so there is a good chance that they will be arriving tomorrow in the DFW.  So much for our plans to be out of their way before they arrived.

Liesl seems to like the new house.  She had fun hanging out in it and Oreo was very excited to have a new, large, open space to explore.  He is going to love being out of the apartment.

Off to bed.  Tomorrow is going to be one crazy day.

Or so we hope.  Tomorrow we are scheduled to close on the house at ten in the morning and, if all goes well, we will be starting to move in over lunch.  Our hope is to have the cars loaded and maybe take a truck with the bed over to the new house at lunch after the closing is done and be in a position so that Dominica and Liesl can spend the day at the new house while I am at work and then I can get another load or two of our stuff in the evening and get us into a “living” position by the end of the day so that we can spend the night in the new house and really tackle the immediate moving needs on Wednesday.

We have been holding off on doing laundry at the apartment for several days because it is so inconvenient and expensive to do it there and we should have a washer and dryer by tomorrow that Dominica can use all day without having to leave the apartment.  So our laundry is piling up on us.

I am quite sick this morning, I can barely speak.  I definitely caught whatever the Grices had.  So I am working from home today to keep from infecting the team.  This is going to make for a really long week.

We did very little today.  A little bit of getting last minute paperwork in place for the closing tomorrow but that was about it.  We called our real estate agent and set up a final walkthrough of the house for this evening.  She was surprised that we wanted this – apparently people do not do this in Texas.  We thought that that would be crazy since the house had had major foundation work, plumbing changes, wall repair and more since we last saw it and we really have no idea what the condition of the house is going to be.

We did the walkthrough this evening at five thirty.  It went well, nothing surprising.  House looks great.  The repairs seem to have gone well.  Can’t wait to start moving in tomorrow.  We are so ready to be out of the apartment.

After the walkthrough we went to dinner at Las Nenas in Irving on Beltline.  Dinner was very good as always there.  We really like Nenas.  We found out at dinner, though, that our closing was pushed back until two tomorrow afternoon – four hours later than we had planned.  That means that there is a lot that we can’t get done tomorrow on the house.  Basically our move to pushed back until the evening at best and that is going to be a struggle too.  But what can you do.  Too bad we didn’t get any notice.  Apparently the bank forgot to tell us about that.

After dinner we got back home and got to bed.  I was starting to get pretty decently sick by the time that we were done and really need to get rest before the long day tomorrow.

Francesca and the kids got up very early this morning and were on the road on their way back down to Houston before any of the Millers even woke up.  Now that we have the apartment to ourselves again, we have approximately forty-eight hours to do any prep that we are going to do to get the apartment ready for us to move in which we are supposed to do around noon on Tuesday.

Mostly we spent the day attempting to clean.  There was a ton to be done and we were really exhausted.  There was very little packing to be done.  We really are not sure where to start.  We can’t pack anything in earnest because we need to still be able to live in the apartment until we know that everything is good with the house.  So we are kind of caught in the middle waiting for the house to close so that we can schedule everything and get the moving underway.

A lot of today was spent doing some relaxing and spending a little time together as a family.  This is our first “day” together just us in over a month!  Hard to believe.

We watched some of the Harry Potter movies on BluRay this afternoon.  We needed some time to just sit and putz around the apartment.

We are all feeling a bit under the weather today.  Sinus issues.  The Grice family had been sick while they were here so we are fearing that we may have contracted some disease from them.  They have been known to spread the plague to us in the past.

It is unbelievable but today my little girl turns two years old.  In some ways it is so hard to believe that my baby is now in her “terrible twos” but it is also weird to imagine a time when she wasn’t a part of our lives.  Her actually birthday party is not going to be for two weeks yet so that we can have it in the new house since we have no place to do it right now.

The big thing that we wanted to do today was to take the kids up to Grapevine for the North Pole Express Experience which includes a show and a ride on the Grapevine Historic Railroad.  We tried to get tickets to it this morning but discovered that tickets for today were not available online.  As this is opening weekend we were pretty surprised that tickets would not be available – how busy could they be?

So to figure out what was going on we took a drive up to Grapevine with the entire family.  It turned out that tickets just were not available on the same day due to technical difficulties so we were able to buy tickets right then and there and schedule a ride for the five thirty showing.  Perfect.

So we left Grapevine and drove down to Denny’s to get lunch before going back to the apartment for a while before we needed to return to Grapevine.

We went to Grapevine a little early, or so we though, but the line for the show started early so we were in line starting around five.  We realized that we needed cash to be able to get things from concessions and that no one had any so while the rest of the family was waiting in line I walked briskly for several blocks through Grapevine to find an ATM so that we could load up on cash for the evening.  By the time that I got back from that very, very long walk everyone had already filed into the show and Dominica was outside waiting for me so that I could get in to join everyone.

The show was in a small exhibition pavilion next to the train station.  They did Christmas music and some light comedy and dancing stuff.  It was cute and the kids enjoyed it, I think.  They did some crowd-interactive things which got people involved.  It was more than we had been expecting.  We were not really even aware that there was a show associated with the train ride.  The show ended up being the majority of the experience.

The last bit thing that they did was the “Daddy Dance-Off” competition.  The emcee went around and asked for kids to volunteer their fathers for “something” up on stage.  The first two people were selected and I felt pretty safe.  I was hidden deep in the crowd and was hiding behind Clara, who I was holding, so I thought that he would avoid me.  But, alas, no.  My family went nuts trying to get me chosen.  Madeline and Emily really worked hard to get me noticed and having so many people making a big deal to get me noticed was hard to avoid, I guess.  So I was chosen as the third, and final, participant.

I must appear to be a character because the dancing girls who were positioning us on stage decided that I should be the highlighted father in the middle of the stage.  I am the cute one, after all.

“Fortunately”, both Dominica and Francesca had video cameras at the ready and were able to grab plenty of footage of me dancing.  This video was taken by Dominica’s new Droid X smartphone.  This was her very first time taking a video with it so was not used to dealing with orientation issues.  But she was also stuck taking video from between peoples’ heads so had a very tight field of view.

It’s hard not to be embarrassed being up on stage dancing at something like this but it was sort of fun too.  Once I heard that they were giving away tickets to the Grapevine Historic Railroad as a prize, well, I knew that I had to win them then.  And I did.  The dad on my left tried pretty hard and gave me a run for my money but the guy on my right didn’t even put in the effort.  But I’m used to being on stage with large audiences and making a fool of myself dancing in public just comes naturally so it was an easy win for me.

Liesl was very upset while I was on stage dancing.  She really wanted to come up and join me on stage and dance.  She is a little dancer for sure.

After the show we road the North Pole Express for several miles.  Liesl fell asleep almost instantly.  She was very tired and couldn’t handle keeping herself awake on the warm, slowly rocking train.  It was perfect sleep conditions for her.  She woke up just enough to open her eyes and acknowledge when Santa Claus came through the train to see the kids then she was asleep again immediately.

After the train ride we went to the little concessions area where the kids made some ornaments for free which was cute.  Liesl (with her daddy’s help) put together a foam penguin ornament to give to her mommy.  We also got hot chocolate, funnel cake and nachos.  There wasn’t a lot to do but it was nice and we had a good time.  At the end we went and got all of the kids’ together for a picture with Santa Claus.

It was a fun outing and very different from what we normally get to do.  A fun change of pace.  The kids all seemed to have a good time.  It was a little chilly for being outside.  It would have been a little nicer had it been just a little bit warmer.  Nice that we got to go out and do something memorable with Liesl on her birthday.