Well, it looks like we're back to square one on the house thing. The seller countered our offer of $25k below list price and she pays closing costs with $1500 off list price and we pay the closing costs; an offer which, now that I think about it, was kind of insulting. Of course, I'm sure she thought our offer was equally insulting, but for someone who hasn't stepped foot on her property long enough in 10 years to even complete the seller's disclosure, she sure is confident she'll get the ridiculous price she's asking. We'll see how that works out for her.

Thus commences the steep downgrade portion of this roller coaster ride. We will continue looking at houses and see if there's anything we feel at least as excited about. However, I think it's going to take us some time to recover from the emotional toll this has taken on us before we get back out there. While we could find a house we sort of like in our price range and sort of in an area we want to live, we both know that at this point it would just be a rebound house. And everyone knows you don't marry buy the rebound. Matt is out of town the rest of this week, so that will make it easier for us to put this on the back burner for a while and regroup. *sigh*