Where do these people come from?

And why did they choose our house?



No, not these people... We know who they are.


Some of you may have heard about our ongoing saga with the sale of our house. Maybe a month ago a couple about our age came and saw our place. They liked it. A lot. And told us right then and there that they wanted to buy it but didn’t have much money. It turns out he’s a grad student and she’s a stay-at-home mom, so yeah, they don’t have much income. Oh, and they have a one year old daughter.

So a couple days later we get an offer to purchase. Our attorney, Jason, calls up and says there’re some weird things with it and the price is pretty low. Really low. So low that we don’t even consider writing a counter offer since the couple said that even that was pushing their finances.

Fast forward a couple weeks… we get an email from them saying that they are still interested and can stretch themselves a bit more and add $8000 to their offer plus another $2000 that would be paid at closing on the side outside of the sale price. The additional $8000 gets them to the highest price their lenders says that they will be approved so the $2000 is a secret from the bank. The total price is still low, as low as we’d consider going at this time, but we are to the point where we just want to be done with it so we say sure. We have Jason draft up the side agreement and get together with the couple in the evening to sign that and the offer to purchase. They asked about closing costs and we said we’d cover what sellers normally cover. Everything seems fine.

The next morning we have an email from them saying that their lender needs to have their mom sign the offer to purchase because she will be a co-signer on the loan. This is news to us. We tell them that that’s not really our responsibility… go ahead and fax her the forms so she can sign them so the lender can get rolling with approving their financing. We feel like there’s a little urgency to get this done because the couple is going on vacation and won’t be back until July 6th. Shortly thereafter we get an email from the lender saying something like “Congratulations!” Buried in this email is this little juicy bit where he writes:

“Also, please be aware that (Family X) is going to be asking for seller credits to assist them in getting the loan. They are going to be asking for seller credits of $2000.00 in order to make the numbers work for them.”

Huh? (Or in today’s parlance “WTF?”) You didn’t think to mention this BEFORE we signed the offer? I forward this on to Jason. He gets back to me shortly and says that it’s pretty normal that buyers will ask for credits for closing BUT THAT THEY ALWAYS OFFER TO INCREASE THE PURCHASE PRICE! Jason’s been doing this for 15 years and says this is the first time he’s ever seen this happen and that we need “to talk with these people.”

So we do. They are in transit to Detroit via Chicago. We email them three options where we would pay their $2000. 1) They simply add another $2000 to the side agreement (that the bank doesn’t know about!) 2) They move up the closing date a few weeks, waive their right to the inspection contingency and pay us an additional $1000 (that the bank doesn’t know about) in a year. 3) They waive their right to the inspection contingency and pay us an additional $1000 in this silly side agreement at closing (that the bank doesn’t know about!) All of these were deemed perfectly reasonable and legal by Jason and probably “make the numbers work” for the buyer.

What do they do? We get this response:

"We just talked it over with my mom and she's not willing to sign the contract. We have sent the earnest money check out, so we will be canceling it. None of your options worked for her."

Since none of the options actually increased their total expenses beyond what they had already legally agreed to (and two of them actually decreased them) we felt that they we were being quite reasonable. Weren’t we?

It’s probably better off that this all fell apart now rather than later. Neither of us felt too good about the chances of a one-income graduate student couple getting approved for a mortgage. And Jason said he couldn’t stand dealing with people who so clearly didn’t know what they were doing.

But, I wouldn’t be too surprised if we get another offer from them after they get back from vacation… They clearly want our house.

Strawberry season

These are the strawberries I picked this morning from our garden. We've picked about this much every day for the past few days and will be for several more.

They're so pretty...

Last night we turned some of them into freezer jam.

Mmmmmmm. Jealous?

Weekend at the Farm

While Will headed north, Claire and I went south with my mom to spend some quality girl time on my grandparents' farm. My aunt Jane and cousins Laura and Eliza joined us and so my grandpa was greatly outnumbered.

(Since generations get kind of confusing, these are all from my point of view this post!)

Here are the four generations: Me, my mom, my grandma, and Claire
A couple things you might notice about this picture. Claire is destined to wear glasses someday. And wow, I think we all hope we can look as good as my grandma does at 78 (?) years old! If her secret is having 8 kids and even today still doing chores (feeding calves) ~10 times a week and caring for the large garden she still has, I think I might be out of luck.

