flea - please share you experience, either here or message me. I'm hoping to be ready to do this on my own. I don't have a Mr. Suziq to discuss the process with and my past home buying experiences are YEARS ago and in hindsight I just let it happen instead of being a part of the process. Not how I want to go forward.

tl;dr - please keep sharing.

Agree with Suzi, but George Winston is an excellent choice! He once did a blurb for my husband's piano piece.

Liese, that makes me feel even more validated in my love for the musician who inspired me to take piano lessons during high school.

Suzi, I'm around if you have questions too. It's not an impossible process, but it requires attention to detail and lots of document gathering.

I will, however, tell you to under no circumstances, even attempt to open up any new lines of credit until you have closed on your house. It will cause you untold grief and teeth gnashing. Also don't make any drastic financial moves. They will question everything.

You and your father should also discuss how exactly he is going to help you. Is he co-signing or his he giving you money to use for a down payment? The first is much simpler, while the second would require a gift letter and could subject you to taxes on the amount above $14,000.

The thing to remember is that the bank will want to know the provenance of your money. They are hyper-aware of the potential for shadiness.

Yes, for example, when I signed an agreement to lease a trombone for Casper's school band last October, they apparently ran a credit report, so now the mortgage lender needs documentation (which I have, but still) of her $28-a-month trombone habit. Any credit reports pulled in the last 6 months they'll want documentation, on, they told me. And in my first mortgage, my stepfather gave us a gift of money, and we had to produce a letter from him documenting the gift.

It is a sad morning when you are able to sleep in an extra hour but forgot to turn the ringer off on your phone and get periodically woken by people trying to reach you first thing.

I am off to San Diego Sunday. Do we have people in San Diego? I'm down there for business so I don't know how much time I'll have. The best thing I did in 2014 was get a TSA precheck number.

Me! I am a person in San Diego! (A dark grey, lurky person this week, but still). To the best of my knowledge, the only 'ffista in San Diego.

I am currently fostering some orphaned baby field mice (looong story), so my schedule is a little tricky with feeding them every 4 hours or so, but I'd be happy to try to make something work, if possible!

The best thing I did in 2014 was get a TSA precheck number.

Oh hell yes. That's even more important than my elite frequent flyer status. I'm going to be sad when it's no longer predominantly limited to people who travel a lot.

And in my first mortgage, my stepfather gave us a gift of money, and we had to produce a letter from him documenting the gift.

When Rob and I bought the house in MD, we used the money we received as wedding gifts for the escrow funds. A lot of it was cash. I don't remember how we got out of proving that it was all gifts. The rest were checks, and I had to pull up the photocopies (glad I did that).

There's a Dental Convention in Boston this weekend, and I gave a dental student a complicated ride there, so we talked a lot about it and our mutual dental experiences.

I'm going to have dental insurance again (thank you Obamacare) so I may even seen a dentist again. Whee?

I just changed the inappropriate use of "literally" in an article, and I feel drunk with power.