Warning! Warning! Danger Will Robinson! Excessively long post...

Hello...I guess I was a bit squiffy the other night...I even forgot I posted...hmm, I did have a nice night out though.

I don't know what I was thinking promising to tell you funny friend stories??? It really is only funny if you know the people in question and the back story is sooo long you'd have fallen asleep before I got half way through it so I won't give you the blow-by-blow. No thanks is necessary.

Anyway, on to a  far more thrilling topics...I mentioned a couple of posts ago that we were all stirred up about a derelict farmhouse that had come up for informal tender...well the offer deadline was today.  We have our house to sell and it is now on the market, but we decided that as we wanted this farmhouse so very badly we would approach a bank manager that my hubby has a good business relationship with and they have been doing business deals for years and years so there is a history of trust and knowledge of our business position there. He yesterday, after checking over our papers agreed to finance a bridging loan at a very good interest rate (interest only) so that we could put in a cash offer today.  yay, that makes our position a lot stronger than saying we will give you X when we sell our house.

Last night I just felt sick with knots in my stomach about what we would decide to offer today and whether it would be enough, or whether we would offer our utmost when we didn't really have to...

Last night we sat down and decided on a three offer strategy. One amount in cash now, or two a higher amount after our house sells, or three an even higher amount to include an extra parcel of land that is also up for sale - again when our house sells...then this morning lying in bed I was thinking to myself, what if they think...'lets take the higher amount and put a time deadline on the house sale, which then reverts to offer 1 if the house isn't sold...which disincentivises us from selling quickly...then in say six months the interest rate has gone up and it all goes to heck! I thought by offering a higher amount and giving them a fall back position we were encouraging them to be greedy and take the higher offer with a belt and braces safety net of the cash offer on the back burner...I obviously don't want to pay more than necessary as the more we pay the less we can afford to borrow to renovate it! I decided that it would be smarter to stretch our cash offer to the limit and just put that in.  I told hubby my thoughts and he confessed he'd been lying there thinking the exact same thing! Synchronicity!

So we were in complete agreement about what to offer...we put the offer in and then before close of business today we phoned and sounded the agent out on our chances.  It looks pretty positive as he said we were a front runner and we'd put in a strong offer. We need to wait till Monday when the offers will be discussed at a Board meeting (the property is owned by a trust) and we may know something...although in all likelihood it will be a case of verifying our position first and then waiting for others to verify theirs. I suspect we may be the best cash offer, but there may be higher offers conditional on sales of other properties. The vendor has been through the experience of accepting offers and waiting for sales which never came and then being back on the market twice before getting to this point...so they are not going to be mad keen on going there again...it may mean that they decide 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'. Fingers and toes crossed.

Now I'm really annoyed because I've had so many Blogger glitches while I've been trying to type this post!!! I've  now lost a load of paragraphs twice!!! aaarrrrgggghhh!!!

I was saying something about my iPhone malfunctioning in about 3 different ways! one of which being that I can't download my photo's! I use PC's and none of the programmes on which I can download photo's will recognise my iPhone! Only iTunes can recognise it, but of course iTunes cannot be used to download photo's.  I'm going to try and get my phone replaced under warranty as soon as I get a chance (it runs out in September). Once I do that I'm going to be able to post photo's relevant to the posts I'm doing which is always good, I might even post pics of myself! I probably won't get rumbled being anonymous, but using pics. If anyone does rumble me, they are more than likely interested in being banded or are banded anyway which I won't even mind! I think it will be good as it helps to feel more involved with people if you know what they look like. My husband will not approve of this idea as he is VERY private and is especially paranoid of the Internet and any info that is out in cyberspace which I can definitely appreciate...but I don't usually do what I'm told...(neither does he for that matter!)

I love you all and I have been working hard to catch up on all your blogs which I find frustrating because there are so so many thought provoking posts that I want to comment on...but it's too late! Hey! Catch up! That was two weeks ago!!! One thing that is good about being behind is that i tend to go on Google reader and see who has the highest number of unread posts and read them in order...it gives you such a good feel for the person...much better than reading one at a time interspersed with 120 others.

Oh! Another great thing about today! My boys got their school reports today...I'm so so proud of them! My eldest is just downright clever. He's gotten into a very selective private school, but I still worry because he is soooo lazy and so easily distracted. I just hope he rises to the challenge because the level of work will be a lot harder than at the local school. They study the International level examinations rather than the regular kind as they have a high number of students who get into Oxford and Cambridge and apparently the regular level GCSE's are not at a high enough level to equip them! Scary.

And my youngest in his first three years at school struggled with an undiagnosed condition known as 'selective mutism' I had never even heard of it, but I knew there was a problem and the teachers knew there was a problem. One of the side effects was that he felt too self conscious to express himself in any creative writing exercises and fell behind in school especially in this area.

In this report although he was well above average in his maths and reading and science, the thing I was most proud of was that he was AVERAGE in his writing. I know this has been a massive challenge for him to 'put himself out there' in his writing and I nearly burst with pride to see that he had worked so hard at it and covered that lost ground.  At the end of last year he was quite behind in his writing, so this showed a big move forward for the year and a really special achievement.  His brother was criticising his result as it was less than he'd gotten in the same year, but I said I was most proud of that score of all of them and I could hear in my sons voice that it meant a lot to him too.  What a wonderful moment as a mum.

I do feel so very lucky today, my boys mean everything to me and I just want everything good for them. I want to try and circumvent every bad experience and the thought that I can't do that does cause me anxiety.

Thank you to those of you who have managed to persevere to this point...I'm actually having an eye twitch now and jumpy vision, so I've probably gone on for too long now...I've got my second viewer on the house tomorrow...I don't know what's going on, is my house not as great as I think it is? Only two viewers in a week! I thought I'd be inundated!

Ciao for now! xxxx