The Move is OVER!

Things I'm thankful for after this whole moving ordeal:

• Central air conditioning
• 2-car Garage
  
• Wonderful, friendly new neighbors
• Fenced-in back yard
• Eli's bedroom and the other two bedrooms are upstairs and QUIET - and have soft carpet
  
• Helpful friends and family
  
• Home phone and internet works again

Things that I could have lived without through this whole moving ordeal:

• CRANKY, unhelpful old neighbors
• Getting yelled at for parking the moving truck in the alley (at our condo)
  
• Home phone being turned off for two days/using up all of my cell minutes
• U-Haul being incompetent, not having the truck that we reserved and confirmed in advance...thus making Thursday night's move WAY stressful and long (we had to store half of our stuff in a friend's garage overnight)
  
• Staying up WAY too late every night last week and now feeling sick as a result (Ben too)
  

The little things that make me smile in our new place:

• the ice maker
• the washer/dryer
• my craft room in the basement
• having more space
• watching Eli attempt to go up and down the stairs
• having an eating nook off of the kitchen
• putting Eli to bed upstairs and not having to tiptoe while he's asleep
• not worrying about when I can use the garbage disposal
• and last but not least... no more annoying dog barking, running, and dropping things above my head!
  

I'll post pictures once we're more unpacked... it is slow-going and while we are starting to get things out of boxes, we're not going very fast since we're still so tired from all of this. Our neighbors have been SO friendly - the ones next door brought over cookies from my favorite bakery on the day we moved in. On Saturday, more neighbors came over and said hi/introduced themselves. We've also met the neighbors that share the alley with us and they are all super friendly and have young kids. We feel really lucky to be around so many nice people and to hopefully get settled in our new place soon!

We're Under Contract!!!! And Other News too...

Whoo hoo! I am so thrilled to say we are officially under contract on the house! This has definitely been a more drama-filled experience than I would have liked, but hopefully things will go smoothly from here. I am completely exhausted from the last two months filled with getting our condo ready to sell, going under contract, losing the house we really wanted, searching like crazy for something else, and finally deciding on this one.

We basically were at the point where we had seen every house in this area that we could afford (and some we could not afford) and the options weren't great. But when this one dropped in price, we felt great about it and we'll be in there next month! Holy moly is all I can say. This is the house that all of the major things have been updated - it has brand new central air (I can't wait), new house humidifier, new water heater, new boiler, new carpet upstairs, refinished hardwood floors, new granite kitchen counter, newer roof, new backyard deck, patio and walkway, etc.

This is the complete OPPOSITE of the house we originally wanted, with the room in the basement full of dirt :) I am thrilled we won't have to live through any major remodeling projects in the beginning and it will be so comfortable and fun.

Here are some pictures of the house:

Living Room w/ a wood-burning fireplace and built-ins

Galley kitchen with a small eating nook at the end (with cute built-ins too)

Dining Room

Family Room (this is a HUGE deal for us - many of the older homes in our price range just had one main living space, and usually that was pretty tiny. We love having a separate family room in the back of the house)

View of the back of the house w/ a pergola deck and nice patio area (it has a side door as well to go in from the backyard)

Another view of the back yard - it has a 2-car garage on an alley, small shed, and playset in a nice fenced-in space. Eli is going to be in HEAVEN! And so am I.

And since I'm sharing our big news, I figured I would include the other part of our craziness - I'm pregnant and due January 25th. Eli and baby #2 will be 20 months apart (I'm trying not to not to stress about how close they'll be) and while it will probably nuts in the beginning, they can hopefully be good friends and it will be great. This was a bit of a surprise, and was the reason we suddenly decided to sell now instead of in the spring. There was no way another baby could fit well into our compact condo (especially since Eli is a VERY Sensitive Sleeper) and it would be hard to sell next year with even more stuff in here. So there you go! I'm 12 weeks prego, feeling a little queasy and tired all the time, but so grateful for our many blessings.

