No more Realtors!

Stephanie will appreciate this post since she too has had the worst experience with realtors. We had to fire our realtor from being our buyers agent. (He was also our sellers agent.) He wasn't holding up his side of the deal. The best part is, I never signed anything, and the new house is under my name not Zac's. We did this on purpose just in case he didn't follow through. Because he is no longer our agent, we needed our $500 earnest money to be transferred over to the builder. He informed us that he would do this last Thursday or Friday. So Zac called him ONCE on Thursday and ONCE on Friday. He never called us back. So at 3:00pm yesterday I called him to see what the status is. He told me that it is really simple to transfer, he just has to do it. I asked him when he could do it, he wouldn't give me a straight answer. So I told him I would call him tomorrow to see if it had been transferred. He then very rudely told me "DO NOT CALL ME! YOU ARE ANNOYING!" (Devin thought this was hilarious) he repeated this throughout the conversation. First of all, this is the first time that I have ever called him. I told him, we will stop calling when he transfers the money. He again told me to stop calling, and hung up on me. At this point in the conversation he was yelling at me. Here are the reasons why we fired him:
- He did not show up for the closing.
- We negotiated at the beginning of the sale of our home to a 4.5% commission instead of the usual 6%. The 1.5% would go back to us, with the condition that he would be our buyers agent also. We signed on our new home the end of February. We closed on our current home in June. After we received the funds from the sell of our home, our Realtor informs us that we will not be getting the 1.5% because he is feeling "screwed". I ask him, "Why are you bringing this up now? You knew how much commission you were getting from our new home back in February?" No response.
- He gave the key to our buyers WEEKS before closing. We were under the impression that they wanted to walk through the house one last time, and that our Realtor would be there with them. So we gave our key to the Realtor, not the buyers. We later discover that they have been through our home multiple times, even spent the night, without our knowledge. Our Realtor never went through the home with them, he just handed over our keys, and forgot to get them back.
- He FORGED our signatures on an Addendum!!!! (without our knowledge)
- He would never talk to me because I am a girl. (I know this one is petty, but it really bothered me.)

The reason why we went with this Realtor is because he is in our ward, and lives two doors down from us. We have learned our lesson, never do business with anyone in the ward.

On a lighter note, the final walk through on our new house is next week! Last week they did the finish plumbing, hung the shower door, put in the closet rods, etc. This week they need to put in the carpet and finish electrical. This weekend we went and bought a washer and dryer, stainless steel refrigerator, and a lot of parts for a computer. Barb's boyfriend Garit (Barb is Zac's sister) is building us our computer. So far I hear it's going to be an awesome computer.

Yesterday my cousin, Chris Perkins, his wife died. Chris is my age, I'm not sure how old his wife is (22 or 23?). She was on her lunch break, and a dump truck broad sided her at 80 mph. It killed her instantly. Chris is in Wyoming on a campout with no reception on his cell phone. So he didn't even know. My uncle drove out there last night, so I'm sure he knows now. Your life can change so fast.

Dad drove out to Montana and Sunday to get a picture of a headstone. When he finally got there, he discovered that they aren't buried in Montana, but in Malad, Idaho. That was a long drive to find out that they are only 2 hours away from home instead of 8-10. Then Dad went to Spokane Washington to find Grandpa Parry's brother's headstone. With the help of Grandpa Parry and his sister Mary, Dad was able to find it. He came home last night. This trip was suppose to be a 5 day trip. Leave it to Dad to do it in two days.

Another Day

So I stopped at our new house on the way home from work yesterday, and the wood floors were almost finished. He is about 4 rows shy of finishing the kitchen, and needs to put some more molding around the edges, but so far it's looking great! Our house has a side entry garage. It's kind of hard to see though with the big dumpster in front of the house. Also on the pics of the kitchen, the light was shining through the windows, so the picture didn't turn out too well.

Zac got the estimates on our car yesterday. Apparently our car isn't worth fixing the blinker. The mechanic told us that they were going to have to total our car out!!! All we need to fix is the blinker, and the car works fine! Dad thought it was so funny. Zac is talking to the insurance today to see if he can reason with them about paying for the blinker instead of totalling the car out. (The estimate was only for $1,000 to fix the blinker and bumper) So it's nice to know that we own a vehicle that is worth basically nothing.

So yesterday I was running over to Court for a sentencing on one of our defendants (the court is 6 blocks away from my work. I was stopped at the light, waiting for the crosswalk to give me the okay to cross, and this guy behind me is holding what looks to be a fountain drink. For some reason he dropped it, and it splashed all over the back of my legs, but it wasn't soda...it was beer. So NOW I get to go into court smelling like beer. It was so gross. I ran into the bathroom and tried to wash it off the back of my legs, but I pretty much smelled like beer for the rest of the day.

