What's so frustrating about the tax credit?

Let me clarify before I start my rant. I am BEYOND grateful for the first time homebuyer's tax credit...especially since we're buying a house this year!!! The problem comes in because it's almost a tease. In less than a year, we'll receive $8000. But we can't have it now.
We found a house that I think is perfect. It has the potential to be a house we live in forever. All the other houses we've found in our price range we will grow out of in a couple of years. This house could grow with us. It has a loft that we could make into a 4th bedroom if we needed. It has a huge backyard and it's in a great neighborhood. I truly feel our family would have a great life in this house.
Here's the problem. We made an offer last night and they countered today at 157. The highest we can go, according to our mortgage guy, is 152. I don't think they'll come down that far. I want (soooo badly) to go back with even just 154. Just 2-3K more than what we can do. That's where the tax credit teases us. We WILL HAVE 8K more dollars in less than a year. But we could use it more NOW!
We can't borrow a couple thousand dollars from the bank because that would then make less we could afford in the mortgage. But the money is RIGHT THERE, dangling in front of me. We just can't have it yet. Why can't I have some really rich relative that would loan us the money? We're good for it...you know next spring we'll get the 8K! Heck, I'd pay them interest if we could just have it NOW.
Yes, I know, I'm horrible at waiting. I am probably the most impatient person I know, so this isn't helping. I just emailed our mortgage guy to find out if we put down 6500 instead of the mandatory 3.5%, would that help us much? I doubt it will but I figured it was worth finding out.
Next month I also get the last installment of my sign-bonus. (I know, can you believe I've been working in the real world for almost a year now!!! Time flies!) But I don't want to count on that too much because taxes kill those bonuses. This will be a bigger installment, but the last couple have seemed pretty small after taxes so I don't want to get my hopes up.
What makes everything worse is being shot down. You start to invision yourself in the house...walking the dog at night and meeting neighbors and all of that. Looking out the window into the backyard yesterday I swear I saw my kids chasing the dog around. Like my brother said tonight, you can't help but do it. And you want to be thinking positively, but it makes it hurt even worse when it doesn't happen.
That'll be the end of my rant tonight. In the meantime, if you find a couple thousand dollars on the sidewalk, please keep us in mind. :-)

Thank you

I wanted to send out a worldwide (at least worldwide web!) thank you to a lady I don't know. Last week I was at the United Methodist Church in Greenwood for my mini marathon training. Before I started my run, I used the restroom. I was wearing my cold weather workout gear...fitted black pants and a very bright fuschia long sleeved top. Since I've been feeling very overweight lately, let's just say this isn't my favorite outfit as it's a running outfit, therefore skin-tight. Anyways, I was washing my hands (as EVERYONE should do!) when an woman walked in and said, "You look so cute in that outfit. I love the color of your top!" Granted, I was in Greenwood so I probably fit in a little more (sorry to any South-sider, I just had to throw that in), but regardless, she made me feel so good! It was nice to have someone compliment you when you were feeling so blah about yourself. Especially a perfect stranger. I think it shows you should do things like that...compliment strangers. It can totally change someone's day.

Open house dance

Click on the above link to see the dance my husband began performing for me and my mom today during an open house.

Another one bites the dust

This whole house-hunting thing is getting a little frustrating. As you know, we've been back and forth with what we thought was "the" house this past weekend. I thought this time we did everything right...we looked at it twice, looked into the age of the roof & appliances, researched the area, etc.
We went in with a somewhat low offer ($11K under their asking price) on Thursday night, wanted them to pay closing costs and wanted possession at closing. They came back on Saturday and had come down 4K from their asking price, said they'd pay closing costs, but didn't want to give up possession until 7 days after closing. We countered yesterday at 9K under their asking price and possession at closing. I told the realtor (Judy), that if the possession was the only thing holding up the sale I was willing to work with it. Say they pay us rent for 7 days or something. She said to stick with the possession at closing and a little lower price and make them pick one that they really want.
This afternoon they came back and the same price they offered Saturday, but now they want possession 4 days after closing and do not want to pay rent or any other fees.
Ummm...no. I am not paying insurance, mortgage, utilities, etc., for another family that I don't know to live in MY house for 4 days, no strings attached. There is way too much liability there! Plus, they're obviously not budging on the price. It's not that we don't want to go up to where they're asking, which actually can't.
I understand their thinking with the price. It's a good neighborhood, they're asking an awesome price for the house, we thought it was great. Obviously, just not great for us.
I know there's other houses out there and all that stuff, but it's a downer. This is the 3rd house now that hasn't worked out. We're not even being totally unrealistic! Oh well, back to the drawing board! On the bright side, I have tomorrow off AND I get to pick up the bear tonight!

Randoms

Wow, December was the last time I blogged?!? Yikes! What have my loyal followers been doing while I was away??? :-)

Happy Good Friday to all. Is that the right thing to say? Regardless, it's what I'm saying. I'm working today saving one life at a time with Albuterol while everyone else has the day off paid. It actually has been a hectic day. We had two codes this morning which were true codes. A lot of times you get there and someone just fell, etc. These were real they're-not-breathing-no-pulse-intubate-compressions type deals. Added a little excitement to my day! Although I have a new scrub top and it's made out of polyester and cotton instead of just cotton. According to the tag, it's a more comfortable fit. According to Shan, it doesn't breathe. Running flights of stairs to the codes was hard work and I sweat right through the shirt. Good thing it's a dark color so no one could tell!

We put an offer on a house yesterday. We want to be very excited but we're afraid it will fall through. A couple of weeks ago we put an offer on another house (which was wayyyy over-priced) and didn't really think it would work out...obviously it didn't. We weren't too bummed because it was a little far out in Fishers and honestly, I didn't "see" us in it. This house I see us in. That tends to make me a little more apprehensive about getting excited because we don't want to be disappointed if it doesn't work out.

Tomorrow night JM and I are going to an Egyptian restaurant with a group of people. I've never had Egyptian food and am very excited! Hopefully it's not a lot of lamb!!!

JM got his internship! He had an interview yesterday and they hired him on the spot! Smart people!!!

Back to work. Hopefully it will quiet down a bit. My legs are a little sore from all the running and stairs earlier!!!

Happy Easter weekend!