It occurred to me by the way of my wife reminding me that is, that it was a year ago this week when we were given notice that the house we were living in was being put up for sale when the owner of said house promised my wife, as a friend, that “she would have this place to live in the rest of her life”. He only made that promise because it didn’t want to hassle with having strangers as his renters but that was besides the point. He gave his word.

Anyway, the series of events went something like this:

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010:

Former friend waltzes into my wife’s quilt shop and announces that he’s going to to sell the house and walks outs. Truth is he had already put it on the market. About the same time I glanced out the front windows of the house only to see one of our local realtors hammering in a “House for sale” sign on our front lawn. She called me before I had a chance to call her.

My wife comes home that evening in shock and proceeds to look online for possible rental availabilities in town. Finds instead a house that’s for sale right nearby for a very reasonable price. We discuss what the chances were of getting approved for a mortgage which I figured at 5 to 1 against but what the hell, there was no harm in seeing it.

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010:

I call the realtor in the morning and arrange for a showing which was set at 1:00 PM that afternoon. We got there right on time, saw the house, fell in love with it, went home and called two different local banks. I mean at 5 to 1 against we needed to spread those odds around a bit. I arranged for appointments with the respective mortgage officers of each bank for the next day. One in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

Thursday, March 4th, 2010:

We show up at our first appointment around 10:00 AM and sit promptly down with the mortgage officer, a woman about our age, who wasted no time in getting down to business. Once she verified my status as a veteran and checked that my VA rights were in place she began the qualifying process. Thanks to my wife who has one heck of a business sense about her and with a bit of help from me the process moved right along and 45 minutes later, with our mouths literally hanging open in disbelief, it was announced that we indeed qualified for the mortgage, with a low fixed interest rate and a monthly payment that was nearly $300 cheaper than what we were currently paying in rent. You could have knocked me off my seat with a feather.

I won’t relate the events that took place at the second appointment that afternoon at the other local bank (yes, we went to that one as well, mainly out of curiosity) as we dealt with some young twit who informed us within 10 minutes that we didn’t qualify at all and to come back in 6 months and try again.

Then a quick call to the realtors office to see if our (future) real estate agent was in and, with bank approval letter in hand, we scrapped every bit of change we had everywhere and anywhere to put down as a “good faith” payment and presented our offer. We then went back home to wait.

Friday, March 5th, 2010:

A call from our realtor confirmed what we had been waiting to hear. Our offer had been accepted with a tentative closing date of May 14th. A date which we actually managed to hit square on the head, by the way.

And so, one year ago this week, within a matter of 4 days we went from having our “home” imminently sold out form under us when it was never supposed to happen in the first place to being imminent future home owners. One year later the house we were living in back then is still yet to be sold and here we are snug and cozy in our wonderfully quirky little house nestled in the Clyde River Valley.

Oh, and the cats like it too.