The Price Family Home Companion

Hardship Letter

I don't know if this is normal, but when closing on our house we had to sign a Hardship Letter. If there was anything funny at closing it was this.

The letter states:

This is to certify that I am / we are aware that there are less than thirty (30) days before my / our first payment is due. This will cause no hardship to me / us.

No, I count it one of the great pleasures in life to owe large sums of money!

Houston Aquarium

There was a review on the Houston Aquarium in today's paper. We haven't yet been, but the review said the tour was great, but the restaurant was a little skimpy on the shrimpy.

Easter Egg Hunt

Today Salem went on her first Easter Egg Hunt. It was a lot of fun watching her go!

One of the other father's asked where my video camera was.. I told him that I didn't bring it.

To which he said "Let me tell you something Jeff. You always bring your video camera. That way, mama's happy."

He then whipped his camera out and soon found his batteries were dead. "That's another thing Jeff," he continued.

House Closing

We closed on our "new" house yesterday... and Wow! What an experience.

E*TRADE Mortgage Corporation was our lender. We've never bought a house before, but they did a superb job!

Our Realtor (and the seller's Realtor) were very skeptical and hesitant to deal with "one of those Internet lenders." They knew it wouldn't go well.

E*TRADE had our house appraised within a week of locking our rate (apparently that's unheard of) and had closing documents in our hands a full 5 days prior to closing!

We appreciated the extra time to read over the documents carefully... and both Realtors were highly impressed. Our Realtor said she has dealt with a lot of lenders (including the one her boss pushes) and she's never had a lender deliver the documents that early. We were all pleasantly surprised.
Because E*TRADE is west coast, it was also nice to have a couple hours after work to be able to still contact them. It worked out really well.

We happened to lock right at the bottom, so we got some great rates. We could have gotten as low as 4.99% (30-yr fixed), but we knew we wouldn't have the cash to pay the higher points.

Anyway, a very stressful month or so... but we've been working with some super people.

A New Game

Adrianna (4), our cousin, was visiting this week. She enjoyed playing Picky-boo with Salem.