A Guy, Two Girls and a Pup

OK, so yesterday was a huge day, and not for good reasons.

First of all, Tuesday night we saw a house that was PERFECT. Love love loved it. Had a great floorplan, the perfect number of bedrooms, cute little backyard, little porch on the front…everything we were looking for. We went to dinner and decided to go for it and put an offer on it. Our realtor was GREAT and stayed with us until 11:30pm to fill out the offer papers, suggest a good offer, etc. We went back to the hotel totally excited (and I know that I was already mentally moving in.)

Big mistake. Our realtor called us yesterday morning and told us that the house had sold (subject to inspection) at 9PM THE NIGHT BEFORE. So, literally, while we were sitting down with the realtor to fill out the papers. SO disappointing.

In addition, Kevin woke up with a cold — hacking cough, head all stuffed up, the whole works.

So we went to Denny’s for breakfast feeling understandably dejected. (Denny’s seems like a good place for dejected breakfasts — just something about it.) While we were there, the realtor (Mary, for clarity) called and urged us to reconsider seeing a house we had before and also a couple of new constructions, which we did. The previous house was really cute, but just didn’t work for our lifestyle — the kitchen was not open to the living room, which just wouldn’t work. The new constructions were just depressingly bland — nice, but without any style.

So we got on our flight back home. Meredith was PRETTY good, although she was being a total wiggle worm — I fought her the WHOLE time, it felt like. I was trying to let Kevin get some sleep in the meantime, so that was a long couple of hours. Then, with about an hour to go in the flight, Kevin got REALLY sick all of a sudden — feeling faint, nauseous, etc. (He’s had this problem before, but it usually happens when he’s doing strenuous exercise.) So he ended up hanging out in the airplane galley with an icepack for awhile. The poor guy next to us on the aisle — between the wiggler and the guy trampling him in order to get to the bathroom, he was probably kicking himself for not taking the flight attendant up on the offer of being seated somewhere else (he was a serviceman, so I think they were trying to give him some more legroom as a “thank you”.)

So drama done, we get into Chicago (at 8:15) to find that our 9:30 flight has been delayed until 11PM. (They later brought that down to 10:40) But talk about agony! We just wanted to be HOME. Which we were. Finally. At 12:30.

It was a long day.

No one ever told me how exhausting it is looking at houses! I remember looking for our current house, but it was mostly Sunday open houses — a couple of hours and we were done! But with such limited time, we feel like we have to see as much as we can every day, so we’ve been doing 10, 11 houses a day. They all blend together! I’m glad I’m taking pictures to remember. We saw some really, really cute ones yesterday, and it feels like we’re narrowing down areas, at least (kind of leaning toward northern Seattle, it seems — Ballard, Phinney, Magnolia. I would LOVE to find someplace in Queen Anne, but I’m afraid that’s beyond our price range just now…)

We’re prepping for one more day of house hunting with the 2 realtors we need to decide between — hopefully this will give us enough time with both of them to be able to make a good choice. I don’t think either would be BAD — just who would be easiest for us to work with. The one is a Seattle native and LOVES Seattle and really knows history and the area — after meeting with her, I was really excited to get here and start our life! The other is more similar to our situation — originally from the Midwest, married with a young (22 month) son. So it’s a toss-up.

We also need to find some time to visit a credit union in the area that’s giving good loan rates. That might be one for tomorrow morning before our flight. No one can say we didn’t squeeze every ounce out of our visit, that’s for sure…

Meredith has continued to be just awesome — everyone is completely charmed with her and she’s very happy to hang out in her car seat while we check out houses. Often, we’ll come back to the entryway where we left her to find her laughing and talking to herself. CUTE. I love her. :} When I was coming back from the bathroom at dinner at Chinook’s, our waitress was peeking through a window with another girl and pointing at our table, clearly telling the other girl how adorable Meredith was. (Chinook’s, by the way, had the best fish and chips I’ve ever had. Yum!)

Whew! Yesterday was a FULL DAY. We started at 9am seeing houses and weren’t done until 4. Saw 11 houses and I can’t remember any of them. No, there were a couple that Kevin and I were both really impressed with. I took a ton of pictures — will post them when we get home. Meredith did FANTASTICALLY well — the realtors and the homeowners we met were all in love with her. She was good all day, just a little crabby when she was hungry or tired, but otherwise smiling and excited and looking around. I felt bad that she was stuck in her carseat all day, but she was a trouper. Good girl!

We checked out a QFC grocery store here in Bellevue in our search for good grocery stores (a very important thing!) Got some dinner and breakfast stuff and back to the hotel to chill out for the evening. In the lobby, some random stranger (who must have overheard us at some point saying Meredith’s name) said that Meredith was his wife’s name and the most beautiful name in the world. AWWW. Meredith will be famous in Seattle.

Good morning from the Left Coast! After 2 days, we finally arrived; in style, it turns out, thanks to an upgrade to first class for our mental anguish and suffering caused by our canceled flights on Friday. (That’s what they call a “first world problem”.) Got some great pictures as we flew in over the Cascades — snow-covered peaks as far as the eye can see! We landed in sunshine and gorgeous warm weather (a complete fluke, according to the weather forecast, but we’ll take it!) We checked into our hotel here in Bellevue.

We decided to head out to Alki Beach, which is on the west side of the Seattle isthmus right on Puget Sound. Well, us and everyone else in Seattle, it turns out. I don’t know if it was a Saturday night thing or just a good weather thing, but it was cruise night out on the road around the beach. We were hoping to get out, stretch our legs and enjoy the sunset, but it took us awhile to get out there, so by the time we got to the beach, the sun was pretty much set (although it was behind the Olympia mountains between Seattle and the ocean, so that was very cool.)

From there, Kevin took us on a (very random) driving tour of some of the neighborhoods between there and here. He’s certainly adapted to the roads pretty quickly! Good thing, because I was totally lost. We rounded out our evening with a stop at Whole Foods for a few groceries and dinner — pasta salad, with some lamb for Kevin. And then Meredith decided that she really wanted to eat ALL NIGHT (hence, Sleepless in Seattle.) We’re going to be meeting our first real estate agent in a couple of hours; hopefully we won’t fall asleep…

So this evening was cereal and carrots for dinner. Meredith has a great time feeding herself! Here’s how it works: 1. I get a spoonful of food. 2. I get it close to her mouth. 3. She grabs the spoon (usually with her hand in the bowl) and puts in in her ear, her hair, her eye… 4. She finds her mouth finally and spends 2 minutes sucking the nutrients off and waving it in the air. 5. I either wrestle it away from her OR rescue it off the floor where she’s tossed it for Devi to help with the cleaning. 6. Lather, rinse, repeat. Hopefully this will go faster eventually — I don’t think her prom date will put up with this game for very long…