New house firsts...

Will made me finally try out my new tub.  I always wanted to but was too tired to wait for it to fill up.  One evening while I was out running errands, he filled the tub up and lit the bathroom with candles so it was all ready for me to soak when I got home.  It was a dream!  I sure love this bathroom...and my husband.

Once I had my first bath in the big tub all the other kids wanted a turn too...I said no, except to Colter.  That kid gets everything...

This is supposed to be a video of the kids first trip down the stairs in a laundry basket...but it wont load properly.  Just so you know, they wore bike helmets...well, some of them did.  No one was injured...give us time.

Our first holiday in the new house was Thanksgiving...which we spent at Dave and Angela's house because...who am I kidding?  I wasn't ready to host a meal of that caliber a few weeks after moving.  

We did have leftovers in our new house...and that was awesome.

Adell got to be the first kid to have a proper birthday in the new house.  Cake, candles, presents....it all happened.

To the delight of most, the tradition of decorating the "birthday chair" with fabric scraps came back at our new house.  A year or more ago, I got rid of our two living room chairs and the "birthday chair" tradition struggled to survive as a "birthday couch".  At the new house, we have two lovely armchairs and the children are delighted to decorate them for birthdays again.  Yay?!

The ignored children...and a disaster...

Lorien and Wyatt had their birthdays in the middle of our moving mess.  It was also election day...so there were a lot of emotions.  I couldn't even watch the results.  Lorien got to pick dinner, Will had to work and I just did laundry.  The kids opened presents and I tried to ignore the TV while the most shocking and disappointing election new I could hear was announced.  I disliked both candidates but I dislike Trump more...I wrote in my presidential vote.  I couldn't pick either one...and a jar of sunburned mayonnaise is going to be our next president.  Ugh.  

Never mind.  That is not what I wanted to blog about.  The big kids turned 15 and 13.  Wyatt is officially a teenager and Lorien is one year closer to driving.  Very exciting (sort of)!

When it was Wyatt's turn to choose dinner he picked going out to eat (yay!).  We made a trip to the Black Bear Diner so he could have country fried steak.  Poor kid had to wait a full week after his birthday to have his birthday dinner but somehow he managed.  It was everything eating out with five kids presumes to be.  A little rowdy, lots of laughs and mediocre food (because you get what you pay for...even when paying for five kids).   

So that was Tuesday the 15th.  We moved over the weekend and life was predictably chaotic.  The kids still had a full week of school to attend before the Thanksgiving week off.  We've been living in and out of boxes for almost a whole month now and it makes everyone stressed out.  Not to mention, we were missing a part to hook up our new washer and dryer so we were all running out of clean clothes.  We still had access to our previous home and washer and dryer so I had done a load or two but it wasn't nearly enough to keep up with seven people's daily offerings to the dirty laundry gods.  

Wednesday was a day of unpacking and normal we-just-moved busyness.  Will worked from the east bay and took Lorien to wrestling practice.  Did I not mention Lorien is on the high school wrestling team yet?  Well, that deserves its own post so look for that in a bit.  Will and Lorien came home, I tried to shovel food down the kid's throats before they had to leave for mutual.  Wyatt was getting a ride from our friends, the Smiths.  Ann came a little early to pick up Wyatt and see the new house.  As I walked her around each room downstairs she said "Uh, is that water?" pointing to a huge puddle pooling in the hall and family room floor.  I started freaking out!  Yes, it was water...and even worse, it was toilet water!  Hot toilet water!?  I tried to turn off the water to the toilet but hot toilet water kept pouring out.  

Ann frantically helped me spread beach towels around (thank heavens I knew where those were!).  I started screaming to Will who was in the shower (as was Lorien--post wrestling work out).  Ann scooped up all of my kids and headed out the door (God bless Saint Ann).  Will came out of the shower and figured out that the reason the toilet water was hot was because it was from his shower and Lorien's shower.  We had a sewage back up.  AWESOME!  Once he got Lorien to shut off her water the deluge stopped.  But the floors were still soaked with sewer water.  Ugh.