Free Slurpee Day - 7-11-08

Go get a free slurpee at 7-Eleven today! Yum.

On a different note, remember that house I had mentioned two weeks ago that was nicely updated and wouldn't need any immediate work? The sellers dropped the price yesterday and we put an offer in. Unfortunately, they seem a little bugged with our offer, but we think it's reasonable based on the new price (it was less than 10% below the new asking price - come on people! The problem is they bought this place two years ago and dumped a ton of money into it - their loss, hopefully our gain). We're still waiting to get a counter offer, so cross your fingers for us!

I'm ready for the ups and downs of this whole process to be OVER.

It's Been a Long Week...

...and it's only Wednesday morning! Yesterday was the epitomy of bad days - Eli cried for the first two hours that he was awake, I think because his teeth were bothering him. Thankfully, he took a morning nap, and then we were able to get together with some friends to help snap us both out of our bad moods.

We came home for the afternoon nap, and after Eli woke up, he cried and cried and cried - so much that he threw up what he had eaten for lunch all over me. I hurried and cleaned up the mess on both of us and the floor, then we raced out the door to pick up Ben from the train so we could make our appointment to see a house with our realtor.

Once I was at this house, I was so depressed by its tiny size and high price. The outside of the house is darling, set on a quiet cobblestone street surrounded by other pretty houses, but not right for us. Later I checked out a large condo for rent. I'll probably look at more rentals this week as we try to figure out what our short-term plan should be.

And right now, I'm hoping Eli will be able to take a much-needed morning nap while the woman above us is stomping around (it seriously makes the light fixture in my room shake when she walks above me). UGH!!! Why are some people such loud walkers??

Back to Reality

Last night I got my frustration out by blogging and of course eating those tasty snacks. Thanks for your sweet comments, even those of you who will miss out on future TJ snacks :) Today those snacks look less appetizing!

I had to keep going with the house hunt and not dwell too much on the sadness, so today I saw four more houses (two were for sale by owners, and two others were houses that had been on the market for a while and dropped in price). One house took the cake - it was in the WORST shape I have seen in the zillions that I've looked at. It was such an enormous project (it was a 3-story, old home that needed lots of love and sweat) that I was completely overwhelmed and we didn't stay long.

However, the second FSBO home is a good possibility! We have to decide if it's an amount we want to spend, but if we did get it, the major things have all been done - it has a new roof, new boiler, new central air, new kitchen, new bathrooms, new new new is the magic word there. So I'm tempted. Ben is tempted too (he came back with me tonight after work). The downsides are that it's on a slightly busier road, and it's not as close to the train as he would like - more like a 10-15 minute walk. The yard is wonderful, the living areas are spacious and nicely done, and I love the warmth of the upstairs... it feels like a nice place to be.

Who knows though? Every day our thoughts change and we go up and down on the emotional rollercoaster of settling on this more permanent fixture of our lives. We'll see what next week holds when we get back from vacation (and BOY do we need a vacation). Happy 4th everyone!

"It Wasn't Meant to Be..."

...that's my favorite line when someone hears we didn't get the house. (sorry, I'm being a little sarcastic)

I'm mourning our loss, so bear with me. Adios, pretty house across from the park, two minutes from the train. So long, house with pretty chandeliers, huge living room, dining room, and family room, and beautiful backyard. And goodbye to the house with the SCARY, SCARY basement with asbestos-wrapped pipes and furnace and a very unfinished room full of mounds of dirt that we would have had to pay a crew to dig out and remove from the place. Goodbye to the house with the weird 80s bathroom, complete with a black toilet and sink.

Excuse me while I go drink root beer and stuff my face with Trader Joe's kettle corn. And TJ oreos. And sweet and salty trail mix. (Can you tell I shopped at Trader Joe's today? Yum. I have all kinds of treats to mourn with!)