We spent a lot of time outside (of course) and luckily it was mostly beautiful weather and not even too hot.

The theme for the weekend was babies. We started off on Friday morning watching a calf being born. Here it is just ~5 minutes after birth:


Then, my grandparents' neighbor invited us over to see his baby bunnies and chicks. Claire liked them a lot.


Then, we heard that my Aunt Mary had several kittens at her house, just down the road from my grandparents, so off we went to the next baby visit. They were adorable in all colors, and a very cute age, playing, but also mostly okay with being held for a little while, too. I was really glad Claire can't really talk all that well because I'm guessing she would have pleaded to take one home.

Note to Claire's Uncle Andy: Claire now makes a very credible "Meow" sound.



I think Grandpa and Grandma enjoyed seeing Claire. She wasn't so sure of her Great Grandpa, but was a very good sport and let him hold her a few times.


She got along pretty well with her Great Grandma, here she is saying good-bye right before we left:
Here she is on the way home:

Being a farmer is awful tiring work!

-K

p.s. oh yes, in case anyone was wondering, I defended my thesis on Thursday, June 12, so I'm now (finally) finished with grad school. Everything went well, and I'm very, very happy to be finished! Now I better get started on writing some lectures for fall!

Will's weekend

Caution: This is not about Claire

This weekend the family split up with Kate and Claire heading south to Mt. Sterling, IL, and me heading north to Lutsen, MN, for a friend's wedding. I'll let Kate post about her weekend on the farm later.

The wedding was for my friend, Erik Berkas, who was also my best man in our wedding. I returned the favor this weekend. It was definitely the second best wedding I've ever been to. The company was fun, the location great, the weather was perfect and the wedding was beautiful. There was plenty of drinking, plenty of eating, plenty of playing "rock toss" into Lake Superior and plenty of quoting classic movies like Superbad and classic TV like Flight of the Conchords. There was also a crazy aunt (and that's all I'll say).



The only bad part was the amount of driving... 7 hours up there, and 10.5 hours back (thanks to Interstate detours due to flooding!)

Strange rewards

Claire seems like a pretty normal kid... most of the time. Last night, though, two things that seem relatively abnormal for 19 month-olds occurred.

First, we realized that we can reward Claire by flossing her teeth. Some kids might be rewarded with treats like candy, or a special toy or a hug. Claire? She requests "Os? Os?" and heads for the bathroom with a smile on her face.

Second, Claire requested her special "hat" before reading books (and after "os-ing.") Maybe that's not so strange, but what is noteworthy is that that "hat" is actually a bike helmet. I'd love to cultivate a tolerance for (or love of?) bike helmets so I wasn't going to deny her request. So there we sat on the couch, reading books while wearing our bike helmets. I realized that parting with that "hat" would not be sweet sorrow and forced her to take it off after a couple of books. This led to tears. Had I not done that I'm sure she would have happily gone to bed wearing her "hat." Having spent 3 years fitting bike helmets on little kids' heads, I can tell you that very few kids ever cried when their helmets came off.

A trip to the Tenney Park locks

Will and Claire took a morning bike ride to the Tenney Park locks in Madison and walked out on the breakwater, watched some fish get caught, threw more rocks in the water (aka "rock toss"), got splashed by water and sun, played rock toss, ate a snack, played rock toss and finally rode home. Here are a few pictures...

Claire gets her first glimpse of waves splashing on rocks.

With a handful of rocks Claire heads toward the water with a purpose.

Here is her life's purpose... to perfect the advanced rock toss technique of throwing multiple rocks in the water at once.

No patriotic lapel pin needed...

Don't jump!

-WcH

M.Y. Dream Park

If a kid were going to design a playground it might end up looking a lot like the Dream Park one near our house in Monona. Claire loves spending time exploring all the various places available to her there. Bridges, stairs, slides, swings, tunnels... they are all there.

Here are a few photos of her enjoying life at the Dream Park.


Claire makes it past the dragon guarding the entrance and enters M.Y. Dream Park.


Claire, walking the walls of the castle.


A view from above.


Slides can be hair raising experiences.


Best. Claire. Action. Photo. Ever.

New PJs

Sunday night Claire tried on one of her dad's old cycling jerseys. She liked it so much she slept in it all night - just that and her diaper. If her diaper leaked at least the jersey has good moisture management and wicking properties to keep her dry...