Moving

This is going to be a long post. I'm just not good at giving a condensed version of a story. I try. I do.
But anyways....

This is actually happening... We are moving. Things did work out with buying a house and it surprises me a little bit how quickly it did. Turns out in July, right about the same time we started thinking about looking at homes again, our home was just being put on the market. I can't remember why it all started but....it's interesting how it all played out and how one thing led to another.

A little more of our house hunting journey...

Basement--Something like this

March 2012, we looked at our first home. We weren't ready to buy a home and couldn't afford it then, but we still wanted to look at this particular home. House of Horrors. Our realtor was so cool about it, but I bet on the inside she was thinking we were insane for even taking her to that home. I am telling you though, the yard would have been AWESOME! ...(In our dreams) we were going to put a horse in the little corral to the right of the home, fix up the outside, and plant pretty flowers around the home....and play basketball in the cool little corner of the lot where there was a little court and hoop. It was cute! And the pictures weren't too bad on the internet of the inside. We quickly found out when we walked in, why this home was only about $90,000 for how much space there was. Pictures were deceiving... Holes everywhere, weak door frames, unfinished basement, like....how did anyone ever stay down there? The basement was so weird. It had two bedrooms of to the side that were just full of dirt & rocks still. Creepy, creepy basement. And the toilets.....that part my Mother-In-Law discovered.....oh, not good.
And that dream died quite right away, like after stepping into the first room, but for curiousity, we continued looking through, I guess.


From then we mostly just drove through neighborhoods and glanced at the houses from the outside...but they sold before we could take our realtor inside or we just didn't like them enough. Then in August of last year we found a home that we really liked...I wrote about that one before. Didn't get it. Blah, blah, sad day...over it now. Moved into our apartment....and thought about buying a home very little. Still in the back of our minds, but we just (or at least I) didn't ever feel like it was time to look or that we were being pushed in that direction.

In July though, for reasons I can't remember, we started thinking about homes again. And maybe, we thought, we should just check out our price range. We did kind of like some townhomes...(that also happened to be in our ward boundaries, which was a plus, since we like our ward..)
So we got pre-approved. Then we visited with an agent in one of those model townhomes and were pointed in the direction of a cute available townhome.  How can I make this story short?... Agent was not easy to reach the next day. Our realtor could not find the specific home that we had looked through (and liked pretty well) on any listings...but there was a different townhome available. So, we looked through the other townhome and there were a few things that I couldn't quite get over...smaller piece of grass outside of home and also it was right in front of a road, unlike the other that was facing a path, and then more grass and lots for other future townhomes (more grass for baby to crawl/walk). So we couldn't really pull the trigger fast enough and it was pending about the next day..

Townhome Kitchen

Our realtor didn't quite understand what I liked so much about those townhomes, she felt like we needed something else....a bigger yard being one of those things. I just loved looking at new pretty kitchens and these townhomes had that.

Anyways, she sent us over more homes to look through. Found one that we kind of liked.....neighborhood was alright, house was pretty good....but I wasn't so in love or confident in it that we had to put an offer in right away. We went on a trip to Utah for a few days and when we came back we thought maybe we wanted to take another look at it. We wanted to do a better little inspection on the home and get a real feel for it...but we both thought we would probably put an offer on it after we looked through it again. Our realitor was busy for a couple of days and when she was available and we were ready to go see the house she found out it was no longer available as of just hours earlier. Discouraged again. Tired of looking through so-so homes and not being completely confident in making a decision... I wasn't sure we even needed to keep looking, remember, we had about 8 months left on our apartment lease. Cade thought we did need to keep looking. So I drove through more neighborhoods and continued to search zillow. And then probably a few days later while Cade was at work I looked up a location that we hadn't really thought about in awhile. Found two homes that I liked....one was a short sale and the other was not. I liked the pictures of the short sale more but wanted to look through both homes. I thought though, the short sale was meant to be....short sales take time and we had time..I also had a number in the my head and I thought this would be a good number to offer for that home. We drove through the neighborhood and past the houses and liked what we saw....I think the next day we had our Realitor take us to see them.

Our entrance...this is all you get right now!

The first home we walked through is now, OUR HOME. (The "for sale" home). I LOVED it immediately and pretty much was sold. It was cute and warm and clean and "us". The pictures on zillow didn't do this house justice. I wanted it. And without really getting Cade's opinion I was blurting out talk of offers. (Don't worry though, he's all in and excited too..) The number I had for the short sale home now made a lot more sense for this home. We thought we would give the short sale a look still though. ..It wasn't good. Pictures were a lot better for that house than what it did look like really. And so we left that house confident in our decision for the first home and ready to put our offer in that evening. For the first time, I was pretty sure we were getting the house. And I also really loved this home, it felt like ours more than any others had. After all the houses on the internet and sad neighborhoods, I thought we would have to settle, but am so happy that I don't feel like we did. Cade will have a small commute to work...but we can handle that. We're so excited! Closing next week! Yay!
And thanks to our realtor for helping us through all of this. Meridian, Boise, Kuna & Nampa she followed us to! She was AWESOME!

Dog can't hide from her anywhere!

Unpacking-Cute...but not helpful:)