Sunday, May 3, 2015

A Week As BIG As Colorado!!

We've got a LOT of big changes coming down the pipeline in the next few weeks, and this week was chock-full of action and adventure. Jon's had the last few weeks of work off (at least with the military; he's still been putting in his hours and Day and Night) due to his "House Hunting" leave. 
I've had SO much fun with him being home all day!! Holy cow!! Work is such an inconvenience, ha, ha. I had a huge To-Do list and we got hardly any of it checked off, due to the fact that we were gym rats every morning, we went to lunch a couple of times, and he helped me run my daily errands-- but we did manage to get a little organizing done and visit the kids at school for lunch.
We hadn't told them beforehand, so they were both pretty surprised! I love getting to see them in their school environment that I hear so much about at home, but don't get to see that often myself.  
Tuesday afternoon I flew out to Denver, CO to check out the housing market and see if I could secure us a house in less than 24 hours. Man! What a challenge. The pressure was sure on! The housing market there has sort of exploded in the last year or so, and in a nutshell, it was a perfect lesson on Supply and Demand-- lots of demand, not so much supply. But we'll get to that later.... The first thing I did when I landed was a) Meet my mom (who'd flown in from Boise), and b) Find the nearest Cafe Rio for dinner. Priorities! 
After relishing a most delicious pork salad, we headed over to Jeremy and Kyelene's house in Parker and had a chance to catch up with them! Jeremy was nice enough to take my mom and I on a tour of where he and Jon will be combining forces come June-- at Clocktower Family Dental in Castle Rock, CO. Here's one of the new signs announcing the arrival of the other Dr. Cardon! Exciting!
And then the hunt began.... We met our realtor the next morning and began touring some of the listings she'd sent us online. Because there is such a limited amount of inventory in our price range (she said there's only about 2 weeks worth-- that's how fast things are selling!), the first couple of houses were AWFUL. I felt like crying. They looked nothing like the pictures, and most of them had disgusting pet stains all over the carpet and they were just plain filthy! We saw probably 6 or 7 houses before we stopped for lunch, and I'd hated all of them! I was starting to feel a little helpless, hopeless, frustrated, to say the least, but rejuvenated from lunch, we finished off the list of homes she'd made appointments with and started hitting up the new housing developments to see if they had any quick sales available. Nothing. Nada. Zilch! I was really beginning to think I'd either have to settle and put an offer on a house I really didn't like, or we'd have to find a temporary apartment, put our stuff in storage, and continue the search when we came in June. My mom had the bright idea (thank heavens she came!) to check the listings one last time, to see if anything new had come up since that morning, and there were actually 3 new ones. The first two looked about like everything else we'd seen and disliked, but one actually looked promising! Although it was already 4 p.m., and we'd just gotten back to Castle Rock and the house was in Parker, about 25 minutes away, our realtor made a last-minute appointment online and we headed over. Because of a mix-up the owner's were actually still at home when we got there, but they let us in to look around-- and to make a very long story a little bit shorter, it's the one we ended up making an offer on!!! Hooray!!! It was literally in the eleventh hour that we did it too. 

By far it was the nicest inside and out, had a great kitchen and backyard, awesome basement, and overall just a great feeling when I walked through, which was something that had been completely missing in every other home. I knew it was "the one." Once they accepted our offer we officially went "Under Contract," so we're hoping and praying everything goes smoothly with the inspection, and come June 19th @ 6 p.m. (our close date)-- we will be first time home owners!!   
 So, needless to say it was an incredibly exhausting day!! We got the offer in around 6 or 7 p.m. that night, with a deadline for them to respond by noon the next day. As you can imagine I was a nervous wreck until we heard they'd accepted. To take my mind off things, we met my old roommate from BYU, Laura and her husband Jeff, at Maggiano's in Englewood.
It was so fun to catch up with her and see how she's doing! We hadn't seen each other in about 7 years-- since Lucy was a baby, so it was a long overdue reunion. I loved hearing about what they liked about Colorado, and that combined with what Jeremy and Kylene had told us, it really helped make me excited to live in Colorado! 
I literally turned around the next morning and flew right back to North Carolina. We landed (no joke) in a lightning storm, and not even 30 seconds after unboarding the flight the lightning alarm (which indicates that lightning has struck within 3 miles) had gone off inside the airport and they completely shut the runway down. It was really freaky! That meant nobody was allowed outside to get our bags, so we had to wait at baggage claim for about 45 minutes until the storm passed. Phew! I guess I was really in need of Beach Weekend #2 yesterday!!
 The sun, the sand, the waves, you got it. It's my happy place. We left about 10:30 Saturday morning and headed straight for the beach!

 Ahhhhhh. This is living! The kids were a little antsier than last time so we didn't stay quite as long, but we got just enough sunshine and salt water to make it count. 
Instead of heading to the outlets like we usually do, we decided to play mini-golf at Mayday Golf. It was really fun! Myrtle Beach is famous for all of their themed, ultra-creative miniature golf courses and this is probably the 6th or 7th out of like 50 that we've tried.
The kids always get a kick out of this one when we drive by-- there are a couple of "crashed" airplanes that light up and make sounds while you're golfing and all the plants are very tropical. We felt like we'd crash landed in Hawaii!
 We didn't have anyone in front of or behind us, so we got to go at our own pace which was just right.
We decided to do Mellow Mushroom again for dinner because of all the restaurants in Myrtle Beach, this is literally the only one Colorado won't have when we get there! I think our brains might explode with all of the new dining options we'll get! But I will sure miss this pizza.
 After a quick dinner we loaded up the car and headed back home. 
 We even got to ride off into the sunset which was sooooo beautiful last night! The South really is lovely, and now that I can finally compare it to what Colorado looks like, I know I will miss all the trees, the green, and just the feeling of humidity and lushness that makes it the South. Instead of feeling peaceful and content driving home, I have to admit I felt really sad. Our time here is quickly coming to a close, and although there have been lots of ups and downs, I will miss the South and I'm glad we've gotten this time to explore it together!