House Hunt and updates

Well, a whole hell of a lot has changed since I last blogged. I now realize why Colleen took her blog down - it is really friggin' difficult to keep this up when you have a full-time job, extracurriculars, and, oh, a life? So instead of doing this in small installments as a blog is meant, I'm doing it all at once. Oh, well.

Since Gene accepted a new position in Ankeny, I needed to find a new job as well. I applied two Des Moines, Ankeny, and Johnston, and got interviews at Johnston and Ankeny. Technically the interview at Ankeny wasn't official since tehy hadn't even posted the job yet, but they knew I was going to be down interviewing at their rival Johnston, they decided they had to bring me in early. I really, really liked Ankeny - their philosophy, their building, the other teachers, but they weren't going to be actually hiring for several months - and I didn't want to jeopardize a solid job with Johnston if they called - which, they did. So, I gave up the nice lit. position with Ankeny for stabilty with Johnston. Oh, well.

So, since we both had solid, stable jobs during Spring Break we started looking for houses. At first I thought that this woudl be fun - getting to see all these different houses, planning what I could do with them if (and when) they were mine, all the good stuff. After looking for about 4 days we found one we really liked. It was practically new - built in 2003 and had a nice open layout with a separate den for the piano and computers. The down fall was that the bedrooms were small (10x11 ft) and it had a practiaclly unusable basement. We could store things and maybe put in a family room at some point. The major bonus was that it was clsoe to both our jobs, and had an amazing view. It was in a development with a lot of waaaay more expensive houses and looked out on houses worth close to half a million dollars. It also backed to a shared lake. It was great. However, we were outbid by quite a lot almost immdiately. That was quite a downer for the next couple of days.

The weeend after Spring Break Gene's dad Michael came down to look with us. The first house we looked at was, again, a dream house. It was on the southside of Des Moines, but in a secluded area that backed to woods. While we were there four deer literally walked through the backyard! The house was a ranch with over 1600 square feet on each level. There were vaulted ceilings, big bedrooms, and two fireplaces. The basement had plenty of room for another bedrooms, a huge family room with its own fireplace and a walk-out slider to the backyard. It was heaven. In addition it was $10,000 less than the first place. We put in an offer and it was accepted! Then the foreclosure company sent us their addendum contract - complete with clauses stating that even though we didn't have keys and hadn't closed on the property, if some catastrophic were to happen to the house, we were still liable. Oh, wait, it gets better. They also had a clause that negated our right to sue them if they broke their own contract!!! Needless to say we backed out ASAP.

This really, really, really depressed us. I went back to Mason City and proceeded to cry on the phone with Gene three nights in a row. Gene, bless him, went out every night after working 8 hours to continue looking at houses with our realtor. When I came down the following weekend, we looked at houses he had preivously seen, but thought were good enough for a second look. One was another ranch in Altoona, but it was in an industrial neighborhood that wouldnt' be good for kids. So we kept looking. Kept looking so much that, I think by the end of the day on Saturday, we had seen, in total, over 60 houses in less than two weeks. After lunch on Saturday we were even more depressed because we hadn't seen anything at all that was worhtwhile. As a last ditch effor we looked at Indianola - where my mother now lives. There were two ranches and a turn-of-the-century boarding house available. As Mom read the description of the boarding house I think I literally had a heart attack. It was laid out IDENTICAL to the Big House! Same everything - four bedrooms and a bath up, kitchen and three rooms down, covered back porch, "gorgeous" open staircase - it was creepy. So we thought we had to see it just because of this. Unfortunatly the owners didn't want to work with a realtor because that meant they would have to pay her fee - so we couldn't get in.

So it was down to two newer ranches on the edge of town. They had never been occupied and were built in 2005. They were wonderful!!! Huge open floor plans, big sunny windows, spacious bedrooms, neat little storage cubbies, 1/4 acre lot, full basement - everything we wanted. The front had stone so it didn't look like all the other tiny little plain ranches we had seen. We put in our offer immediately because another couple had already seen the house the same day and were as impressed as we were. they accepted our offer and our dillemmas are now over - mostly.

Okay this post is getting ridiculously long, so I'll cut it off and add pics of the house and a description later!