I'll eat that while I scan the MLS again and contemplate if we could stand a house with an upstairs that looks like a log cabin. Or a house 10 blocks from the train. Or a house with hardly any backyard. What would you choose?

Eli's Latest Trick - Clapping with his Feet

Do you ever have days when life feels completely out of control?? I don't have the energy to explain everything that's going on at the moment, but all I can say is, one of the major things is that we're still in limbo with the house we really want. I've now seen every single house on the market in our price range and not loved any of them. The selection right now is AWFUL, in my opinion, because people are only selling if they absolutely have to.

We should hopefully know by Thursday or Friday what the outcome is on the house we are hoping for (we are the backup offer). In the meantime, tomorrow is the home inspection on our condo and I have been busy cleaning and getting our place in perfect form for the inspector. I'm also a tad behind on getting the Severson family cookbook edited and formatted, which needs to be done before we leave for the big reunion coming up. No problem. :)

In the midst of the craziness, Eli was pretty cute today. While I am NOT happy he's trying to give up taking two naps and just take one in the day, he made up for that frustration by clapping with his feet while I was changing his diaper. He thought it was hilarious and liked to say "clap clap clap" while he was doing it. See the video below for a little taste of my foot-clapping little boy!

What NOT to do When Your House is on the Market

While our first choice is for the house we were interested in to become available again, we don't have a whole lot of time to wait around and see what happens. So this afternoon I ran around to 10 open houses in hopes of finding the perfect Plan B. However, these are some of the things I found instead:

• Trash can filled with used maxi pads (GROSS - at least empty your trash cans before your open house people!!)
• Dirty bathrooms
• Smelly, stained carpets
• Closets with clothes piled on the floor (how hard is it to pick up your clothes??)
• Closet stuffed with linens that started falling out when I opened the door
• Stinky teenage bedrooms
• Dingy kitchens that had weird smells
• Weird pet odors
• Floors that felt greasy

I can't tell you how discouraging it is to look at these homes that are not exactly cheap, and to not find a single one that was really in great showing shape, unless it was totally empty and the people had already moved out. There were a few of those too.

And actually, I take it back - there was one house that was really cute and in good shape, but while advertised as a 3-bedroom, it was just a 2-bedroom with another room in the basement... so it didn't fit what we were looking for. Eli and I are going to go see some more places tomorrow with our realtor... hopefully there are some decent ones in the bunch!

Hungry for Change?

Today we drove by two different bake sales for Obama - it was pretty funny. I got this picture a little haphazardly as we were driving by, so it's not very good, but this gives you an idea. The other bake sale had a huge sign that said "Bake Sale for Obama" in huge letters.

And as the housing roller coaster continues, last night we put an offer in on the house we are interested in. Well, our luck ran out and someone else had BARELY gotten an offer in and negotiated with the sellers at the end of this week, so it's now under contract. Of course we didn't learn this until today, after we had submitted the offer (the seller's realtor is not impressing me - our realtor left multiple messages with her and she never got back to ours until after we'd sent the offer). I guess they are still going to counter our offer and then we'll end up being a back-up offer in case the first deal falls through. Ben and I are pretty sad though. We're not exactly in a place where there are a zillion houses in our price range to choose from. So now we're praying the first offer falls through!

It's Official!!! We're Under Contract!

After two weeks of craziness - packing up our clutter, making signs, creating a blog (evanstoncondo.blogspot.com), posting online on craigslist, zillow, and ziggy's house, we had an offer LAST NIGHT, negotiated over the phone this morning (while I was downtown at the Shedd Aquarium on a CRAZY, PACKED museum free day with Eli and a set of twins - no problem), and settled on a great price and terms.

Tonight we'll start the process of making an offer on the house we're interested in... we close on August 15th to sell this place, so it's going to be pretty fast! We feel SO grateful, blessed, a little stunned, and amazed that everything is working out so far. Wish us luck on the buying end!!