Our big sparkling new house + first days of school

It has now been 2 weeks and we are finally settling into our new home.

We closed on a Friday and spent the night on the floor that night since the movers weren't able to get here until Saturday.  Even though they were on the floor, I think the kids were in a blissful state because they actually had a bedroom door that they could shut and have some alone time.

Before we were able to move in we had our first day of school while we were still living in Dublin.  This meant 3 hours in the car to take them to school and 3 hours in the car to pick them up from school.  Luckily I only had to do that for a couple of weeks before we moved closer to the school.

Our school is a year round school.  This means that the kids get a couple of weeks off every few months, every Weds. is an early release day and I think they get the entire month of June off.  I love this!  I'll take my insanity in small doses please.

They are in the same class this year, which I am SO grateful for.  The girl has already made a couple of new friends, the boy takes a little bit longer I think.   This past Monday as I dropped them off, the girl jumped out of the car because she saw her friend's Debbie and Maddie waiting for the gates to open.  The boy finally got out of the car and went to join them.  By the time I picked them up after school the boy was telling me that at recess 'our friends Debbie and Maddie' were all playing a game of store.  So that's how you do it folks, if you have problems making your own friends, just hijack some from your sibling.

Alright, back to moving in.  The movers showed up with our mountains and mountains of boxes early Saturday morning.  It turns out that they only had 1 truck to haul our belongs with, so this meant that they had to make a 2nd trip.  With the first load they were just loading things up in the garage to empty the truck in order to go back and get the balance of our things.

As any woman worth her weight will do, you start with the kitchen.  That is the heart and soul of your home right?  It's where you all come together as a family, and as the kids get older I'm finding that this is about the only time you come together as a family.  I unpacked box after box after box of kitchen wares and in the between time directed movers with boxes as to which room that box needed to go in.  Somewhere in the midst of all of this I happened to notice something sparkling on the floor, but since I knew that there were probably loose beads floating around in quite a few of those boxes, I just chalked it up to that.  As I started to see more and more sparkling I realized that wasn't beads after all and couldn't figure out what it was or where it came from.  Then I opened a box of art supplies that had been in the basement.  The box had 3 extra large containers of glitter in gold, copper and silver.  Guess what?  The silver one was open and leaking glitter everywhere the box went.  I do believe that box is currently put away in a cabinet and I have mentally marked it as 'deal with it later'.  On an up note though, if you want to come visit us in CA, just go to Windsor and follow the glittery trail.

Once I got the kitchen in a functioning state it was on to the bedrooms.  It was a good thing that we were all living out of suitcases to begin with.  All of our clothing was in boxes, that is other than what had traveled in our dresser drawers.  My first find was a box of shoes and my wedding dress.  So had it not been for that suitcase I would've been taking the trash out and picking up pizza's in my wedding dress or pajamas's.

By 4pm the movers were working on assembling beds, patio tables and anything else that had to be put back together.  I could tell they wanted to get out of there and honestly we were all beat and just wanted some quiet time in our new house.  When they left they were unable to get the desk part put together on the boy's bunk bed.  Then the mover that was working on our sleep number bed told me that he put it all together correctly but the remotes were out of battery so he couldn't test it.  Of course I have a ton of batteries, but which box they are in???  So I took him at his word and signed off on everything.  After getting new batteries I found out that no, it isn't working.

After they left I went into the garage to find that the original boxes that they were unloading so they could send the truck back for the second trip, well those boxes never moved from the garage.  Most of them are unbelievably heavy boxes of beads and shop hooks for those beads.  We packed the beads into gallon zip bags with probably about 12-15 or  more bags per box.  I don't know if you can imagine just how heavy those boxes are, but we have to find a way to get them upstairs to the new office.

At this point the downstairs is almost done, other than a mountain of broken down boxes in the 2 front rooms.  Since we are only allowed to fill up our recycling garbage can and not put anything extra out there, it will be months before we are able to clear all of those out.  But since we don't have any furniture to go into those 2 rooms just yet anyway, those boxes are fine where they are.

I've started on the office and just reopened the Etsy shop with just Luna cabochons, (since those are what I found...lol).  I even have a couple of sections in the shop sorted... boxes of beads, office supplies and my UFO pile (i.e. Un Finished Objects).

Slowly but surely it is coming together and I am so grateful that we are getting settled.  I'm even more grateful that I'm not writing this in my wedding dress.

We're Almost There

I think we did it, I think we are going to actually have a home this coming Friday.

Yesterday we signed all the paperwork, again.  The money was wired this morning and I'm told that by Thursday we might be in our new house, Friday at the latest.  Our movers can't get there until Saturday, but as long as we have a roof over our heads and a floor below our feet that we can call our own, we're golden.

