The unfinished basement....... (I'm standing in the middle of the "future" family room looking across to where bedrooms will be.
The Story...
After months and months of searching and looking at LOTS of homes, We finally found the perfect one and moved in! We finalized everything mid April and made the big move! It still feels like a dream. The reality of the fairytale and actually LIVING in a HOUSE has not completely hit us yet! I look around and think: "Is this really ours?" I can't believe it!
Oh the joys of moving and things we go without while we're getting settled!.....We finally got our internet hooked up and also got the fabulous Disney channel up and running! (my lifesaver for Cam in the mornings while I get ready!) I was getting a little concerned at the amount of requests from Cameron asking to clean the boxes! Who cleans a cardboard box anyways???
We just barely got the mailbox put up on Saturday! And a couple Saturdays before that we finally got our blinds on the windows . (Thats kinda freaky having a ton of open windows at night! and its pitch dark over here!) We just picked up a garbage can! (who knew you had to go get your own garbage can??) And whenever we call to set something up at the house, the common response is: That address doesn't exist. (Well, actually it does Mr. Uh---We live here.) Oh the joys...... :)
So, here's the story and details to our lovely experience of making this simple and minimal purchase. :) Oh how i wish.
We had originally found a home in Nibley. Actually 2 homes. Fell in love with both of them. We walked through them a few times. Then, back in December we put an offer on one of them. Didn't work out the way we had really wanted so we pulled the offer out. We continued looking at home after home after home. Always coming back and comparing to the first home we put the offer on. Finally after walking through every home on the MLS website (well almost.) We had decided one Sunday night.( around the first of March) that we wanted to go back and put another offer on that same Nibley home we had originally put one on. So the next Morning. Which was Monday, I called our realtor and asked when we could come in. But to our complete shock......The home got sold over the weekend. ....ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? We had watched that home on the MLS website for MONTHS with NO ACTIVITY happening AT ALL... and then the NIGHT we decide we wanna offer on it, it gets sold??? I couldn't believe it! So....I decided rather than to be disappointed, I would just jump right back into the searching again. We began looking at lots and home plans, so we could build. We didn't know what to do....We decided we wanted to walk through the OTHER home in Nibley again that we had liked; but never made an offer on. We decided we still liked it a lot and the next weekend we once again...decided to proceed forward with making an offer on that one, So the next morning we called the realtor and much to our SUPRISE.....That home was sold the night before. (the very time we were walking through it, they were actually selling it! ) I was beyond stunned. I didn't know what to think or what to do at that point. So I thought we might just take some time off of looking because it OBVIOUSLY wasn't our time to buy.....So, the next morning I was kinda slow about getting ready for the day...feeling kinda sad, and ....it was just a not, so good day, but... I decided to jump online; yet one more time...and all the sudden I saw this new home pop up on the site, and I wasn't sure I was reading it right because it sounded almost too good to be true, even though it was more expensive..the deal was almost to good to be true for what we were getting! Comparison wise- (It was bigger than the Nibley home, had the upgrades, Sweet location, loved the outside of it, Had lots of extras, and lots of room to grow, and nicer appliances, fantastic basement Rex would be stoked to finish)........so I call Rex, we set up the appt. (Along with about 6 other homes) we wanted to see and that night. So, we went looking. Again. We walked through them and the"to good to be true" home I had found previously that day, I just knew there was something sweet about it. For one.... Rex was actually smiling as he was walking through it. That was a first. He would always wear his poker face when looking at home...I, on the other hand...didn't. :) I was a little hesitant if he'd actually wanna put an offer on it because it was totally different from everything else we'd been looking at. In a total different price range and a total different area. I had no idea what would come of this, but at the end of the night, Rex said he loved it. He felt better about that home than any home we'd been in. We waited a few days to see how we felt, and in that waiting time, I happened to be looking online (of course) at the homes again and I noticed our FIRST NIBLEY HOME was back up for sale!! I was shocked~! I called Rex so fast, and said, let's just go put the offer while we can!! He said, well what about this other home (I'll call