Officially "Homeless"

Well we did it, we got our whole house packed with about 8 hours to spare.  We had to be out of our house on Saturday at 9 AM.  Friday at 12:30 AM we were on our way to our hotel for the night...DONE!

Let me tell you a few things I learned about staying in a hotel with a dog:

1.  EVERY little noise makes him growl and/or bark.  He's not usually a barky dog.
2.  It doesn't matter how nice your hotel is, when you take your dog out to go potty there might be a "lady of the night" outside who thinks he's cute and when she bends over to pet him she shows all her goodies on both ends...
3.  Allowing the puppy to sleep with you in hopes that he won't bark/growl quite so much might work...a bit.
4.  Allowing the puppy to sleep with you keeps you super warm!
5.  Allowing the puppy to sleep with you means you are in the middle and he might take up more room that your husband on the bed.

Currently we are staying in Arvada, housesitting for some people from church.  Let me tell you how glorious my morning was today.

Woke up at 4:30 AM to shower.  Laid in bed while Ryan showered.  Got up at 5:15 to fix hair/do make-up.  Left house about 6, stopped to get gas and a sandwich (I HAD to have a cold lunch today because my class went to the zoo...no microwave...I forgot.) and still made it to school by 6:15!  Hooray for not living in Kansas for a while! 

Ryan's morning was probably a bit longer than mine...he'll live...it's only 3 weeks.  {Anyone got an extra bed we can have beginning October 24th?  We have a dog...}

and we're getting a house...

That's right, after about 7 weeks of trying to sell our house, and looking for houses we've found one!  Let me start at the beginning...

About this time last year I saw online that there were three houses for sale in the Wheatlands.  They were a bit out of our price range but I wanted to look at them anyway.  They were KB Built to order homes that had been built and for some reason or another the buyer had backed out so KB was trying to get rid of them.  Ryan was less than interested at the time so one Saturday I went by myself and fell in love with the Montgomery model.  I tried for a long time to get Ryan to go see it.  I was in love.  I wanted to make it our house for the next hundred years...

I took many people to my favorite house in Aurora to see the model.  Kathleen, Hannah, maybe Colleen?  and FINALLY after Kathleen told Ryan about how great the house was he was willing to come with me.  We looked.  He agreed, it was great!  There was one small large problem.  They wouldn't take contingencies and we had one...a house to sell.  We knew there was no way to commit to building a house in this market when selling our house was no guarantee.  We also weren't sure what we would do during the 120 to 150 days it took to build it.  So we did nothing.

Finally in July we got hooked up with a FABULOUS realtor, Lisa. {If you're buying or selling in Denver and need a realtor, call me.  She's amazing!!}  She's so fabulous she sold our house in 3 weeks!!!  {The house next to us has been on the market for a year now...}

Anyway, as we looked for houses we always compared all the houses we saw to the Montgomery.  Finally about 3-4 weeks ago we found a new house to compare all other houses to.  We started calling it the Doane house (because it was on Doane Street...clever?)  So we put an offer on it.  But it was a short sale which meant it was going to take a long time.  Meanwhile we have to be out of our house on October 1st {EEeeek!}.

Last week we had some great friends and family come help us pack up our belongings in three containers from Door to Door.  They all went home and we realized we needed more boxes.  So we headed to Sam's club to get said boxes.  As we drove that direction we saw signs that said "QUICK MOVE-INS AVAILABLE" above the KB Home signs.  We thought, maybe they will have the Montgomery avaiable.  So we called.  No answer.  We decided to just stop over there and see what they had for a "quick move-in".   

THEY HAD A MONTGOMERY!  

So we talked and looked, and talked some more.  We went home and made a Pro/Con list to compare the Doane house to the Montgomery.  In the end, the Montgomery won.  So we met Lisa on Sunday at the KB Sales office and signed a million pieces of paper to become owners of the house.

The house had been started by potential buyers who for whatever reason had to back out.  The frame work is up and the plumbing has been put in.  The previous buyers had put in over $70K in upgrades...in our dreams we can afford that...  So we are going to the design studio on Thursday to put in our own "up"{down?}grades.  We will do some upgrades and some standard things.  We're super excited.  We should be able to move in the week of Thanksgiving!!  Hooray for having a real plan!

The pictures below are Ryan & I changing out the "available" tag to a "SOLD" tag on the property map!  Yay!  The second picture has Ryan pointing at the location.  The third picture is a better shot of the cul-de-sac.  Huzzah for having a house...almost!! 

This Weekend

Did you hear?  Our house is officially UNDER CONTRACT!  Hooray!  Do you know what that means?  We have about 5 weeks to find a new house, pack our belongings, and hit the road.  So guess what we did this weekend?  Yup!  We looked at houses.

I got to say, I love our realtor.  She's great.  She's a lot of fun and I really feel like she's "got our back".  We met her at 9 AM Saturday morning to look for houses.  She had sent about 30 listings to us a few weeks ago.  Our task was to hit 6 houses.  We found out that 2 of the 6 we wanted to see were no longer available, but we picked up a few more along the way.  Here are the houses we saw, according to our thoughts on them:

1. Angry man's house with dog poop in living room.
1. These people weren't ready for us to be there and the man wasn't too happy about us being a bit early.  We rushed through and when we left Ryan asked me if I saw the poop on the living room floor.  I didn't, thank goodness!
2. 80's House
1. This is the house that Ryan said reminded him of one his parents had owned.  It was built in the 80's and it showed in many ways.  Updates had begun in the kitchen (which is what sold me in the pictures and made me think we needed to see it), but the rest of the house was far behind.
3. Dream House
1. This is the one we liked the best.  It seems to be perfect.  It's a short sale.  The agent still hasn't called our agent back to let us know where in the process the house is...we haven't got high hopes for it working out
4. Long house, tiny master
1. This was a ranch, we saw the For sale sign and Lisa called to set up the appointment.  It was set up with two long sides.  On one, a huge front room, a giant wall, kitchen, dining.  The other side (they were separated by stairs going downstairs) was tiny master, bathroom, bedroom, bedroom.
5. Very Religious & 3 Kitty House
1. This was one we saw as we were driving.  The owners were home.  They let us look.  They had not done much de-personalizing.  There were tons of photos everywhere!  There were also tons of Virgin Mary's and saints and crosses.  They were displayed in a manner that I felt was a little overboard/tacky.  (We had, up until we started packing away a lot of extras in our house, a cross wall.  I felt it was done nicely.  The crosses all had special meanings to us--our baptisms, our confirmations, our wedding, one made from Camp Luther wood, etc.  I think you can decorate with religious symbols nicely.  This house was a bit extreme.)  It had four bedrooms upstairs.  One was decorated perfectly for a baby.  (Winnie the Pooh--I LOVE Pooh!)
6. Schizophrenic House
1. This one had essentially 4 levels.  The "100% completed basement" was about 5 stairs down from the hallway into a giant den/bedroom area.  (This area was the greatest craft room I've ever seen.  I asked if we could request that the craft stuff stay...)  The main floor was the formal dining, the kitchen, a bathroom, a front room/bedroom, a laundry room.  The next level up was just the master bed & bath, the next level was a loft and two other bedrooms.

I don't remember much about the back yards and what not.  Most were pretty decent.  We realize that we are probably going to not have the great yard we currently have.  We're giving up space outside to gain space inside.

Tuesday we are going to go see two or three more houses.

Saturday night was spent entertaining the teachers at the annual Back to School BBQ at the Glover's.

I have tons of pictures from today.  I'll share them later this week.