The Last Three Weeks Have Come And Gone....

So the last few weeks have been really crazy to say the least.

Three weeks ago Blake was out of town on business for a few days. It was a bit boring to sit at home with only the cats, but I had a lot to keep me busy so it wasn’t too bad.

Two weeks ago Blake stayed to work late Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. It was good for the company because they got a lot of new business but a bit depressing for me because I’m usually spoiled enough to have him home every night at a normal time. But again, we made it through the week.

Then this past week things were a bit better, but the kitties both needed trips to the vet which was an added expense we really hadn’t planned on. Our little kitty, Hannah, somehow ulcerated her cornea and had to have meds for her eye and wear one of those cone collars all week. Mraz finally seems to have her allergies in control, but now we find out that her litter box problems are in no way related to her allergy problems. She has something called Feline Interstitial Cystitis. Basically a big fancy word that means her bladder muscle is weakened and the best part is they don’t really know the cause or have a guaranteed course of treatment. We’re giving her drugs to “mellow” her and then a supplement that’s more anecdotal than anything. As we found out tonight, she may not be entirely cured yet… good times.

BUT - we were very happy to finally have an answer and some hope for Mraz. At least she wasn’t doing this on purpose and not because she had gotten out of the habit. Still not entirely finished with the frustration, but it makes it a bit more bearable.

AND - Blake won tickets to the MSU game which is awesome, because we couldn’t have gone if we had to buy tickets. To make things even better, the tickets are box seats, which means free food and heated seats!! Not that I wouldn’t have gone to the game and enjoyed regular seats, but not having to pay for food is a definite bonus. Many small blessings have helped make this week a better one.

However, our house hunting has been put on hold because of all this, but when we heard that the tax credit was extended today we resolved to really start getting serious about finding a house. So on Sunday we start narrowing the list and hopefully next week we can visit more houses!!

The First of Many!

So much can happen in a week!

On Sunday we decided to drive by some houses to get a feel if we would be interested in looking at them or not. We did pretty well, crossed a few off the list because of location, and put a few in the we-want-to-see pile. There was one in particular that we really liked just from the outside so we decided to start scheduling showings right away.

Blake had the day off on Monday so he got in touch with his uncle and set up some times for us to look at houses. Unfortunately the house that we really liked had an offer accepted over the weekend. First lesson of house hunting: Don’t get attached. It was a bit disappointing but I know that it will all work out the way it should in the end. We did end up looking at two houses though, one in DeWitt and another in Bath. The DeWitt house is on 7 acres but needs a lot of work. Definitely not move in ready, but still a really nice house with good potential. The house in Bath was not so impressive. Just a weird layout and weird spaces and… well, weird. Plus it was in town which isn’t ideal, but we’re keeping our options open. I had a dream about the DeWitt house that night… kinda scary considering the amount of work we would have to put in, but I still haven’t figured out how to control my dreams…

Tuesday we had two more showings scheduled for houses in Perry. The first one wasn’t too impressive from the outside but had a great layout and a pretty big yard for being in town. It became a possibility, but not the most ideal choice, due to location and distance away from family. The second house looked really cute from the outside but the layout was weird, appliances were old, and it wasn’t nearly as nice as the first house. That one was pretty much out before we got back into the car.

Thursday night we went out to look at one more house. It’s in Shaftsburg which is a teeny town to the west of Perry which is a bit closer to family and only gives Blake a 15 minute drive to work. We drove by it on Sunday, even though it didn’t show up on MapQuest, and it’s a cute little house. Surprisingly it’s equally as cute on the inside! Very open layout, great kitchen, garage connected to the house with a breezeway, and a pretty large yard even though it’s not completely isolated from other houses. Drawbacks? Well… the bedrooms are a little on the small side which also means small closets and it is close to the Railroad tracks. Regardless of all of that though, it definitely moved to the top of our list. We were only left to wonder why it had been on the market for almost a year and a half…

This house hunting thing is not so easy. Not that we thought it would be, but there’s so much to think about! Trying to figure out how many houses to look at before we make an offer and when to make an offer so that we don’t pass up a house that we like and making sure that we don’t take on more than we can handle… I know that we’ll figure it out and find a house and I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason, but that doesn’t mean the journey won’t be complicated!

And So It Begins....

Last night Blake and I went to his Uncle’s house to start looking for houses. Luckily for us his Uncle is an appraiser and also has his realtor’s license, so we are thrilled to have his help!

After a great dinner and some chitchat we sat down at the computer. At first, we were content to look at houses in a radius of the East Lansing area, since that’s where Blake’s work is. Even just a 10 mile radius gave us a listing of over 500 houses for sale. Sweet. So after a quick discussion we eliminated a few areas where we would prefer not to buy - Lansing mainly - and narrowed it down by school district. Granted, it will hopefully be at least 7 years before we have to worry about schools so it’s not a deciding factor, but at least it’s easier to narrow down the areas that we’re interested in.

After narrowing it down we had about 180 homes to look at and narrowed it down even further by using the “garage” criteria - If it doesn’t have a garage, we aren’t interested. Yeah, yeah, it’s probably not the best thing to use to help us narrow the search, but we’re really really really tired of scraping snow and ice in the winter. That gave us a pool of about 130 houses which we felt we could handle.

When looking at house info we checked off houses we might be interested in based on… well, anything. Square footage made us pass up some houses. Others didn’t show well on camera - especially kitchens - and were eliminated. Some were even too far away from Blake’s work and he wasn’t willing to drive that far. After a while we had a list of 80 and we decided that we would go from there.

So now begins the laborious process of sorting through the listings that we have and deciding what we’re still interested in. Then we group by location and go see some houses! We’re really in no rush but it would be nice to be eligible for that tax credit - though there have been rumors of it being extended too, so I guess we’ll see. I’m planning on taking a notebook and camera with me to keep track of everything that we look at, so updates will be posted as time allows. Hopefully we’ll find at least one that we like!!