Happy Thanksgiving :)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of family, friends and counting your blessings! We enjoyed two very delicious meals with both the Underwood's and the Herrman's. It was great to enjoy our "first" Thanksgiving with family.

We have been keeping busy here in Philadelphia. Chris has started teaching for the winter session dance program at the Agnes Irwin School, an all girls high school. Dan is very busy at NW and had the chance to travel to LA a few weeks ago for work. He really enjoyed it. We decided to back out of the house so we will not be moving in this December. There was too much the needed to be fixed and we weren't up for that. We are taking a little break in looking as December is going to be a very busy month.

Last night we decorated our very first Christmas tree. We will see how long it lasts before the cat attacks it. :) Enjoy some pictures.

Up in the air....

Well, many things have continued to happen since we received our signed agreement of sale... They accepted our offer with no conter-offer which was really exciting. It seems like they are ready to get rid of this house as soon as possible. We had the house inspection the following week and Dad Underwood came up to go through it with Dan. The inspector was very thorough, however it was raining like crazy, so some things were not able to be completed. What was inspected revealed a lot of issues.......The biggest of all being the small attic/crawl space. There are extremely old tube and knob wiring the goes through the entire attic and someone decided to spray insulation in with these wires, thereby creating a HUGE fire hazard. As a result of this, and the fact that the electrical box is no longer up to date, deems this house unliveable. This means that without this being completed, we can not get an occupancy permit. When we received the report from the inspector, we typed up a list of what we wanted the sellers to do for us, or what they needed to give us a credit for. Unfortunately the next day the inspector returned to the house to complete the inspection and found that the house really needs a new roof as well.....So, we re-typed a list and the total amount of what we are asking from them is abour $18,000 worth of work or credit. At this point we are waiting for the termite report before submitting this to the current home owners for consideration.

Aside from this Dan called our land lord and found out that no we can't just give 60 days, we also have to pay 2 extra months rent in order to get out of our lease....WHAT A RIP! This isn't written in our lease anywhere, so she told Dan that they would take a look at it...we'll see what happens. We are going to give our 60 days notice now and luckily we can retrack that at any time.

SO what this all boils down to is that unless they give us $100,000 or less for this house, we will not be buying it. We don't want to put more money into this house than it is worth and we don't have the extra money to just pay 2 extra months rent. So, we'll see what happens in the next week. We are entertaining the idea of moving into Center City if the house doesn't work out, but that is just a thought at this point. We figure that this would be the only time that we could really live in Center City, so we'll see what happens.

Other than that, highlights of the weekend included Chris going to the city on Friday for the Phillies Parade. It was a lot of fun and pretty CRAZY. It was a great day, but due to the crazy public transportation situation, she ended up walking home and Dan picked her up about half-way. We also went to two Halloween parties, one in Manayunk and one in center city near the art museum. The center city party was on the 16th floor with a beautiful view of the city (hence why we may be moving to center city). It was a great night out with friends. Today Dan went the guys to go Paintballing in Maryland. Sounds like they had a great time.

That's it for now. We'll keep you posted!

One step closer!

We officially have the signed agreement of sale sitting on our kitchen table! We are so excited that they have accepted our offer and we are now beginning all the necessary steps prior to settlement on December 1st! We hope to have the home inspection within the week and will be putting in our 60 days notice for leaving our apartment. It is all SO EXCITING! It will be so neat to spend our first Christmas together in our very own house!!! :D We'll keep you updated!

Anxiously waiting......

A lot has happened since our last post. We went and looked at the house, had both Dan's parents and my parents check out the house and.....WE PUT AN OFFER IN! That's right, on Monday we made an offer and we are currently waiting to hear their response by 5:00pm today! It so exciting and hard to believe that we are starting this process. Our fingers are crossed that they accept!

To tell you a little about the house, it is about 5 blocks from where we live now. It is a townhouse and has 3 bedrooms and 2 baths, a backyard, small front yard, garage, newer extended kitchen, large basement, and dining room. It was built sometime around the 1930's and is a gorgeous old house. It is in pretty good condition and we could move right in without any major work to be done. It would make a great first house!

In other news we have been keeping very busy! We have kayaked on the Schuylkill, attended a few art fests, and taken photographs around Fairmount park. We are trying to get out and about in this wonderful city while the weather continues to be nice. Oh and we've been married for 2 months already and it is wonderful! :) Check in for news on the house!

Moving Along.....

As I am writing this, Dan is finishing up a phone call with a realtor who we are meeting with on Friday to check out a house. We have been searching the internet for houses off and on for fun for about a year, but now things are really moving along. We really had no major intentions of buying for atleast a year, however we are finding ourselves getting a pre-approval and going to look at house. HOW CRAZY!!! It is pretty exciting and buying a house is definitely a huge dream of ours. We'll keep you updated if any of this develops.

To catch you up, last weekend we went home to our parent's for really the first time since the wedding. It was great to catch up if only for a day or so. We really have missed hanging out at home in the "country." We watched the Presidential debate with Dan's parent's and friends and it was quite interesting. (I don't feel a huge need to go into politics at this moment, but we are really looking forward to the upcoming debates and really being informed voters.)

We had to come back to Philly Saturday afternoon and spent a lot of the weekend continuing to set up our apartment. We made a quick trip to IKEA, Crate and Barrel, the grocery store...you get the picture. We are really enjoying getting things for our home and really making it ours. :)

That's about it for now. This weekend is going to be a crazy one, but it involves lots of friends and family!!!!

A weekend of friends

We had a wonderful weekend of visiting with neighbors and friends! From good food to kayaking, it was full of fun!

Saturday night we went to our neighbor Florence's house for a fantastic dinner. Our other neighbors Stevana and Brenda were there, as well as Brenda's mom. She had millions of hor devors and we had amazing crab cakes and corn on the cob. We had such a great time with great conversation. It is really nice getting to know our neighbors.

We also got to see our great friend, and old roommate, Ryan. He brought down our wedding presents which were prints of two of his own photographs. He printed them and framed them for us. We have a perfect spot in the bedroom and can't wait to hang them. We are the proud owners of two Ryan Mannion originals.

After dinner with our neighbors and visiting with our neighbors we finally got on the road headed for Stone Harbor, NJ. It took us about 2 hours due to a little google direction snaffu, but we finally made it. A whole bunch of Dan's Industrial Design classmates were there and we had a good time catching up and working on a puzzle until 3:30 in the morning. The next day we were up and in the water by about 9:30am. There were a total of 8 kayaks down there, so we had a nice little group of us kayaking around. It was my first time using my own kayak and it handles really well. We kayaked for a few hours and then walked into town for lunch and little shopping. We were headed home by about 5 and had a little bit of traffic to deal with, but not terrible. It really was a great couple of days.

Not too much is going on this week, just busy with work.

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! I just thought this would be a fun way of keeping everyone up to date on the lives of Chris and Dan and our adventures in Philly as a married couple! Check back often to read about these adventures and see the photos along the way!

Chris :)