Michael

3 week road trip. Left Phoenix July 2nd drove to Albuquerque & stayed with my sister Dina’s family, We visited while cooking breakfast. From there we drove up to St Louis, Mo where we visited the Gateway Arch. Since it was the 4th of July we were able to see the airshow featured over the Mississippi River, awesome vantage point from the Arch. After the airshow we scampered up to Chicago to catch the Fireworks Display aboard a boat out in Lake Michigan at the Navy Pier. The next day we drove up through Canada to get to Niagara Falls, Canada. We spent the following day doing touristy things such as the Maiden in the Mist among others. (Beware riding a bicycle across the Rainbow Bridge!)
While in Boston we visited friends & family as well as doing little tours. Freedom Trail, Sam Adams Brewery, Plymouth Rock, Fenway Park. We also drove up to Maine. Maine was a pleasure to visit (thanks Weng’s!) Lighthouses, Lobster Rolls, Beer.

I drove solo on the way home. i chose to do a mostly Baseball tour. I drove down through New York City over to Philadelphia, where i was able to do the Constitutional Tour(especially Ben Franklin)
upon completing my tour I drove across Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh where i saw a Pirates game. The next day I drove down to Cincinnati to catch a Reds game. And finally I caught one more game the following day, the Royals in Kansas City.

Lol I got home Thursday. We took a tiny road trip up to the Grand Canyon that weekend.

This summer i was able to visit 4 new stadiums
Fenway Park Boston Red Sox v Texas Rangers 7/15/10
PNC Park Pittsburgh Pirates v Milwaukee Brewers 7/19/10
Great American Park Cincinnati Reds v Washington Nationals 7/20/10
Kaufman Stadium Kansas City Royals v Toronto Blue Jays 7/21/10

as well as still getting to see the Yankees play here in Phoenix against the Dbacks 6/21/10

ok so i need to catch you up on where i am.

i ended up going to the homebuying education orientation. however, i somehow overqualified on the income level.(our company allowed us to gang up on overtime knowing they were about to give us a pay cut, & because of that the program didn’t look back at my past 3 years as i had expected but forecasted my salary based on the first 2 months of this year… haha just my luck)

so with that out the window i felt i had to take some action. do or die.
i went to several showing with my RE agent(buyers broker). i narrowed my search down to a few houses that had some “michael” potential. did some more research comps, neighborhood, etc. & decided on a house to make an offer on.
i made my initial offer on tuesday march 23rd. the seller countered back today. i recountered this afternoon. basically i agreed to their counter with one small minor twist i asked for a little more help with the closing costs*
so now i have started the ball rolling on narrowing down home inspectors, finally deciding on a lender(making em compete), getting quotes on home insurance.
i am sooo excited. & proud of myself!!!