On the road to buy a home

Everything is slowly falling into place for us to buy our first home. I'm so glad that God is allowing me to be patient during this process. While it's a little nerve-wracking to wait, I'm content in our apartment right now and in no real rush to just buy whatever looks like the best deal from an outsider perspective. God's timing is amazing and I know He'll show us which one is the right one. A few houses that we were interested in have either had accepted offers on them or are turning into short sales so we'll see what becomes of them. That's probably God's way of gently telling us that it wasn't meant for our family. 

Where we're at right now:

• We signed on our real estate agent so she officially works for us now. 
• All of our loan application paperwork is done and we've been pre-approved/approved for a loan of $XXX,444.00. I think for the official approval, the house has to fit certain criteria, but we're pretty much approved. We have a meeting to speak with a woman in 2 weeks to discuss the details on the particular loan that we're using.
• We had our first homebuyer education course last night. Only 2 more to go! The first session was about budgets and credit reports. It was pretty basic, but there was still some good information. We pay off all our credit cards every month so we didn't have to worry about any of the scenarios she gave, but there was one where you buy a $10 pizza and it ends up becoming a $40 pizza if you put it on your credit card and don't pay it off right away. Crazy!! We're looking forward to the other classes because they'll have people come in that are part of the homebuying processes (ie. Loan officer, Real Estate Agent, Home Insurance Agent, and an Inspector.)

That's all for now. We're hoping to look at a few more houses that have come on the market and also ones that have been on, but don't have any pictures to really go off of. Who knows? Maybe we'll have a house by next month!