I'm back! It's been a bit since my last post, so let me fill you in on some of the in-between. In April, Trevor graduated from BYU with his bachelor's in IT. Chelsea, his sister, also graduated that day so they chose to walk together.
Although Gideon was super proud of his father and aunt, he was more interested in the game room.
The next week, we left Utah to become Idahoans. Trevor has landed a fabulous job working for Hewlett-Packard (aka HP, a computer/printer/etc company) up in Boise, ID.
The short version of the next 3 months is that we were house-tenders until our house was finished being built and then we closed and moved. The longer version goes like this: We found a house that we loved that was bigger, cheaper, and in a better school district than any other house we had looked at...by a lot. We were super excited. The only catch was that it wasn't built yet, so we'd have to wait for it to be completed. This left us with a couple months with no where to stay! So we started looking and looking. Most apartments wanted a 6 month minimum lease, but we found this lady on craigslist that did "house-tending". Basically you stay at a home that's on the market and you maintain it, prep it for showings, stage it, etc and get reduced rent in return. Well, this turned from being a fabulous find to chaos.
Within the first week of having moved in, the owners of the home became disenchanted with the idea of house-tenders and the house-tending lady informed us that it was our job to impress them so they would let us stay. Their home has been on the market for over a year so they were mostly just sick of the house not selling. The house tending lady also wanted us to buy a TON of new furniture and do-dads to stage the house. This was annoying to us because we sent her pics of all our furniture so she could ok us to stay in the house. Her excuse was she never actually opened the pics anyway and it was our fault. Alas.
That first week we told the home-tending lady AND the owners that the kitchen sink was leaking and I put a bucket under to catch the frequent drips. They gave us the "ok we'll come fix it" but never came. Anyway, within the first month, we come down to the kitchen for breakfast and find a puddle on the kitchen floor in front of the sink. We mopped it up, but hardwood floor isn't forgiving of these things so they had extensive water damage. While this wasn't our fault, nonetheless, the disenchanted home owners really didn't like us after this point. It is my belief that this is the reason they kicked us out 3 days before we closed on our home. Eek! Not only that, we didn't find out we had to be out on Tuesday until Saturday.
So Saturday they tell us we have to be out by Tuesday (despite closing Friday) but that we can leave our stuff in the garage until we close and move into our house. Then Monday morning after Trevor's at work, I get a call. Just kidding! We CAN'T leave our stuff in the garage and have to be completely out by tomorrow. Double eek! This lead to having 3 different addresses in one week. Luckily we got a lot of help from our ward, the missionaries, and neighbors to make it possible. Ironically, closing itself went crazy smooth. I always heard that was the hardest part!
So now we live in a beautiful home that we OWN. This house-tending mess has made me hugely grateful for the blessing of owning our home. It's so convenient to not answer to crazy people. We now have internet (which we didn't in the home tending place, which is my excuse for not writing for at least 3 of the months). Anyway, now our lives our blissfully happy living in our own little piece of paradise!