Sheesh. This home-selling/home-buying/moving preparation thing is crazy!

Our inspection on Friday 11/30 went well. All the major stuff (plumbing, electrical) has been updated, but there’s still quite a list of things we want to do after closing. We requested a couple things from the sellers, and they agreed to them. So now we’re just pending until closing on the 20th.

I also made arrangements with my dad to come up and help us out with our To Do list. This is quite a list, but he has experience doing all the things we want to do and it will be a nice opportunity to catch-up with him for a week from 11/20 through 11/27, including Thanksgiving.

We’re going to be painting nearly every internal wall, removing the carpet, refinishing the hardwoods upstairs and installing new flooring (bamboo downstairs and marm.oleum in the kitchen and bathrooms). There are also a number of odd jobs (replacing cabinet fixtures, insulating pipes, maybe replacing a couple windows to name a few) and we’ll just see how much we get through during the week. There will also be professional help coming in to service the furnace, sweep the chimney and do some minor electrical work.

This past weekend we began continued our furniture and flooring shopping, including a trip to IK.EA, Mortackyfurniturestore, Dan.ia and a huge flooring place all in cities just SE of Seattle. We now have  a few less places on our list and a few ideas more idea about what we want. Bonus was that I get to include 3 hours and all mileage for reimbursement as work related because I purchased “supplies” (decor items really) for our grad lab/lounge.

I just completed the change of address forms on the post office’s website–paying $5–$1 each per name to make sure my former hyphenated last name, my non-hyphenated often used last name, my new-ish hyphenated legal last name, C’s name and my business name all get their mail forwarded to the new address–after a week of them all being held at the post office while we’re between homes that is…

I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for a week..a month maybe even.

This real estate thing is some stressful business. After numerous hours sifting through online profiles, three viewing sessions (3, 3 and 6 hours each), walking through over two dozen houses, hours of discussion, a short list and pro/con lists, we wrote up an offer on Sunday night. It was presented by our realtor on Monday morning and we spent a long 24+ hours waiting for a response. Their counter offer was acceptable and we signed today.

This is a house that we went to at the end of one of our after work search. It gets dark here pretty early in the autumn, and it was dusk as we arrived. The family that lives there now was leaving, and it may have helped that when we walked in it was warm and cozy and they had obviously just had dinner. There was homework on the large table in the kitchen and a candle glowing in the bathroom. I loved it right away. By the time we walked through the two upstairs rooms, headed down to the finished basement and poked around a bit before heading outside, it was too dark to really see the backyard, although we could tell it was big and had a nice deck. Christine didn’t love it, but liked it enough that I put it the top of my short list.

On Saturday, we went back to see this house, along with another 11 houses in the area. It was bright and as we walked though I could see us living there, raising a family just as this family has done for the past 9 years that they’ve lived there. C was still not sold, but it did make her top five and we had three that we were seriously considering.

Sunday after teaching Sunday school we went to an open house in a neighborhood we really like. Unfortunately, the house was overpriced, awkward and had too much land to maintain. After coming home and comparing notes on all the top houses, we wrote out an accurate (but ultimately not very helpful) pro/con list. Every house has pluses and minuses (at least in our price range, maybe if we had another few hundred thousand dollars to throw around it would be a different story). In the end it came down to which one we could see ourselves in the future, what house had the most going for it now and potential for the future.

Here it is:

Inspection later in the week. Fingers crossed that goes well and we can move forward.

More to come after I catch my breath!

What I can piece together from the week:

Monday – Catching up, LNL, C sick after work, online house hunting, went to be early

Tuesday -  Work, class canceled, real life house hunting

Wednesday – Work, found out about the suicide of my ex-almost-but-still-sorta-uncle, shock, sadness, gratitude

Thursday – Work, class, headache, avoidance, organized property listings,

Friday – Plumber, avoidance, proposal writing, dog cuddling

Looking Ahead:

Tomorrow – All day house hunting, Ani concert

Sunday – Sunday school teaching, Maybe Baby planning meeting, maybe more house hunting

I also want to write about the rest of the conference, school/my proposal and hopefully some good news about buying a home.

After waking up early and getting ready, BILS took me to the hotel/convention center where I took my exam. It was 100 questions shorter than we had been told and not nearly as scary as I had made it seem in my head. I took about an hour to get through the 150 questions, took a break and came back to review my answers. I think I passed, but won’t know for a little while.

The exhibition hall was fun–cbe related swag!–and I met some people during the (catered!) lunch before the official start at 1pm.

