Our New House

I realized I never finished blogging about our summer. Seriously, once School /work starts it's hard to get anything done.
In July, I was driving around looking at new construction homes, and every day I was looking for houses posted for sale. I just had the sudden urge or push even though we had planned to look in the fall, and move around December. I found a development in the city we've been living in but the prices were crazy high starting around 500,000. Coming from New Mexico, these prices seem outrageous! I decided to look on their website to find other developments that they had. I saw they had another one where the house is were starting at 297,000. It's in a little town called Scappoose of only about 7,000 people. It's about 20 minutes from where we were living. So one afternoon, Patrick and I decided to go take a look at the development. We had been to the town before, and liked it it, was cute. We looked at the model homes, and really liked one in particular that had a third story Loft area. After lots of back and forth for a week or two, we decide to go ahead and try to purchase one. It's quite different here than it was a New Mexico, they only released like four lots at a time, and they were already pre-planned with what model of house was going to go on what lot. We didn't really have much say in anything. We just knew the model that we wanted and had to wait for them to release the next one. We didn't want to wait too long, because each time they released more lots, they'd raise the price. I believe, on July 27th we entered into contract on our home. It was already well under construction. It was set to be complete the end of September. We came out and checked on it from time to time, but not nearly as much as when we were building our house in New Mexico. We closed on our house on September 29th. We've been in the house a little over a month, and we are still unpacking. We ended up paying with upgrades and everything a total of 314,000 which for the Portland area is a really great deal! Our home is 2,019 square feet. The yard isn't very big, it's obviously not our Dream House, but it's so nice to be in our own home again finally. We have a commute to work and school, but it's one of the prettiest commutes ever. We live right on the Columbia River. It's been fun to slowly explore the town and find out what's here. We have lots of plans to fix up the house and do some upgrades over time. I'll post some pictures of the process of the house being built and where we are now.

Crazy Life

Things have been crazy lately.

Lowe's messed up with the installation of our new washing machine, causing water damage. Still waiting on contractors to come fix stuff.

I've been dealing with some migraine / nerve pain, and missed a little bit of work. Both Patrick and I have major allergies and can never seem to breathe! We live on Afrin, Claritin, essential oils in a cool humidifier at night. I have an upcoming appointment with a neurologist.

We ordered new checks with our new address. They got sent to our old address in New Mexico! We had to have stop payments put on those boxes. Our bank then had to change our account number. While we were at it, we decided to switch Banks. We have had a primary and secondary accounts with different banks, so we decided to switch them. Tons of work!

Our dog Cody has some sort of growth on his bum. He went to the vet and had a biopsy done. Waiting for results. Poor guy, hope he's ok.
* Heard back from the Vet. It's a tumor. We need a surgical consult now.

We spent the weekend refinishing furniture. Patrick had just bought a new Sander. A really nice one, almost $300. He let the kids use it to sand some stuff. The next day, as I came home with the kids Trevor was driving, he was going to fast. He crashed into Patrick's car parked in the driveway. He didn't even apologize. After we all got out, Patrick laid into the kids because apparently the kids left his brand new Sander outside in the pouring rain. He was mad! We left the kids to fend for themselves while we went out to a nice dinner to try to calm down. We checked after a week, and luckily the Sander is still working, yay!

Griffin didn't want me to attend his Cross Country award ceremony. He actually said he didn't know why I would need to be there. He was being a punk. Trevor was at work, so Savannah and I went out to dessert together. We picked the boys up much later in the evening. Lot's of late night commuting over the mountain. In the morning, Trevor came and told me Griffin had been throwing up all night. It was everywhere, even on the walls! Like a scene from The Exorcist! The rest of us headed into work/school for the day. When I left work, my car wouldn't start. I was out of gas! I tried to call Patrick, but he was still sleeping. I ended up walking to Savannah's school. I think that took about 40 min. After I had her, we headed out to find a gas station. I walked for hours before I finally got ahold of Patrick. He came over the mountain to our rescue. My feet were killing me. We eventually got picked up, and got some gas. We enjoyed Chick-fil-A before getting more gas and the heading home. Finally made it home around 6:30pm. Only after 4 hours after I got off work.

Patrick left to take Trevor to work over the mountain. Left both his work and personal phone on top of his car. Didn't realize until after he'd made it into town. Griffin and I searched in the dark and rain until we finally found them. Work phone almost untouched. Personal phone crushed!

Just some of the craziness going on
recently. Now Patrick has the stomach bug. It'll get better I'm sure.