Tickle Me Senseless: Update on the House-Buying

Okay, so this morning we signed the counter-counter-offer. The day before yesterday they sent a counter-offer, and we have been discussing strategy, finances, and doing some good ol'-fashioned arithmetic (combined with a detailed examination of all the comparable houses sold in the area in the last two months). After looking at all facets of the situation, we decided on a certain amount to offer. This is after waffling for the last 24 hours back and forth between a couple of different bid ideas, but our realtor Greg finally told us that if we were willing to ultimately go with the higher amount, and were figuring on haggling back and forth one more time, that we needed to not do that.

He said that it would irk the sellers and make them not want to deal with us at all. Even if we were offering a really good price. I totally understand what he meant because the sellers already irritate me because of the fact that they rejected us in the beginning (even though Greg told us not to take it personally...).

So we decided to go ahead and offer the slightly higher bid, and now we have both signed the offer contract and sent it in. All this after much discussion and a three-way conference call between Greg, David, and Me. (And I'm the one who figured out how to do that- how exciting!)

The good news is that if they take this bid then it will end up financially meeting all of our criteria (as in, not exceeding any of our limits) that we had discussed beforehand. And they said they would throw in their dining set and matching hutch and refrigerator at no extra cost. Happy dance!

All of this has been pretty nerve-racking for me. I've been really nervous with the whole process of bandying around large amounts of money, as well as the stress of getting our house ready to sell, hoping for a buyer for our current house, and dealing with treading the tight-rope of finding a house I like, but that I don't like too much to walk away from. David and I have been doing a lot of praying aloud the last few days with each other, and God has really helped me to feel more chilled out afterwards.

Another positive in all this is that David and I have had some more opportunities to learn how to resolve conflict with a win-win outcome. And we have both learned a lot about how to deal with stress and our own feelings in constructive ways. We had a really good moment the other day: we were driving home, and discussing everything on the to-do list for the evening. I could feel the tension building in myself, and could feel that I was starting to get overwhelmed. Then, we both used slightly snippy tones with each other, and I realized, "Wow, we have a good learning moment here. We can resolve this now, or we can ruin the rest of the night with sulking." So, instead of fighting about it, we discussed how we were feeling- that he was feeling stressed because our time schedule, and I was feeling overwhelmed because of all we had to do. We came up with a resolution that consisted of relaxing four about 45 minutes after we got home, having a cold drink and a healthy snack, and then working on the house for 20 minutes. When the 20 minutes were up, we would stop and start getting ready for bed, and whatever we got done in that time was going to be it for the night. We both felt so much better after discussing our thoughts and feelings, and then coming up with a manageable solution. And we had a great night together! Yay!

And, some pictures of cuteness, just because!