There were two general sessions this afternoon with a break in between. The first one was about possibilities for cbe as a field. It was less inspiring that I would have hoped for, but I’m not at the point that this is the only thing I have going and therefore there’s less pressure on it for me than for other career cb educators.

After a snack and chat break the second general session was amazing. The founder of this organization and author of this book, spoke about the neuroscience behind and sacredness of birth. It was parts passionate lecture, Powerpt presentation, guided group meditation and pictorial slide show. I cried.

Being at this con, discussing the personal and regional differences in child.birth ed and the birth climate was a great reminder of how lucky I am to be doing what I’m doing and where. It’s unfortunately sometimes too easy to forget that not every area has a vibrant and supportive dou.la community, hospitals that accept–if not fully embrace–our work, OOH birth options and a myriad of cbe avenues–including an independent  non-profit organization.

C and the fam came to pick me up in the evening (I skipped most of the reception and all of the opening party) and we got a tour of OKC before heading home for a home cooked meal and crepes and ice cream made by SILT.

C spent some of the evening going through some boxes of her childhood stuff that they had moved and stored here. It was definitely a nostalgic trip down memory lane and I really enjoyed seeing her yearbooks, 12-year-old self diary, at one time most treasured possessions and expressions as she pulled stuff out.

I also can’t get over the cute and cleverness of NE. I love being called “Auntie Joy” and hearing her say “Auntie Christine” in her little three year old voice.  inherited some of C’s toys, including a yo-yo she referred to as “oreo” for part of the evening and a Hello.Kitty bag that she carried around except for dinner and bathtime, which I got to help give her and included a lot of playing with bubbles. Helping her do things, answering her questions and watching her and C interact makes me look forward to having our own little ones someday.

We left our soon-to-be-former condo at 6:15am this morning, in the rain and walked with our suitcases to the bus. Two buses, a flight to Denver, and a small commuter plane flight brought us to Oklahoma City where we were met at the airport by C’s brother (BILS),  his wife (SILT) and our adorable three year old niece (NE).

After heading back to their place–a lovely brick suburban home, complete with yard, three car garage and master suite–they took us out to eat and what can only be described as a Bar-B-Q joint–in/next to a gas stations. It was a fun and authentic OK experience.

After dinner we went back to their place and I played and cuddled with NE before getting ready for my early morning tomorrow when I’ll go to the cbe convention and take my certification exam. Too bad I’m going to bed late, and there’s a time difference and I have to wake up early, because I’m already tired…which actually makes me a bit hopeful.

Preface:

They say that sell/buying a home is up there on the list of the most stressful things people do in life. Now I see why.

Update:

The original potential buyer that I mentioned so excitedly in this post, dragged out her decision about finalizing the contract from Sunday until Friday when her agent presented a new offer…for 10k less and an impossibly short closing. It was actually quite insulting. We countered and then didn’t hear back.

Good thing C made the house look amazing–while I was at my local dou.la conference all day yesterday–because of the three showings we had in the afternoon–while she took Kai on a crazy long walk–we got not only one, but two!, new offers. Both were even better offer than the original offer. We accepted the first one and now have a closing date of 11/16/09. Yay and yikes! This gives us a month to find a new place, put in an offer, get it accepted, get an inspection, close and move. This timeline is very tight and made all the more challenging by our trip to OKC this week. If we don’t put in an offer in the next week or so–including the five days we’ll be gone–there’s the distinct possibility we may have to try to negotiate a later closing or rent-back or perhaps we’ll end up doing some interesting combination of storing the rest of our belongings, taking Kai to my family and staying with people locally for a week or two. Whatever happens it will work out and by the end of next month we’ll be in our new home!

Tonight we went out with our original Realtor and looked at six properties. These were all in the North end of Seattle and in Shoreline, the city just North of here. It was fun to look at actual houses with the ability to actually buy one of them. Unfortunately, only two of the six were really potential homes for us. The first one we saw and the last. The first one was a cute (read small) older bungalow with a large MIL unit (read rental income or possible future daycare) in the daylight basement in a great neighborhood. The drawbacks were the small upstairs bedrooms and the fact that we would need want to renovate the kitchen fairly soon. The last one we saw was a duplex-style townhouse that met all of our requirements, but sadly just didn’t wow us and was in a so-so neighborhood. That one may not even be a possibility, because when we got home it looks like the status changed to pending.

So while we’re gone we’ll be doing some more research about neighborhoods and schools and some “online shopping.”  Then next Monday evening we’ll go out looking based on a narrowed down list and our Realtor’s suggestions. Hopefully we’ll be able to make a quick decision that we’ll be happy with for years to come!