So we've been in our house for less than five days and already had a major disaster!  Overflowing toilets are clearly classified as a major disaster.  FEMA has to be called in.  

Thankfully, we had sprung for the new home buyers insurance.  Which covers anything plumbing or electrical for the first year.  So I made a call to our realtor at 8:00 pm on a Wednesday night...probably not a good sign.  She was amazing and said she would sort it all out.  It is a disaster!

**Post edit** 11/20/2017 It took a few days for a plumber to come out to the house.  In that time we didn't run the water at all.  For some reason, even though we had an overflow "mushroom" in the yard the blocked pipe caused the overflow to happen in the downstairs toilet.  Likely because of gravity...the downstairs toilet is lower than the overflow "mushroom".  Anyway, the plumber had to cut off the pipes in the downstairs bathroom sink to run an auger through.  He broke up a bunch of debris blocking the pipe and discovered the contractors who renovated the house used the drains as trash bins.  There were nails, screws, dried grout, hunks of plaster, all kinds of renovation garbage blocking the pipes.  He cleaned out as much as he could but we will likely have this problem again.  If they dumped grout down the drains it probably hardened in places and will cause a backup.  So annoying!

**post, post edit** it did happen again.  Over Christmas.  We couldn't get anyone out to fix it.  Thankfully, the overflow "mushroom" worked and it backed up into the front yard...but still.  Will ended up going to buy a 50 ft snake and clearing the blockage himself.  We are trying to find someone to come out with a camera to find where the blockage is exactly and see if it can be removed.  Bummer.

Moving weekend...

It's moving day!  It's moving day!  Time to round up all of your crap put it in a truck and unload it at the new place.  In the days and weeks leading up to the move, lots of my lady friends came over and helped to put stuff in boxes.  Saturday, Will organized all of the menfolk to come and do all of the heavy lifting.  I think Mormon moves are one of the great miracles in my life.  As a married couple, Will and I have moved eleven times (I think) and people from church have moved us 9 of those times.  It is amazing...people just show up and start hauling your crap.  It can happen very quickly.  I think our record is two hours for loading up at an old house and getting fully unloaded at a new house.  Will has helped families move countless times and he is an organizational wizard.  He knows how to get us all packed before help arrives so the processes is easier.

After we got all of the major stuff done (moving furniture and boxes).  I went back to the old house to tie up a few loose ends.  There were a couple of curtains to take down and some loose stuff in the yard and garage that didn't make it onto the truck.  It took me a few hours to clean and gather stuff before heading over to the new house.  One of the last things I grabbed was this sign that has been on our bedroom door for years.  I think Clare made it for Will when he was on a business trip.

 

Sunday after church we took the kids back to the empty house.  We also delivered a little bag of going away goodies to our neighbors to thank them for being so good to us.  Truthfully, we have at the best neighbors!  I am going to miss them more than anything.  After our unpleasant neighbor experience in the apartment, our neighbors on Cambrian way were a continual blessing.

 

Monday morning Colter and I went back to do the very last bit of clean up and leave the house open for our house cleaner to come do a deep clean.  I get emotional every time we move out of a house.  It is hard to leave memories and places where family magic happened.  I was sad about leaving this house but not as sad as I have been before.  I think the excitement of finally owning our own home overshadowed any sorrow I had.  Cambrian way was a darling home for our family for five years.  That is the longest we have ever lived in one place.  Second only to Redwood City where we lived for four years.  Colter came home as a new baby to Cambrian Way and it is the only house he and Adell have memories from.  A lot of growing up and love happened there and we will miss a lot of things about Cambrian Way.  Thanks for the memories!

However, we are so happy to have our own house.  We love, love, love it!  Now to get unpacked and settled...that should take a while.

A few pictures before we filled it up...

The day after we had our offer accepted we took the kids over to the house.  Wyatt and Colter had actually walked through it with me and Will back in the summer.  Colter didn't remember a thing but Wyatt did.  

We took a million pictures and measurements.  We wanted to draw up plans to place furniture and figure out where stuff would go before moving day.  

The kids ran all over the place, claiming rooms and being generally awed over the awesomeness of the house.  