I sincerely hope I'm not jinxing this, but I'm going to go ahead and give you all a virtual tour.

The front of the house, including our very own palm tree.

The front doors.  As you walk through there are small sitting rooms to either side

 

Next up is the kitchen, to the other side of the island there is a huge walk in pantry.

Dinning area and into the living room

 

Master bed, bath and closet

Down the hall from the master is the downstairs bathroom, laundry and 3 car garage.

Now we go upstairs.

The boy's room, the girl's room and the guest room

Next is the loft, a.k.a. Ed's gaming area.

Mommy's office/playroom

And finally, the backyard.  The trellis in the back is a huge grape vine with 

luscious green grapes all over it.  (God I hope I don't kill it)

The house in CO still hasn't closed and I didn't hear from Catherine today.  I don't know whether to be elated or scared?  Ed assures me that everything will be okay.

But that's it for now.  The Edwards are official Californians!

More House Drama

When I last wrote about our housing situation we were dealing with snowballs.  I'm torn to give this one an analogy of either a tea kettle or a roller coaster.  Maybe I should do a tea kettle on a roller coaster?

Currently we are tick tick ticking our way up to the top of the roller coaster, the tea kettle is cool enough that I can hold it in my lap.

We had scurried to get all the work done on the house for a closing of Friday the 2nd of August, this was supposed to be our move in date for our new house.  Gabe finished the deck work on Monday and got the office window prepped for the replacement.  He did however fail to get the trim on the house fixed.  The appraisers came in and gave the okay on everything except of course that trim,  Gabe said he thought we were going to take care of that part and wouldn't be able to get back there until after 5pm.  Once again I was frantically trying to get this fixed up and Catherine was attempting to get the appraiser back out there to confirm that the trim had been fixed.  I was able to sweet talk my dad and his neighbor David to go over there and fix that trim up.  So mid afternoon on Monday we were completely done with our end of everything.

On Tuesday the appraiser came back out and gave the all clear.  I scheduled the moving company for Saturday Aug. 3rd.  (And as I am writing this from our same apartment in Dublin you can guess that this didn't work out so well).

We are at the top of the roller coaster now looking down at what appears to be the craziest set up ever with dips, turns and drops.  My kettle is just a warming up, but it's still okay to hold it.

Catherine calls us to let us know that even though we are done with inspections and appraisals, the new buyers loan office still will not give us a closing date.  It seems that these buyers are using one of those Quicken Loans or 1-800 loans that you see on TV.  The customer service is atrocious and they will not commit to a closing date.  According to Catherine, this is unprecedented.

Next I get a phone call from our CA realtor Jim who informs me that he also has been on the phone with Catherine and the Friday closing date will be impossible to attain.  He also has been on the phone with this rinky dink lender and even though there is no privacy laws preventing them from giving us a closing date, this lender just will not commit to a date.

Our roller coaster is plummeting down the rails now, my cheeks are plastered back, hair is whipping behind me while I white knuckle the bar in front of me.  The frustration in my body is heating that kettle up to an uncomfortable bath temperature. 

In the meantime...... on a whim, another realtor did a showing of our house to a couple in Boulder.  These people are first time home owners and were really interested in it.  My feeling was this, I am so tired of dinking around with this house, why not!  Catherine tells me that the Boulder people are a conventional loan, they don't have to sell anything in order to buy.  The downfall, if we have to go through another inspection there maybe more things that they want fixed and after dropping over $10 grand into this property, we just are not spending another dime on it.  I gave Catherine some terms to run past the Boulder people, the house will be sold as is and we need a firm closing date.  They agreed, we're home free right?  Nope!

Catherine then calls the first buyers, the Montana people to tell them that they are now moving into a back up position and the Boulder people are in first position.  The Montana people come back with an offer of $5000 more.  Well, money talks right?  Ok, let's sell it to the Montana people if they can get a closing date.  Catherine calls all the interested parties to deliver the news.  Our Boulder people were devastated.

Now behind the scenes of all this drama we also have the potential of losing our house in CA because our sellers also have a back up buyer all set and ready to go.

On top of this, we are now up against a dead line of Aug. 8th that we have to be out of this apartment.  I am not looking forward to trying to house the entire family and 4 pets in a hotel.  Not to mention the fact that we would have to pack all of this up and probably store it in our cars, just to move it again once the house closes.  These Montana people and their lender have put us into a horrible situation.  Not to mention, our sellers are also waiting for that money, they are staying in a B&B with their family.  So this domino effect is rippling it's way through at least 3 families, that I know of.

