Week 9 Day 3 - Sunday, July 12th - More houses and nature walks

We took our time getting ready for church this morning and I checked online for new listings and gave calls/wrote e’mails to them all. Then we headed out. We were early again since the Youth Band’s Worship Team was doing the service. Arnold always does sound for them. Anyway I went to the nursery again with the boys and we hung around there and I got a phone call. I thought it was Arnold because I had just texted him but it was someone I had emailed earlier before we went to church. He gave me the information for his house and we arranged a time to go and see it. 12:30 that day. We would head over right after church to see it. He did warn me it was getting painted so it might not look 100% and I told him that was fine.

After church was over I went to the library and got more of my books (I LOVE these ones really I do! You should read them!) as well as a few DVD’s for the kids. I met Arnold up by the van and we quickly headed out to the first house.

This is the one that we found before church. It was a whole house. The front was nicely manicured and inside the front door we met the owners’ parents and the owner. They were all working on painting the house and getting it ready for the new tenants. From what we understood the floors were all carpet (you couldn’t see since there were drop sheets everywhere). When you walk in the front door behind it is the front closet (bonus it has a door, bad bonus it opens funny). Then to the right you walk into the living room and dining room. It’s one large room. There is a main window at the front that is nice with two windows on the sides you can open. If you walked to the dining room and went to the left you would enter into a ‘mini hallway’. There was one room to the left, a bathroom, VERY small linen closet (one that couldn’t be more than 8 to 12 inches deep with a crap load of shelves in it) and then to the right is the ‘master bedroom’. There is a window there that looks out onto the deck and back yard. The closet is SO small and slants because of the stairs going to the basement. If you were back in the dining room and went straight instead of to the left you would find the small kitchen. It is beautiful. Newly redone and everything is so nice, but a very SMALL kitchen. I don’t think you could have more than 2 people in there at once. The cupboards are normal size until you reach the end of the kitchen (it kind of goes in an L shape so you walk in hit the fridge, if you turn to your right and walk 5 big steps and then turn to your left and go another 2 big steps you are at the backdoor). Those cupboards are a bit smaller (think the linen closet I just talked about) and are from top to bottom. The door goes to the back yard onto the deck. Still in the house, if you go to the left at the door instead of going on the deck, you would fall down some stairs, steep stairs. At the bottom is the laundry. Newer units but still kind of funny to figure out. Then there are some old kitchen cupboards overtop of it. Beside it is another kitchen. And a chest freezer. In the basement is a hallway and right across from the kitchen is the family room with a small gas fireplace. Walking down the hall on the left is the bathroom and then a bit further (on the other side of the wall from the bathroom) is the AC unit and heater and water heater. Across from that (on your right) is the 3rd bedroom. There is a tiny place for storage by the AC/heater/water heater unit. Not that big at all but maybe enough for about 5 or 6 Rubbermaid containers.

Anyway in the backyard is a deck with a 2 car garage (one door to open) and a small yard. The yard is fenced in so that’s a bonus (even over the driveway). It is a very nice house.

So the back-story is that when we pulled up I told Arnold if it was nice inside I wanted the house. We walked in and I squeezed his hand. We looked around the whole house and checked everything out and then Arnold and I went back in and looked in a few rooms and talked quietly. The Owners mom was out in the backyard with the boys playing around (she suggested it). We said we wanted it. So when we told the owner he said, you know take your time ect… I told him that we had seen a lot of houses and we wanted this one. He said to e’mail him and give him some references and we would go from there. So we left and went to check out the other houses. We did stop at the grocery store and found a few more places we were looking for and then stopped at a park and had a picnic there. It was a lot of fun. I read some of my books and the boys got to play for a bit.

We went from there and found another 2 houses and had tours. Well townhomes. They were BAD. One was being lived in and they didn’t look like they were ever leaving and the other one was SO smelly and dirty and when you opened the garage we found bottles of beer and bags and bags and bags of garbage.

We had made an appointment to look at one more house on Monday night and even though we knew we wanted the whole house we wanted to keep our options open so Arnold was going to check it out the next day and I was going to send off some references to the guy soon. We got our youth pastor, a friend of mine and my parents (since they were our latest ‘landlords’ that spoke English!).

We got home and had a bit of a break and some supper and went off on our nature walk. The kids had a blast doing that. Here are some photos from it: