Updates

Clara's vet appointment - this went fine - Clara weighs 21 pounds now and got her 3rd (and next to last) installment of puppy shots - the only problem was the harness I had bought to transport her in the car... I guess I put it a little too loose because as I was driving home from the vet she somehow slipped out of it. There wasn't much I could do about it, since I was driving, and I *thought* she was not getting into any trouble, but when I got home I realized that she had been quietly chewing through the charger for my GPS during the car ride : ( So add something to next week's to-do list- buy new GPS car charger.

Refinance - we managed to close on our refinance yesterday afternoon. There was a slight scramble because no one told us that we weren't supposed to pay December's mortgage, so we needed to scramble yesterday morning to make sure the lawyer could get the updated payoff amount /redo the settlement statement in time for the closing. The other slight issue was that the lawyer had scheduled us to close at 4pm yesterday but until I called yesterday morning about the payoff amount, no one had bothered to tell us that closing was actually scheduled, much less for that afternoon. Fortunately Joel and I were both able to get there, though we had to bring Ben with us since he doesn't go to J Team on Tuesday afternoons. Ben was very impressed with the lawyer's office, primarily because the lobby contained a coffee vending machine that also dispensed hot chocolate. So Ben treated himself to two cups of hot chocolate and played his DS while remarking that he wished Daddy were a lawyer so he could have a coffee machine at his office too.

Joel and I closed on a 7/1 ARM at 3.25 percent, the beauty of which is that a) it lowers our monthly mortgage payment by over $700 a month and b) even after the rate is allowed to adjust 7 years from now, by the time it would be able to hit its cap of 8.25% the payment then would STILL BE LESS than what we were paying before (because we paid down the mortgage a little bit with this refinance and also since we'll be paying more principal with the lower interest rate, 7 years from now the payment on 8.25% of the remaining principal would still be less than what we were paying on 6.5% previously). It will only take us 5 months to break even on the closing costs, so the only question we have been asking ourselves is why didn't we do this sooner??? Also, the timing allows us to skip January's mortgage payment, which is cool because I'll be on maternity leave, so the decreased expenses that month will be appreciated.

However, Ben did not find any of this exciting, only the coffee machine.