Slumber Parties and Houses

Last night we had a slumber party for the Young Women and YW leaders in our ward. It's the first slumber party I've been to in quite awhile, I must say, and I had such a great time! We talked about so many things, played games, told stories, and generally laughed and had a great time. I am very sad to have to be leaving these girls soon, as I've gotten to love them all so much. This will be the hardest ward to leave out of all the wards we've been in and out of in the last 4 years. It's the oldest, kindest, more serving ward I've ever been in.

There were a couple girls that were tough at first and I didn't think cared for me too much, but it seems that part of this calling is taking the time to really get to know the girls individually, and not just the Mia Maids which is where my calling is specifically. Part of the reason that I have the feelings of people laughing at me is because of my self-consciousness in certain areas of my life, so when people are laughing around me, I usually assume they're laughing at me (which used to be true, unfortunately). Of course this is silly and even slightly conceited to think that people are talking about ME, but because of my past school years I have a hard time giving that notion up completely, but it's getting a little better with time.

So, an update on what's going on. We put an offer in on a house in Fresno. It's about 1900 sq. feet, has 5 bedrooms, on a large lot with a pool/spa (the spa doesn't really matter to me, but if it's there, hey, why not). However, the bank who owns the house (Indymac Bank) recently (as in yesterday) "imploded" (our realtor's word). Apparently in order to try to salvage their bank from the feds they laid off half of their employees. I'm not really sure what that means for us, other than that everything will probably slow down, which is really okay with me. I really want to see the house once more in person before we don't have a chance to withdraw our offer. So...wish us luck! I'm not sure what will happen, but I'll keep you posted. The one other thing that may be in our favor with this bank going half belly-up is that we no longer have to have a pre-approval through the bank who owns the house, but through any "known" lender. The reason this is probably beneficial for us is that we were initially pre-approved by Countrywide for $250,000, but when we went to get pre-approved from this bank to make an offer on this house the amount was only $205,000...big difference huh? So, maybe the larger number will work in our favor. We shall see what happens. In any case, we only have 10 days left! Woohoo!