My roller coaster is on a rapid up and down track with my stomach dropping at every fall and anxiety building up every hill.  My kettle is boiling and ready to start whistling.

To make sure we don't lose our house in CA Ed and I decide to just liquidate everything.  We are flying without a safety net at the moment.  The thought being that after all is said and done we can just put that money back into 401k's, college funds, etc.

Because of the liquidation, we now no longer have to worry about a time deadline.  It's just a matter of how fast can they get the money to us, this goes to federal reserves being open on the East coast and brokerage firms getting the job done.

This is the straight part of the roller coaster track where you are up really high, but you're just sort of chugging along.  It's a little bit surreal and euphoric, you can't believe that you just made it through those ups and downs, but there are still plenty of twists and turns ahead.  The kettle is no longer screaming, but it's still too hot to hold.

Now back to the Colorado house.  The Boulder people are so devastated about losing the house they come back with another offer.  They match the extra $5000 and offer to get the closing done in 2 1/2 weeks, putting it at the 20th of Aug.  The Montana people gave us a 'range' of between Aug, 19-23rd, still not committing to anything.  The Boulder people also threw in an extra $3000 to go towards any repairs that need to be done after the inspection.  So we said that's it... let's sell it to those nice people from Boulder.

On Friday we received word that the paperwork for our money will be available either late Friday or Monday at the latest.  Once that is in we have to race to the title company to get notary work done and I'm not sure how much time will pass after that until we finally get the keys in our hot little hands.

And that is where we are right now.  My roller coaster is safely coasting into the station, my tea kettle is lukewarm.

Wednesday will be our last night in this apartment whether we have a place to go or not.  Keep fingers and toes crossed that we have the keys to our new place before then.

Side bar, I now completely understand the people pushing shopping carts around with all of their belongings in it mumbling to themselves.  They were previously trying to buy a house from a disreputable lender.  By next week, I might be joining them.

July Adventures

Here are a few things we did our first full month in California.

At the end of June we paid a visit to the Alameda County Fair, which was crazy expensive!  But it did get us out of the apartment for a little while.  All four of us took a ride on the swings.  I thought these swings were the kiddy kind that just sort of twirl you around nice and relaxing like.  Nope!  These swings were the kind that lift you way up in the air and twirl you around fast enough to make your cheeks look like you just had face lift surgery.  The kids had a great time on this, mommy a little dizzy and sickly after that one.  That's why I was so glad that my son is not a thrill seeker like his sister.  I was able to go on the Ferris wheel with him while Ed took the girl on a roller-coaster.  I guess my aging brain is ready for the Ferris wheel to be my maximum excitement level.

The weekend after that we took a little drive to Brentwood and Discovery Bay where we had passed by some fruit picking stands while looking at houses.  We found ourselves a nice Strawberry farm and set up to go pick some fresh strawberries.  Now because of the competitive streak in both of my children it immediately turned into a race to see who could get more strawberries in their box than the other team.  Calista teamed up with Daddy and Alex teamed up with me and in usual Alex fashion took over the operation and started barking out orders.  The final tally, Mommy and Alex won that one.  Then I made a strawberry syrup to go over our pancakes and we feasted on strawberries for the entire week.

Side bar here, let me just say that the person that came up with this idea is/was a genius.  Grow the fruit, then let the customers come pick it.  You cut out several middlemen with the grocery stores, harvesters, etc.  The public gets the freshest fruit possible and all you have to do is water some trees or strawberry bushes.  Brilliant!

Our last adventure was a day trip to San Francisco.  We had to make a 20 minute stop once in San Fran to plug in the Tesla, we figured we'd just have lunch.  Ed had scouted out a charging station and that was our first destination.  Little did we know that this was the George Lucas Film Studio. Unfortunately it is only open Monday - Friday so we weren't able to go inside or find lunch.  But they did have a Starbucks around back and a bunch of grass and landscaping for the dogs to stretch their legs.  We are hoping to go back once the kids are on a break to tour the inside. 

  

After charging up we were off to the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was a bit cloudy, but still wonderful.  Before we got there the kids weren't very excited and I was second guessing my planning this adventure.  But once we got on the bridge and they saw all the people and the bright red bridge you could feel the excitement exuding from the back seat.

After that it was a trip to Sausalito where we found a waterfront, open deck, seafood restaurant.  It was just heaven!  The smell of the sea air, the light bouncing off the water, the sounds of the seagulls, this is the stuff that feeds my soul.

These were my first attempts at the panoramic setting on my phone.  Be patient, I'll get it figured out.

Those were our adventures thus far.  Next blog will be more on the house sale.  Spoiler alert, "It's going to be a bumpy ride".

TTFN