House!

Well, it happened so quickly it still hasn't quite sunk in. On April 1st we met with a banker about getting preapproved for a home loan. We asked him if he thought it was reasonable for us to try to get into contract on a house by the end of the month (to receive the tax credit). He replied, "Oh, defintely." We thought that it might be a stretch. We had been researching prices and procedures for months...and we were finally ready to start looking. One week later we met with our Realtors (who our banker recommended and have been just fantastic) and started looking at houses. Three days and about 30 houses later, we made an offer on a home. Today we had our inspection (which went well--no major problems). We are slated to close on June 1st. I'm so excited to get into our house and have a garage and room to put everything away and our very own laundry!

What the crap, Ed!

Back in February when we were being forecasted to get yet another dumping of snow....the local sports guy sat in stunned amazement and uttered these words to the local weather guy: "What the crap, Ed!" Of course, I about died of laughter...because it was just what we were all thinking.

Today, I sit typing wearing a tank top and wondering how lame it would be if I turned on the air conditioning on the first of April. The weather channel's website puts our current temperature at 87, though the big two local news stations say it's 84 degrees. There has been no talk of breaking record highs. Yesterday our official high temp was 82 degrees. I thought, this must be a record high for March...has to be. Little did this Northern girl know...that nope, this is not all that weird for spring time in Iowa...seriously.

So lets look at some of these numbers.

• The earliest (in the year) record high of 70 degrees is on February 12th. The record low on that day is -21 degrees. (Just for a bit of reference--the record high in Fargo, ND on February 12th is 43 degrees.)
• The earliest record high of 80 degrees is on March 3rd. The record low that day is a slightly less impressive -6.
• The earliest record high of 90 degrees in on March 29th.
• The highest record temperature in West Des Moines is 110 degrees. Lowest record temperature is -30.

So apparently this little heat wave we're having, is not all that impressive. Though...if the weather channel's current temperature is deemed accurate, we've just tied our record high for the day. Less than two weeks ago--it snowed 6 inches.