Our little family has been through a crazy roller coaster of emotions/health/life in general, but it looks like the roller coaster is finally at an enjoyable moment for the time being! Recap!
Wednesday, October 1
 |
| Leif is finally figuring out finger foods! He still has a quick gag reflex but he's learning. It takes a lot of will power not to clean up every second; apparently it's good for his sensory skills to play with food. Babies are messy! |
Thursday, October 2
Husband started feeling better (thank God!). He had to come to our library for research so we had lunch together. I savor our alone time-don't get me wrong, I love my Leif to pieces, but adult time is nice once in a while.
 |
| I yelped a Chinese restaurant and it was so-so even though it had high reviews. |
That night I received an email from one of my rental websites and even though we had a deposit on our apartment in Moorpark, I still look at what's on the market. Well, a house had popped up for rent that was the same price as our apartment...thinking it was too good to be true, I still sent an inquiry email.
Friday, October 3
I checked my email once I got to work, and lo and behold, the realtor replied about the house. I called him right away and set up a viewing appointment for Saturday morning. Hubs was in and out of feeling better still, but he said he was up for checking out the place with me.
Saturday, October 4
Leif loves waking me up early on weekends...so we took a 3 mile run. Afterwards:
 |
| Good morning! I can now pop off the lid to my puffs with my teeth. |
We headed out around 10:30am to view the house, technically located in "West Hills". It's still on the way to my work, but definitely not as close as Moorpark. You climb up the freeway and get off in the mountains...then take this crazy, windy road up. We passed a lot of really nice houses and the road felt super narrow. Finally 10 minutes later we found the place-
 |
| See the little arrows? Yes, this is where it is located. IN the mountains. |
It's definitely isolated, and it's a little area with manufactured homes. Thus the lower price. But these homes were nice! Hubs was discouraged by the drive, but I wanted him to actually see the home. The manager/real estate guy was really nice, and once we arrived, it was better than the photos I had seen on the rental website. It's huge-1,300 square feet, two beds, two baths, porch, covered stacked parking, a shed, a little grassy area in the back, TWO stacked ovens (I can cook lots at the same time, haha), and a washer/dryer hookup which means we'd have to buy our own washer/dryer...but at least we wouldn't have to share it!
This place was great. We took an application and discussed on the way home the pros and cons of this place compared to our apartment that was on hold (and had a freakout about money/future...). But here is what we came up with (since I love lists):
Apartment
PROS:
- Closer to work (15 minutes away)
- Newer apartment
- Close to stores, food, civilization basically
- Has washer/dryer
- Has a path behind the apartment to a park, so good for runs with Miles
- I have a friend who has a one year-old in the same complex, so play dates would be fun
- Central Air
CONS:
- Apartment living is the WORST (neighbors/shared walls)
- Pet Rent! They're going to charge $65 per month
- It's on the second floor and the stairs leading up to it look super narrow; hubs is worried we won't be able to get the couch up
- We have to share a garage with another tenant and have one parking spot outside
- Even though it's close for me and hubs for class, it's far for him to work
- Small living area (850 square feet for the entire apartment)
House
PROS:
- Same price as apartment, but WAY more space
- It's a house! No shared walls
- Still on the way to work and actually able to drop off Leif to daycare on way to work (apartment Matt would have to drop him off or I'd have to back-track)
- It's quiet
- Did I mention we have way more space???
- Built in cabinets with doors-I actually said to hubs the day before we need doors on our bookshelves since Leif likes to pull things off
- Double oven, new dishwasher, new sink
- Parking will be easier and covered
- There's a porch!
- Central Air
CONS:
- Still have to drive a while, even though it's the closest I've lived to work since I've been here (with Leif drop-off, it'll take 50 minutes...but hubs can drop Leif off now once in a while instead of only myself since that's only 20 minutes away)
- It is pretty isolated, so if we want to eat out it will take a while-but I see this as a pro as well; we have to cook and eat in way more, thus healthier lifestyle
- It's all electric, no gas; not sure if this will be a pro or con
- We have to buy a washer/dryer; not too big of a con
After tossing these around, a few hours later we decided it couldn't hurt to fill out the application for it. Hubs wanted me to call him to make sure it was still available...and WAH WAAAAH-someone had snatched it up. He told me though to call on Monday if we were still interested, because they may not qualify. I was an emotional wreck because I thought it was perfect. We picked ourselves up and drove out to Moorpark to first look at our apartment-well, see the location then the model since we can't see the apartment until the 23rd. Afterwards we went to take out my friend Michael's dog for a walk/feed him since they were at Disneyland!