Lorien's friends from down the street walked over to check the place out and say hello to their new neighbors.

Colter and Adell commented on the depth of the tub..."Hey, I could drown in this thing!"  A reassuring thought if ever I've heard one.

We scoped out the yard and made plans for the trampoline and garden.

This is our lovely Realtor, Bonnie.  She is also our across the street neighbor.  She has been like a Grandmother to our kids and we have loved being her neighbor for the last five years.  Actually, we love all of our neighbors.  Our neighbors is the first thing we know we will miss when we move.  

Welcome to our house...

It really happened!  We actually bought a house!  I still cannot believe it...I don't know if I will ever believe it.

The story is long and I want to tell it.  So buckle up.  Or just skip this post all together.

Last July (2015).  I started working at Complete Solar for Will.  My job was to compile a series of reports for the executive team every day.  It was fairly straight forward and I was able to take a few hours every day to put together the reports and answer questions for the executive team about how different parts of the company were preforming.  I took the job in hopes of using whatever income I did to pay off our credit cards.  There were several times in our marriage where we needed to live off credit cards or use them to supplement our income.  When Will was in business school, when Will was starting one company or another...or that whole year he had no job and was trying to start Complete Solar.  Times like those...  While we didn't have an unmanageable amount of debt we were slow to pay it off.  We knew it would take a concentrated effort to get the cards payed off and just have student load debt to deal with.  We were also confident that by paying off our credit cards we would be able to buy a house.

FOR REAL!

We had saved some money and Will's income was sufficient.  So I started working and we started paying off credit cards.  Some months we used my extra income for fun things...like Christmas.  But for the most part, we paid off debt.  For a year, we watched our credit debt shrink and got hopeful.  In April, we heard one of our "normal" friends bought a house.  By "normal" I mean, a one income family where they didn't have a large gift of money or an employer who offered home buying support.  They just worked hard, saved money and bought a house.  We were floored!  As far as we knew, the only way to buy a house around here was to get an incredibly generous gift from family or work with your employer to secure permanent housing.  (Or hit the workplace lottery and cash out when your company went public...but we don't personally know many people who did that).  After talking with these friends we were even more encouraged.

WE COULD REALLY BUY A HOUSE!

We continued to save and pay off debt over the summer and by the end of the summer we started looking at houses to buy.  We contacted our neighbor across the street and asked her to be our realtor.  She was pretty great.  She showed us a few houses and we tried our best to continue to be hopeful.  The closest we came was just as school was starting (back in the middle of August).  We walked through a house that was in the best location and big enough for our family...it just needed a lot of work.  We put an offer in but lost out.  So the search continued.  We worked with our lender to finalize loan details and kept looking.

All this time I kept a secret flame for a house that had come on the market way back in April.  The house had been bought by a flipper from an origional owner.  The flipper had gutted the whole house and put it on the market.  The house went pending pretty quickly in May.  Over the summer, I think it was in July, the house came back on the market.  Apparently, the first buyers were from out of state and got cold feet about buying a house that didn't have the most cutting edge earthquake technology.  I walked through the house in July and asked the agent to keep me posted on what happened with the house.  We still hadn't even started the lending process so I knew we weren't really in the running.  Sure enough, the house went pending again.  I was bummed but knew there wasn't much I could do.

Two weeks later, the house fell out of escrow and was back on the market.  It sat on the market all summer long.  I think it went pending one more time but fell out quickly.  Finally, in September, we had all of our financing in place and were ready to put an offer in.  As our agent was working on the offer she found out the seller had just accepted another offer and the house wasn't available any more.  I was super bummed this time!  I thought for sure the house was meant for us.

So we kept looking.  There weren't a lot of houses on the market and even fewer that would fit our family and were in our price range.  I'm not going to mention what our price range was because it is ludicrous to think about spending that much money on a house that doesn't come with a butler.  We considered a house that was too small but in our price range but it sold quickly.  We got really serious about the two houses: a big house that needed a ton of work and a tiny house that didn't need much work with a great yard but backed onto the freeway.  During this period of time our lender tried to change the terms of our loan that would have effectively made it impossible to buy a house.  My husband, the super negotiator, got them to change the terms back.  At one point when I was freaking out he said: "Don't worry this is only the fourth of fifth most stressful deal I've ever had to put together."  He is a pro.

