Home!

We are homeowners!

After 10 months of waiting, we finally have the keys to our very own home. It is so exciting and hectic all at once.

Last Thursday we closed on our house. We met our real estate agent, Jane, at the title company and signed a pile of papers. It was honestly better than Alison and I was expecting. It went very smoothly and there were no surprises. We were in and out in about an hour. After we signed we went to lunch with Jane. She was a great real estate agent. She helped and supported us through every stage of the home building process. We are so glad we went with her. At lunch we were talking about the great team we had helping us out and Alison pointed out that Jane was the leader of that team. She made sure the process went as smoothly as possible and that we loved our new home.

Late in the day on Thursday we received word from Ivory that there was a problem getting our certificate of occupancy from the city. This was a big issue and could prevent us from getting our keys on Friday. Apparently, there was a pile of dirt in the front corner of our lot that the city said needed to be moved before they would issue the certificate. This was super stressful. I immediately reached out to Jane and she got to work putting pressure on Ivory to make sure they would have the dirt moved by early Friday morning. Alison and I were pretty nervous about whether this would go the way we planned (we had a ton of deliveries scheduled for Saturday at our new home).

On Thursday night we got great news. Our puppy was born. We are so excited we will be able to pick him up in early June. We are so excited.

I took Friday off of work to move. I spent the morning following up with Jane and with Ivory to make sure the city issued the certificate of occupancy. I was a nervous wreck. There were probably at least 2 hours where I did nothing but sit in front of my computer hitting refresh on my email to see if there was any news. By 9:40am the dirt was gone and we were just waiting on the city. Unfortunately, no one could get ahold of the person at the city offices that we needed to help us. At 10:50am we got the certificate of occupancy and sent it over to the lender. Then it was a waiting game while money was transferred and the title was recorded. Since it was now very likely we would begin moving Debbie and I loaded up a couple of trucks full of our first load. At 3:30pm I got the call that we could pick up our keys. I immediately headed to get them. By the time I was done Alison got off work so we grabbed the trucks and Blake and Debbie's and headed to our new home. We walked in together, which made Alison so happy!

We spent Friday evening unloading the trucks and working on projects. Blake, Debbie, Jake, and Meg all came over to help us. Alison (with help from Debbie and Meg) sealed all the grout in our house. We thought this would be like a 30-minute to an hour type of project. Then it ended up taking a few hours. Blake and I worked on installing ceiling fans on our porch and in the master bedroom. The first one took the longest because we were figuring out how it worked. After the first one, the other two went much more quickly. As we were wrapping up Friday night Alison decided to work on one more project. She put together a little end table for our living room. It was the first piece of furniture she has ever assembled.

On Saturday we woke up early (Alison was so excited to be in our new house that she didn't really sleep on Friday night). Blake and I went over to pick up the moving truck. Then we met Jake, John, Blake, and Debbie; all of whom helped us move our stuff. We actually had everything moved into our house around noon. Alison had to head to the house a little early because our piano was delivered at 9:30am. After everything was in we had to unpack and assemble everything. That was a much bigger project. We spent the entire day at the house working on projects. Our fridge and washer and dryer were delivered. Alison said she feels like such an adult owning her own refrigerator. Debbie saved Alison by buying her a giant diet coke and some cookies from Swig. Blake bought a bucket of chicken and some sides from KFC to keep us going. Debbie was so helpful in putting together the master bedroom, linen closet, and coat closet. Alison and Debbie went room by room and made our house livable. Blake and I put together a curio cabinet and hung pendant lights in the kitchen. Big thanks to Debbie for taking pictures and documenting the move.

We are so very grateful for the help of our family and friends. We really could not have done this move without them. We are especially grateful for Blake and Debbie who were there throughout pretty much the entire process. We would not have the beautiful home that we do if they would not have graciously opened their home to us for 10 months. They were incredible hosts. We are so happy to have our own home but we will miss spending so much time with them. They were also amazing during the moving process, bringing us food and helping us navigate through all of our projects.

On Saturday night we made one last trip to Blake and Debbie's to get the rest of our stuff. It was mostly clothes, odds and ends, and our cat CC. Moving CC is a trip. She hates going in her carrier and usually, I have to grab her and shove her in. Once she is in she has the most terrible mewling cry. Once we got her in the house she was very on edge. That first night was pretty terrible with CC meowing and running around all night. Neither Alison nor I slept well, which is crazy considering we were up around 6am and working hard until around 11pm.

On Sunday we woke up and continued our projects. Our goal was to get enough unpacked that our house was livable. We took a couple of breaks to attend church (they asked us to pray in sacrament on our first Sunday as official members of the ward) and to visit with family. By the end of the day, our house was livable. The main rooms of the house were put away and cleaned up. We still have a lot of projects we want to do and more unpacking, but our house feels like a home.