 |
| Clever the greyhound smelling Leif for the first time |
 |
| Michael wasn't sure how Clever would react to Miles, but they were just fine! |
 |
| I had the dogs (Miles was crazy). Clever was so tame! And I don't know if you can see, but Clever only has one eye. He's awesome! |
On the way home, traffic got kind of backed up near the exit to the house; we thought it was an accident but then we saw this...
 |
| We got excited because we had never seen a helicopter just parked on the freeway before |
 |
| Fire! |
 |
| Due to location, we figured it was probably some idiot who threw their cigarette out the window. On a 100+ degree day. But who knows, wild fires start so often in Southern California. |
Traffic was so backed up on the other side and it looked like they had been there for a while-people were sitting on top of their cars, camping out. I felt so bad for them since it was so hot. We drove further on and noticed they were filtering people off to another exit-so about 100 cars got stuck in that small area. SO if we had left about a half an hour later than we did, we would have been stuck! Crazy how that worked out.
Sunday, October 5
I started organizing around the house/cleaning since we have to move soon...but then I remembered Leif had to have his 9-month photos taken! It's getting harder, he's so squirmy now. Hubs had to tinker with the photos, but came up with:
 |
| Love this shirt on him! |
Since it was hot, I changed him and then hung out with my folks:
 |
| Hangout is google's version of Skype. Hi Lola! |
Then I wanted to take some selfies with my little one...
 |
| He knocked my glasses askew and thought it was funny. Oh and the bandana was due to the copious amounts of drool he produced. |
 |
| My glasses are stretched out because of him |
 |
| I love this little face! |
At around 7pm I decided to check my email...and received an email from the real estate guy of the house saying the people didn't qualify!!!!! Right away we called Ann/fabulous mother-in-law to get her opinion. As hubs was describing the pros and cons, she said the washer and dryer wasn't a big deal and that it sounded like we were leaning towards the house. I also called my pa while giving Leif a bath to get his opinion-he said if we were living somewhere short-term, the apartment was fine, but since we're locked in for at least two years for hubs' schooling, a house was more practical. And optimistic me had filled out the application earlier that afternoon, so all we had to do was scan it, scan bank statements, pay stubs and IDs. Then we sat and played the waiting game...
Monday, October 6
Both hubs and I were on edge, anxious to hear back from the real estate guy (Ron). Of course I had a super busy day yesterday which included driving our piano teacher to the ER...yeah, he was scheduled to have gallbladder removal today (he's been in pain since last Monday) but on my way to make copies he was hunched over outside of his office. I asked if he wanted me to call 911 but Eric is one of those guys who likes to "tough it out"...but I insisted on driving him when he turned down an ambulance. Poor guy-his surgery was moved up to last night and I'm hoping everything went smooth. But as work came to an end, I still did not receive any word about the house-so I called Ron. Ron said it was "one of those days", and he still hadn't gotten to our application but he was going to look through everything soon.
I returned home with our crazy baby:
 |
| He now ignores a lot of his toys and goes for things he's not supposed to have...so we took the battery out of the DVD remote and let him have that. |
 |
| It's hard to tell in this photo, but he gave Miles the remote to play with before returning it to his mouth. He's been really sweet about sharing-I thank his daycare! |
I had missed a phone call, and it was Ron...
"Please call me back on my cell, I have good news."
YAY!!!!
I immediately returned his call and he said "informally" we got the house! He was waiting to hear from our current town home management (and I agreed with hubs when he said good luck getting a hold of them), and wanted to make sure we didn't have any late payments. But since we know we're good to go, we got the house everyone!!!
 |
| Apparently when hubs dropped off the deposit check this morning, Ron said a few people had applied for the house but didn't qualify. Apparently this house was meant to be! |
Tuesday, October 7
I've been in a much better mood today knowing we have a home to move into. I forgot to mention that if we moved into the apartment, we would have only one day to move in-and we don't even know what it looks like inside. We can move into the house on the 15th! So we have to start packing asap. I'm so excited! We have so much room and it's in a pretty area-come visit us! :)