So October rolled around and I noticed that the for sale sign was still out at the flipped house.  I kept looking on Zillow and Redfin a houses that we missed out on to find out how much we were out bid by.  This flipped house was not showing up as sold.  So I finally called the listing agent.  I also called the listing agent on the really big house that needed a ton of work because it wasn't showing up as sold on Zillow either.  That house was sold...

The agent for the flipped house said: "Funny you should call today.  The house has fallen out of escrow again and the seller is really frustrated.  He isn't sure if he is going to put it back up for sale, rent it or trade it to another seller."  We talked for a few minutes about what it would take for Will and I to buy the home and I said I would have our agent call him later.

I had loved this house from the very beginning.  It was beautifully renovated inside and with it sitting unsold for so long the price had come down quite a bit.  The biggest selling feature for me was a gigantic soaking tub in the master bathroom.  It looked quite luxurious.  The location, while on a busier street, would be an easy walk for middle school kids.  We also would be right down the street from some of Lorien's friends from her home school year.  The price, while lower, was still a little out of our reach.  We walked through the house one more time and then looked at two other houses in the same price range.  One was big, close to the freeway and had a big back yard...but it needed a lot of work.  It had been an ill-used rental and showed it.  Kitchen cupboards were ripped off, one toilet had an out of order sign on it.  The back yard was a wreck.  The other house was old but charming.  It had been cared for by original owners.  It needed work but was in livable condition.  It was at the end of a cul de sac and had a gigantic yard.  The biggest draw back...it only had three small bedrooms.  Really, too small for our family of seven.  The flipped house really was the very best choice and I LOVED that house.  So we put in an offer Thursday night.

Friday, no word.  Saturday, no word.  Sunday...nothing!  We were kind of going crazy.  This house had been on the market for six months.  Why weren't they jumping at the offer?  We did hear from the seller's agent on Sunday, apologizing that the seller was hard to get a hold of on the weekend.  We weren't really buying it.  It felt like maybe the seller's agent was shopping our offer around.  Contacting other people who had showed an interest and seeing if he could get another offer.  Sure enough, Monday we heard: Sorry, we have another offer for full price (our offer was 20 grand lower).  If you can come up above asking price it's yours.

I was so mad!  No, we couldn't come up above asking!  We were paying the maximum we could!  We were out.  After crying really hard for the umteenth time during this whole price I shook it off.  I had always felt confident that when we were ready to buy a house, there would be a house for us to buy.  It just wasn't this one...or any of the other houses we had tried to get and lost out on.

Two days later, I think it was a Wednesday, I got a call from our realtor.  "You are not going to believe this...the other buyer backed out again."  I was floored!  This house really was meant for us?!  I talked to Will and our agent.  The seller wanted us to come up by a 10 thousand dollars.  Will negotiated with our lender (again) and was able to come up to the price the seller would take.  We resubmitted our offer and waited.

Meanwhile, life was in full swing for our family.  It was homecoming week for Lorien at the high school.  Wyatt had cross country practice and meets.  Clare and Adell started ShowBiz.  Life was crazy.  On Saturday the 15th I took Lorien out dress shopping for her homecoming dress.  Then I took Adell out shopping for halloween costume stuff.  While Adell and I were driving down to the thrift store, I got the text from our realtor: our offer was officially accepted!  IT WAS HAPPENING!

Naturally, I burst into tears again.  It was unbelievable.  The next few weeks were also crazy.  Not only did life continue at a frenzied pace but we were doing all of the crud we needed to close on our house.  I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.  The "never mind, you cannot buy this house" shoe.  It never happened.  We signed all of the closing documents on Tuesday and the loan and title posted on November 10th.

WE ARE HOMEOWNERS!

With the help of friends and family we moved on Saturday.  We are in our new, lovely, fantastic house.  It is a mess of boxes and stuff but it is ours and we love it!