Another Car Accident

On Friday, Zac got hit again in his car. This is the third one in five years. For those of you who are familiar with Provo, he was at the 3rd south light on State, turning left. This left turn has two lanes that turn left (heading East). A Dodge Truck next to him, didn't see our small silver car, and came right on over to Zac's lane, and clipped the corner of the car. The driver didn't even realize he hit Zac, and continued on driving. Zac had to chase him down, and because our wonderful car doesn't have a horn, Zac's waving his arms around trying to get his attention. The only reason why this guy stopped was because he was lost looking for an address. Zac ran out of the car and informed him that he hit our car. The guy got all mad saying, EXCUSE ME!! So Zac made him go back to the scene of the accident where our blinker was on the side of the road. Zac's pretty excited though, last time he got hit we got a check for $200, but the blinker is only $15 at the junk yard. We'll see how much we'll get this time since the bumper is also cracked. My Dad got in an accident 2 weeks ago, his was a lot worse. He was stopped at the light, and a girl didn't realize that the light had turned red, and rammed into the back of his car, shooting Dad out 15 feet into the intersection.

Here are some pictures of Eric that we took yesterday. His face is looking a lot better. He finished taking his antibiotics, but under his eye it still looks red. It actually was turning purple last week, so hopefully the infection is completely gone from his face. Zac took Eric to swim lessons yesterday. He put his face in under the water for the first time willingly. He was pretty excited. He only almost drowned once. The teacher has 5 three year olds and goes in a circle to each of them. Right after she finished with Eric and moved on to the next child, Eric was under the water trying to breath.

This weekend I made some strawberry jam. We had over 200 strawberry plants in our last house, and right before the buyers moved in, Zac went over and took a whole bowl of strawberries. I was able to make 16 pints out of the strawberries with several strawberries left over. Zac and Dad also went over to the house and took about 15 strawberry plants and planted them in Dad's garden so that we could transplant them at our new house when it's finished.

Zac was suppose to lay the floor at our new house. Dad and Zac went up there and decided that it would be better if they had professionals install it instead. So the professionals came out yesterday, and are probably there today. But our bathrooms are finished, all we need in the house is carpet, and to have the final plumbing and electrical finished, and the inside of the house will be finished! (The outside still needs the driveway and stairs poured). That's about it for our weekend!

When Dogs Attack

This post is part of a request that I received for people who didn't see the pictures of Bandit's attack on Eric. For those of you who don't know, Bandit, my families white dog, attacked Eric 3 weeks ago. It was really surprising. Bandit was not an agressive dog. He was even scared to death of Cosmo (the Millburn's cat). Cosmo ruled the yard when Cosmo lived with us. Eric ended up having 14 stitches, 3 of which were in his mouth. When they discharged us from the hospital, they didn't give us any instructions on what danger signs to look for. The ER didn't give us any antibiotics either, even though we requested them. Five days later, I went back to the ER to get his stitches out, and he had this huge infection. They said it was on it's way up to his brain. They immediately did CAT scans, and gave him high doses of antibiotics. We had to come back to the ER for 7 days straight to give him more antibiotics. Finally, he got his stitches out. They waited so long to take them out because they were afraid it they took them out, the infection would pop the wounds open again, and we would have to start over again by getting new stitches in.

Now, Eric is not only afraid of dogs, but every animal. At Lagoon, there were a family of geese running by the pavilion, Maysen, Jorja, and Eric all ran out to see them. Eric didn't get very far. So on the subject of Lagoon. That was by far the wettest year ever. I thought Aubrey would love the rides, but, I was wrong. Below I have a pic of her before the ride started, and then during the ride. That was her first and last ride (besides the train, but that doesn't really count) This was the first time ever that we were home by 7pm and able to watch 5 episodes of Arrested Development. I completely underestimated how funny George Michael is. Thanks Devin.

Eric started swimming lessons with his daycare. We needed to buy him a backpack to put his towel, change of clothes, etc in it. Eric has slept with this backpack every night since we got it. He is having so much fun with his lessons. He demonstrates on the carpet every night of what he learned.

We finally sold our house!

So, it has been EIGHT, count it EIGHT, months since we put our house on the market. We have had it under contract 4 seperate times, with each of them falling through. The people who bought our house extended the time to close 3 times with us, and finally they came through! Although, they did ask Zac to mow the lawn one more time. It's their house, they should mow the lawn. But Zac wanted to be nice, so even though we sold it on Thursday, he is mowing the lawn on Tuesday. What a nightmare. I thought selling a house would be easier than that. Plus, we put it on the market right before Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. That was smart.

Our new house was suppose to be finished 2 weeks ago....but it's not. They put in the cabinets tomorrow, Zac will lay the floor by the end of this week, and then they will give us a better idea on a closing date. I don't have my camera here with the pics of the house, but I will post them later.