Found a Place to Live!

We've been searching on Craig's List, the local classifieds, and several property management company websites for a couple of weeks.  We found several options and started making phone calls yesterday (yep, on Mother's Day...more on that later).  We decided to drive around a see a few places that had open houses and to just check out the neighborhoods.  We went tonight to look at one more place.

We've had our eye on one place around the corner from us.  We love our new neighborhood, our proximity to the beach, the freeway, and shopping centers, plus my commute to work is only 20-25 min.  We went and looked at it yesterday and it was perfect!!  Four bedrooms (one of which is a large master and another that is perfect for an office), 3 (!!) bathrooms, large outdoor area plus a cute front yard, upgraded hardwood floors and brand new carpet, a newer kitchen, open floor plan with three of the bedrooms on the second floor, no shared walls, laundry room, 2 car garage, dog is okay, plus very nice (and experienced!) landlords who own 20 properties and have been doing rental properties for 15 years.  The landlord was okay with us getting Fios service installed and putting up a dish for DirectTV.  We didn't want to fall in love with the first place, so we took our time looking yesterday and then saw a final place today.

The place today was a completely remodeled single family home, but the bedrooms were smaller and we didn't like the floor plan as much.  It a great backyard, but a strange, oversized deck in the middle of it that the kids would climb on and fall off of.  Plus it would add about 10 min to my commute.  We also felt a little uncomfortable because the realtor who is managing the property didn't know much about it.  The property was just purchased in December at a foreclosure auction for $517K...and the rent they were asking doesn't seem like it would cover the mortgage plus taxes, especially because they had to gut the place and remodel.  We just want a safe deal after our last experience.

So we called on the place around the corner and she was excited to hear from us.  Chris will drop off the application tomorrow and then we should be all set!  I'm so glad we found a place that's perfect so quickly!  Relieves a lot of stress.

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Mother's Day - 2009

It was a great day again this year!  I got to sleep in and then both of the kids were in wonderful moods when I got up.  They piled on me and gave me lots of hugs and kisses.  Chris bought me a digital picture frame and loaded it with pictures.  He knew I didn't have any pictures up of the kids at work, so it was a perfect gift!  He also bought me a new longer chain for my necklace that has their names on a couple of pendants.  I can finally wear both of them around my neck!  (Cooper broke my last chain and I just got the pendant for Charlotte for Christmas.)  We ordered italian from my favorite restaurant Roman Cucina and enjoyed the day looking for rental properties.