Moving... Part 6 - House Hunting

So now it is January 2 and we are living with my parents. They were great to help us out. I know it was cramped for everyone and it took some getting used to but I appreciate them so much! Wally our cat went to live with Katie and we brought Molly the dog to my parents with the kids and I. But this was only going to be for 6 weeks at the most! We knew we'd find something super quick and we would all be together so soon! Right?!?!?

Jim started driving around neighborhoods. I would go through Redfin and find a list of houses then we would narrow that down to the best ones. After that Jim would drive through the neighborhood and we would narrow the list down even further. We didn't have a real estate agent yet so that made it a little more difficult. There was one house we in November that Jim loved but it had gone off the market. He decided to drive past it in January just to see it again. There was a sign out front of it and it had fliers on it. We couldn't find it online so Jim decided to call the agent listed. He made an appointment with him and they chatted for 3 hours. Michael, the agent, told him about the house and said it was a great house, beautiful neighborhood, in fact he had actually sold the owners the house 10 years before. He said however unless we could afford to put the kids into private school that we shouldn't buy that house. The elementary school that the kids would go to, if we bought that house, wasn't good. That right there showed me the integrity of this agent. He would have been the buyers agent and the sellers agent but he chose to let us know that this house wouldn't be a good fit for us because of the school. He also went through and emailed us a list of homes in different schools that were higher rated.

We went through this list and did the same thing we did with the lists I had come up with. We narrowed the list down from 65 to our top 20. Then we went through those twenty and rated them on a scale of 1-10 If they came in under a 6 we knocked them off the list. We got the list down to 10-13. Jim and Michael drove around and went to see the houses. We knocked them all off the list. So we started over. I think this happened 2 or 3 times. (We didn't think we were THAT picky lol) But none of them felt right.

We found one that we liked and decided to put an offer on but the house wasn't worth what they were asking and the owner wouldn't budge on the price so that one was gone. Jim had a hard time with it because he was worried about picking the wrong house. I got to see pictures of the homes and he would Facetime me while he was at the houses if he could but I couldn't really get a feel for the houses.

By February we were getting frustrated but still looking. Jim found one house that he liked but I wasn't 100% sold on it. We discussed where all of our stuff would go and if everything would fit where we wanted it. Jim couldn't say for sure that it was exactly what we wanted. We both were having a hard time with this. Jim said "I can't make this decision without you here. If I pick a house and you come out here and hate it then it's all my fault" So we booked a flight for me to come out and look at houses with him. He had a list of 15 houses to go through and narrow it down because we were only going to have a couple days to look at houses.

Michael said "They teach us in Real Estate to show the worst houses first so that way you end on the good ones. But I'm going to show you the best ones first and go from there" The first one Jim didn't care for and he didn't love the second one either. The third one he walked in and said "this could be a contender" It was gorgeous and had a lot of the things we were looking for.  He liked the fourth one too. But then he walked in the fifth one. He called me and said "I found our house. This is it!" He sent me pictures of the house and we agreed to put an offer on it. The problem was the seller's agent didn't like Big Banks or VA loans and we were going with both. On top of that they had 2 other offers. We were really nervous because we loved this house and it was looking like we wouldn't get it. Jim put the offer in Tuesday morning and within 3 hours they had accepted it!!!! We were finally in escrow!

Moving part 3 - The house gets listed!

The decision was made and I had to get our house ready to be listed. I really had fun staging the house and taking pictures for the listing. We were hopeful it would sell quickly. 

Moving Part 2

Not only did we have to fly me out there, we had to break it to my parents that we were thinking of moving. We decided not to tell anyone about it until after we had made the decision but we needed to tell my parents because we needed them to watch our kids while I went out there. We sat down with them and let them know that this is what we were talking about. It wasn't a decision that had already been made but it was a very real possibility. They were sad but they understood we had to do what was best for us. Thankfully my dad has layovers sometimes in Atlanta so hopefully he and my mom would be able to come visit at times.

We flew out to Georgia in late July. Jim flew out a couple days before I did. We first went to visit Athens. We had talked to a couple people and they said Athens is awesome and we would love it there. We went down there on Friday (I think. It's been awhile lol) We walked around downtown near the college and I hated it. lol - No offense to anyone who lives in Athens or loves it there. It just wasn't where we fit. There were tons of cute coffee shops and stores and bars and it looked like a great place to live if you were a single college student - not an almost forty year old couple with three kids. We were looking for something COMPLETELY different. I took my camera and got a couple pictures. This gargoyle was super cool!

We spent about 2 hours in Athens. I just had that "pit-of-your-stomach" nauseous feeling. (Besides being super anxious about moving, I just didn't feel at home in Athens) 

We left Athens and drove around some of the other small cities around there. As the day wore on I got more and more anxious (and car sick) I just kept wondering what the hell we were doing. Was this really something that we wanted to do?  We got back to the hotel and I just laid down. I had a pounding headache and didn't feel good at all. I slept for a couple of hours and felt a little better when I woke up. Jim said "lets drive to Lawrenceville and Auburn and some of the towns closer to our hotel"  He knew I needed to get out of the hotel and he was worried about me. We drove down to Lawrenceville and when we got there we noticed hundreds of people in the park next to City Hall. They were having a Concert in the Park!!!  So many people showed up and it looked like everyone was having a blast. The main street had tons of neat little shops and some of the buildings were hundreds of years old. It was awesome!

We decided to go back the next day and walk around. It was beautiful

This was a complete switch from Athens. I felt so at home here and comfortable. I still wasn't 100% sure. I couldn't bring myself to actually say "Yes, we should move to Georgia" It sounded good, everything lined up on paper, I loved the city and the homes (Oh my goodness the homes were amazing!) but I couldn't stand the thought of leaving our friends and family. My anxiety makes me freak out at new things. 

We drove around some more and everything we saw that day we loved. 

We spent Sunday going to church at the local ward and it was really nice. Monday came and it was time to fly home. We still hadn't made the complete decision to move. I knew we probably would be moving but I still couldn't say it. We got to the airport in Vegas and I sat in the airport and just cried. I had so many fears:

• Leaving family and friends
• starting over in a new place
• the effect the move will have on the kids
• being so far away
• meeting new people
• being lonely
• not having people to rely on
• what if I wasn't accepted?
• it was a huge change
• telling everyone we were moving. 

Jim and I talked a lot about it. He told me he needed me to be 100% on board with moving. I told him I couldn't be. I told him if we made the decision to move I wouldn't change my mind and I wouldn't let the kids know that it freaked me out but I couldn't be 100% at peace with it. I told him that if he knew it was the right thing for our family I would put my trust in him and have faith that it would be wonderful. So we made the decision to move. 

We got home and got the kids and let my parents know our decision. (They pretty much knew what it was going to be although I know they hoped that they would stay)

Jim called the new manager and let him know we were on board with it. They told him that his starting date would be Oct 6th! We knew that Jim would have to move out there first and we would move later once the Moreno Valley house sold. We were pretty sure it would be just a couple of Months. We even thought that maybe it would before the new year. (boy were we wrong!) Cont...

Is this thing on?

Hey! Guess what?! We're still alive!!! I know you weren't sure unless you follow me on Facebook. But we are still alive and we've moved across the country! We sold our house in Moreno Valley (What a nightmare!! FYI - DON'T EVER USE THE HERO PROGRAM!!! horrible horrible program. That is another blog post all together. but needless to say it delayed the selling of our house for months.)

Let me rewind - In May of last year we were trying to figure out what to do with our lives. We didn't love living in Moreno Valley anymore. We had already transferred our kids to a different school 20 minutes away (it was the elementary school I went to as a kid) We drove them there and picked them up everyday. It worked fine when Jim was home because he would take the kids to school then I would pick them up. But when Jim traveled I would spend most of the day at the school because it was a lot of driving. We loved the new school and wanted to move to the neighborhood. Problem was -  homes in that neighborhood started at over $350k and that was usually for a fixer-upper. That is INSANE! We went back and forth on what to do. Every path we tried to take ended in a dead end. So we resigned ourselves to staying where we were at. We decided we would focus on getting out of debt (Seriously what were we thinking with our credit card debt?!) We would continue to slowing fix up our house and make it the way we wanted. We even discussed eventually putting in a pool. We had PLANS! We were excited about the plans we had made. Jim even ran for PTA president for the upcoming school year. He won the election and was super excited to really get involved at the school and make some positive changes.

Fast forward to June - Jim and I were sitting on the couch watching American Ninja Warrior ( Guilty Pleasure! Although no where near as good as the original Japanese version!) One competitor came on and she was a dentist from Georgia. Jim works for a company that handles dental financing so she perked our interest. Later that evening he was looking to see what job openings there were in his compnay (He likes to keep up on what is available) Turns out there was a position open in Georgia for the exact thing that Jim does. We joked around about it and looked at he Real Estate in Georgia and HOLY COW! The amount of home you could get there vs the amount of home you can get in Southern California. Plus I absolutely fell in love with the style of homes in Georgia. We tossed the idea around a little. We have always talked about getting out of Southern California. But was this really a viable option?! Georgia is 2200 miles away! (Random Fact - this is also appx the number of miles in the Tour de France ) We agreed that Jim would discuss it with his current manager and get her opinion.

Over the next couple of days, everywhere that Jim went he heard references to Georgia. There were quite a few times that the song "Georgia on My Mind" came on the radio. It even came on right after he talked to his manager. She told him she would be sad to lose him but she knew any other manager would be thrilled to have him on their team. We talked about it a lot for the next couple of days. I felt good about moving but I had never been to Georgia. I was nervous to move across the country to a new city, a new state, a new coast. I told Jim I was willing to move but I wished we could at least visit before we made the decision. I knew it wasn't possible it was expensive to fly both of us there. That same night Jim talked to the manager over the new territory. The manager told him that if he wanted the job they would love to have him. But the manager wanted to make sure that I was comfortable with the move. He told Jim that he would have him do a presentation at a staff meeting out there and they could fly him out. (Jim had recently done a really great presentation at a different meeting that this new manager had attended so he wanted him to present it to his team) Now we only had to fly me out there.

This is getting a lot longer than I expected so I will continue it tomorrow. (I guess I should have expected it to be long. It is covering an entire year)