Michael and Revel’s Cranberry Blog

This past Sunday on January 25th, Grampy Gilmore passed away.  My grandfather was an amazing man. He gave the best hugs in world and was always delighted to see his grandchildren. The last couple years since my grandmother passed away I was able to spend much more time with him. My parents had him over for dinner every Sunday,  a time in which he told stories of his childhood, of being in the war, and of cranberry growers he knew. He always made us laugh and never had a negative thing to say about anyone. I will miss him terribly.

My grandparents on their wedding day.

Click here to read a detailed obituary.

So we will not be closing on our new house on Jan 29th. The bank for the buyer of our house is moving slowly and we still don’t have a commitment from them on the financing. We SHOULD know sometime early next week, but it was getting pretty obvious that the Jan 29th deadline was not going to be realistic. Fortunately, everyone (buyer of our house, seller of the new house) agree to extend the date. So now the new closing date is Feb 6th. Of course I had to make calls to all the utilities and moving truck and insurance to update them, but if everything goes thru on the 6th, it will be worth it!

So keep praying for us. It’s so close we can taste it, but it’s not here yet.

If you’ve been keeping up with the Cotsford’s recently, you know that we are working on selling our house and buying a new one. Here is the latest update. Look here for prior updates.

We got the P&S signed for the new house we are buying, which allowed us to lock in our mortgage rate. Very happy about that and now the bank is doing what they need to do to get us ready for the Jan 29th clsoing. On the sale of our house, we are still waiting to hear from the buyer’s bank that everything is set for the financing. We were expecting to know by last Thursday, but they asked for an extension and we didn’t have much choice but to agree. So the new date is Jan 23rd (this Friday). This is essentially the last hurdle for us and if that is all set we believe all will go thru as planned.

It’s starting to feel real close and we’re trying to not get too excited (seeing as nothing is for sure yet), but we know that in less then two weeks we may be in our new house!

Thanks for all the prayers and we’ll keep you posted. Once it’s a sure thing we’ll definately be posting pictures.

Charlotte Atwood Carr decided to surprise the world with an early delivery on December 23, 2008. She spent several weeks in ICU while she gained some weight. Baby Carr is now home (all 5 lbs and 7 ounces). Below are a few pictures that her family took a few days ago. She is a sweetheart!

Precious Charlotte.

Charlotte rests in the safe haven of her dad’s (John) arms.

My Aunt Susan and Uncle Ben, Charlotte’s grandparents, adorn her with love.

Baby Carr having quiet time with grampa.

The new mom, my cousin Alison, with her darling Charlotte.

Auntie Abbie and Grandma… Charlotte, you are one lucky girl!

My brother, Cass, attends Mass Maritime Academy where he is studying marine engineering. As part of his study he is required to spend a certain amount of time out on the ocean training on a ship. Just before Christmas he boarded the SS Blue Ridge and began his training. Over the last couple weeks the ship made its way up the Atlantic towards New England. Last week my parents were able to stop by and see Cass while the ship was docked in Providence, Rhode Island. Here are a few pictures my mom took while they visited:

Cass with the tanker’s chief engineer.

Cass in the control room overlooking the engineer room that is three stories deep.

Just after celebrating our entrance into 2009, Michael and I took advantage of our time off from work and drove into Boston for the day. We walked around Boston Common, Faneuil Hall, and the North End. Nothing too exciting happened but we did tour the Old North Church and picked up a few sweets at Mike’s Pastry.

for more pics click here.

Every year since forever, we’ve (my family and the Culter family) celebrated Christmas Eve together. Unfortunately, Cass wasn’t able to join us due to being called to his sea term just before Christmas. Jeff, Laura and Ada were also missed as they were out in the Midwest visiting with Jeff’s side of the family. Still we had an enjoyable, relaxing evening of food and gifts before heading out to the Christmas Eve service at which my parents sang in the choir.

The Cutler Family: Uncle Rich, Matthew, and Aunt Gini.

for more pics click here.

My dear sweet hubby came home the other night with a beautiful arrangement of flowers as we celebrated our fourth month of marriage.

So everything has been moving in the right direction for our house hunt. In my previous post, I mentioned that we had an offer for our house in Milford. Since then we have had the inspection, it went fine (a few minor issues which we settled for a $500 price reduction – no big deal) and have signed the P&S (In Massachusetts, the Purchase and Sale agreement is the document that states all the details of a home sale and is where lawyers can come in and add any special conditions or requirements to protect the buyer/seller).  So now the buyer’s bank will do a assessment of the house value and as long as the value is above the purchase price, we should be all set for a sale on Jan 29th. We are cautiously optimistic that this is all set (keep on praying!).

For the purchase of our new home, we also did an inspection and it mostly went well. We did find a couple major issues including a pipe in one bathroom that was leaking into the first floor and the oil heater is running hot. The seller knows about this and has promised to fix them before we sign the P&S, which if all goes well is this Wednesday. As soon as we have a signed P&S we can lock in an interest rate with the bank, so I’m hoping the rates stay low for another few days!   The plan is the close on this house the same day as the closing of our current house.

That’s all the news for now. Praise God for everything that has gone well so far and thank you for all your continued prayers!