House Hunt

We have known for a good long while that our next move would happen sometime this year.  We knew the two possibilities were Chicago and Madison.  We have been looking at homes to buy (via the internet) for months.  We focused mainly on Madison.  Housing prices in Chicago are outrageous and it wasn't much fun looking for homes located an hour from David's work, where the homes are less expensive (still high, but better).  Plus, we were really hoping for Madison!  So, we concentrated our search there.  It wasn't long before we found that there were slim pickings.  We were looking in three suburbs of Madison and kept viewing and re-viewing the same handful of homes in each area.  It was a little disappointing.

 

Then, we came across this little gem the day it went on the market.  I told David that this was the house I wanted, but knew someone was going to snap it up fast.  I assumed we would miss out on seeing it in person....especially since we didn't even know yet if we were moving there!!

 

David actually calls this house, "the ugly duckling" on the block.  True,
it is the only green one, and a bit boxy, but we love it still!

 

Two days after it went on the market, David got the call that he was going to interview in Madison the following week.  The person setting up the interview told him to maximize his time in Madison and set him up with a real estate agent.  David saw this little house (along with some others) while there.

 

He ended up with the job (yay!) and house hunting became very real.  Between tying up things at his current job and class on two Saturdays a month, we weren't going to be able to go house hunting until mid-May.  I was bummed.  My favorite house would be gone by then.  Rather spontaneously, as in the night before, we decided to head up to Madison the last weekend in April.  David cleared some things at work and what meetings he couldn't change he conferenced in on, while on the road.

 

We had 10-12 houses we wanted to see, but all but 3 of them ended up being under contract.  We discovered that the supply of homes does not meet the demand.  Thankfully, "our green house" was not yet under contract.  We saw it, we loved it, we put an offer down.  So did two other buyers.  We counter-offered.  So did they.

And...WE GOT IT!!

 

It was a whirlwind of a trip.  All the boys came with us.  We had intended to farm out the two oldest, but since we made such a hasty decision we didn't feel comfortable asking people to take them on such short notice.  The boys did awesome on the 10.5 hour drive.  We did have to stop a gazillion times since we have a newly potty trained little one, but I am amazed he didn't have one accident the whole trip!  On the way home, we had another child with some intestinal issues (I won't go into details), so we had to stop a lot as well.  But we made it.  And found a house too.

 

The trip was filled with so many blessings from start to finish that we can't even count them all.

 

---------------------------------

 

I had to include a couple of pictures of Porter and his potty seat.  He has trouble going potty in public.  He will, it just takes anywhere from 5-15 minutes for him to relax in a public restroom.  Not something I was looking forward to on a long trip.  So, we took the potty seat along and the problem was solved.