it home #2)we're liking now? I said..well we aren't sure about it, We haven't researched everything about it. We've only seen it once. We don't know the neighborhood,and I was worried if we waited any longer we would miss out on the Nibley home once again. So after much LONG drawn out contemplating and weighing out the pro's and con's of both homes. We went for the Nibley home. We came home that night, found out we got the screaming good deal that we offered and wanted. We were thrilled. The next 3 days we drove out to the home about 4 times just looking at it and pondered what life was going to be like in the next few years. After each time of driving out to the home, we started to feel a little different each time we were there. We weren't sure what to think. We felt so confident at first and now every time we went back out there, we felt....unsure. The neighbors didnt' seem so great. The backyard had a swimming pool of runoff water (big concern) and the house wasn't very big for us to grow into....and we just started to notice things we didn't notice before which made us a little nervous. So what do we do..We ask our realtor to go look at Home #2 again. We walk through it and just so happened to notice the neighbors across the street (like the only neighbors within 500 feet of us.) and I was like...ooohhh pull over, lets talk to them. See what they say or what they think! So we asked them all the questions I always asked the people standing outside by homes we were interested in (what's the neighborhood like, the ward, the building material, the utility bills, property taxes....ya know..the usual.) AND I am convinced that these neighbors were the reason we got sold on the home. They are the SWEETEST and nicest people! We could tell they would be fantastic neighbors and that it was a fun ward. They told us all the right answers we needed to hear to everything else. We loved it. We left feeling so.....confused now about what to do. I wanted to live there now. And so did Rex. So we sat down once again, and went back to the drawing table, for like the MILLIONTH time. Weighing out the pro's and con's. We were torn. We were scared to pull our offer on the Nibley home for fear we wouldn't get a great deal on home #2 and then it would be way out of the price range and they would give us nothing in the closing contract. Then we wouldn't have ANY home.... So we hesitated at what to do.....Finally, my dad. the amazing business man he is....came up with many, many ideas. To make a REALLY long (yeah I know this is like 4 novels already) story short, My dad ended up managing to pull a million strings and he talked with the CEO of the company (yeah the actual PRESIDENT...who does that anyway? well, my freakin' amazing dad does.) anyways.....So he works out a verbal deal with the CEO (so we would know BEFORE hand what they would agree to if we were to go put our offer in and pull the other one.) My dad got them to pretty much agree to EVERYTHING the other builder had given us. I couldn't believe it. (I STRONGLY believe now that the reason Rex and I were so inclined to even put the offer on the Nibley home was because it ended up being our leverage with the 2nd home and getting everything we wanted out of the deal. Even our realtor asked how we managed to get them to agree to all they did :) Just hearing that made it feel like, all that hard work from us and my dad had finally paid off :)...Anyways..... We weren't sure how we were going to break this all to our realtor and tell her we wanted to place another offer....( but the weekend before this, when we did a walkthrough of the Nibley home, we had noticed that builder had placed fans in the basement because water had leaked in there! We knew at that point, we weren't gonna be living there. So this was our breakout. So we explained our reasoning and did it. Rex was traveling at the time we got the word that the deal would be accepted on house #2....So I rushed over to our realtors office (which ended up being after hours, and she happily came back in and wrote up the offer on that home) and all the sudden we were under contract on 2 homes.... ( The realtor didn't want us to cancel the first contract until we had all the paperwork on Home #2 yet. So we stayed under contract on 2 homes over that weekend.) YEP, 2 HOUSES. I WAS FREAKING OUT to say the least. I didn't know what we were really gettin' into! But after all the long contemplating and countless hours of discussion and talking....Monday morning came, The Nibley house went. We filled out all the paperwork on Home #2 and 3weeks later we were movin' in!!!!!! Since we made that decision to buy home #2, the blessing and doors continued to be opened up to us. It is sometimes unreal to me the many, many things that just fell into place as we went through this home buying process. I don't think we could have had a more clear understanding now that THIS is where we were supposed to be. And here we are. Loving it. Loving the house. Loving the neighborhood. Loving the ward and Loving life. Every.single.second.of.it. :)
