The house

We have been trying to buy a house in Atlanta and found out over the break that it did not go through. The house was a short sale and I loved just about everything about it other than the process to buy it. This was our first experience with short sales and it was not pleasant. We made our offer on this house the first week of October and did not really know that we weren't going to get the house until the first week of January. The bank finally approved our offer the week before Christmas but the stipulation was that we had to close by Dec. 29th. Hello... that is impossible. We didn't even have approval yet from the sellers second mortgage company that they would accept the payout being offered. You can't close on a house that has liens attached to it. Seems their bank did not care too much about the lending regulations and the fact that it takes longer than that to process a mortgage. We were ahead of the game really because our lender had already began processing our loan three weeks prior so we were just about done with the process. In the end we needed about 4 more days to close and the bank said no. Supposedly! We still do not have a formal letter stating this from the bank. We were told that the house is going to foreclosure and we thought maybe we would still be able to buy the house by going that route. I am beginning to believe that is just what the realtor is telling us. We are trying to get back our earnest money and found out yesterday that they don't feel they need to return it. The whole thing is crazy. It seems they had a backup offer that they are now negotiating. According to our contract this was not allowed and to date we have never relinquished our position as primary buyer. So we are writing letters, our lender is writing letters, our realtor is negotiating on our behalf but it looks like we may have to contact our attorney. Sometimes things just can't be simple I guess.

So with no move on the horizon, I have resigned myself to the fact that we will be here when the baby comes in June and I need to get this house in order. So, I have been cleaning out closets and drawers and doing a major purge. It seems like a never ending process but little by little it is getting done. We actually have a big house but we have no storage. We're in Florida so there is no basement. Our attic is a joke. I have little attic space in the garage that I use to store holiday decorations. For over 3000 sq feet we have a teeny linen closet upstairs and a half of a coat closet because the bottom half holds an air return. It's insane. There is only one walk in closet in the house in the master bedroom but it is by no means a big walk in. At any rate, I am moving my daughter's playroom to the second floor and combining that with our bonus room. My spare room/husband's office is moving downstairs and the baby's room will be the old spare room. I think it will work. None of the bedrooms are big other than the master which is enormous so the kids rooms are a little tight. I am thinking of buying smaller furniture for this child. My daughter has beautiful bedroom furniture but it is huge. Looked great in the old house - makes this room appear even smaller than it is. On a positive note, the pregnancy is going very well. I got my integrated screen results back yesterday and my probability of having a baby with a chromosome disorder dropped from 1 in 67 to 1 in 10,000 so that was a relief. I have an ultrasound on Monday and the results of that combined with the results I've gotten so far should help me decide whether or not to do the amnio. I'm leaning towards not doing it. I'm just thrilled that we've gotten this far and I'm starting to think that this time might actually result in a baby for us.