We Have Moved

view of the front of the house

So pretty much we have been in our new house 6 months and I am just now officially posting about it!  I wish I stayed on top of blogging- it was so much easier when I posted more regularly.  Kudos to Ryan for talking and pushing me into having us see if we could qualify for a loan.  I was way super nervous, didn't know if it was right for our family, what would other people think, I love our small home- with my dad's custom crown molding, what would other people think.  I was mostly worried what other people would think- something I am still working on even at the age of 33.  Anyway we did qualify for a loan and so we started looking.  After putting an offer on a home that was priced VERY low- but needed a lot of work, our realtor informed us that someone on the seller's end was lining things out of the contract AFTER we had signed it.  We opted to pull out of that mess, and were a little discouraged.  In just a short time we found this beauty- freshly painted, new carpet, new tile, new hardware on the doors and in the bathrooms.  We couldn't believe how move in ready  it was.

from the front door looking in

*All of these pictures show the "staging furniture"- none of it belongs to us!*

my kitchen

I went out quite a bit with the realtor- without Ryan. Well the Friday before we left for Utah, my realtor showed me this house and one other, Ryan was able to meet us at the other house- but didn't see this one. A little after we got home Friday I realized I had left my folder at the second house we looked at. It had all sorts of personal info in it. So we called our realtor and she kindly came back out, Saturday morning, to open the house for us to be able to get our folder. She asked us if we wanted to take another look at the house and we said no, but would she mind taking us to the one Ryan wasn't able to see. I need to interject that Ryan likes to leave early, when going on trips. By meeting our realtor it was pushing our departure time later than we he was planning. When I looked at this home Friday I wasn't sure Ryan was going to like it, boy was I wrong- he took one look around and said we want it- let's put an offer in. Except that was going to be a little tricky, because we literally had the car packed and were planning to leave right then. Plus our realtor had another appt. she was leaving to. So Ryan and I went home quickly and called an Office Maxx in Flagstaff to see if it was possible to recieve a fax there. It was, so we headed on our way, our realtor drew up the offer, faxed to us in Flagstaff, we stopped there signed it, faxed it back to her and went on our way. We weren't sure how long it would take to hear if our offer was accepted. Well not very long when we got back from church Sunday(still in Utah on our trip) there was a voice mail letting us know our offer was accepted. WE WERE SO EXCITED!

from the back corner of the great room- looking over to the stairs

view from the back corner of the great room

So up at our friends timeshare the front office was very accomadating, sending super long faxes for us, notifying us when super long faxes came in.  I spent some of Monday on the phone asking questions about the forms we neeeded to fill out.  Ryan had to wire our earnest money over-the-phone, from the slopes.  It was kind of interesting needing to take care of all of that stuff while we were out of town.  When Ryan took our two oldest back home after Utah(see this post) we had the home inspection on Thursday.  Everything went very smoothly.  We got the keys Thursday April 14th- that day the kids and I cleaned.  It wasn't super dirty, but I just couldn't resist vacuuming every nook and cranny of a completely empty house.  On Friday, after preschool, I took the first van load of stuff over- I moved the entire preschool that weekend.  One of the days the next week I spent over two hours sweeping the walls and ceiling of the garage- it was totally covered with cobwebs and spiders- GROSS!  For about two weeks we were back and forth between the two houses, still sleeping at the old house, until we officially moved our big things the last weekend in April.  We are very happy here, still have a cul-de-sac, a park across the street, a huge space for my preschool classroom, snow birds to one side and no neighbors on the other side.  We feel truly blessed, and are very grateful to have found a home still in our ward, close to our friends and allowing us to keep our callings.

view of the upstairs loft from the back corner