I have had an extremely busy past couple of days and have been too tired at the end of the day to write the goings on.  On Tuesday, we went to a park in a neighborhood we had been looking.  We knew they were having a neighborhood playdate there because Chris found it on the neighborhood website.  WOW huh?  Anyway, we show up just as we see a couple moms and kids leaving out the other exit to the park.  We were the only ones there.  I was about to be really disappointed when another car pulls into the parking lot with kids hollering out the window.  Yippie!  People!  Kids!  Camille had to go to the bathroom which was right by the parking lot and so as we exited I asked the mom if she was Nathasha, who was the coordinator of this playdate and she said no.  Well, long story short, she was there for the playdate and eventually a couple more moms and kids show up and it was really great for me to meet and talk to more people from the area.  The next morning was the Seattle Neighborhoods tour with the professional relocation person.  We started a little late (something about someone weilding a sword around in the I-90 Tunnel so they had to close down Eastbound traffic) and didn’t finish until 2 pm.  I hadn’t eaten breakfast since 7:30.  too long for me.  Luckily all the kids were under the wonderful care of Olivia, who we met at Bible school.  She is wonderful.  I saw some really great neighborhoods in Seattle, but I’m afraid the houses that would be good for the family (ie, have somewhat of a yard and be off of a main drag) would be out of our range.  More on that later.  So I got back from the tour, took Olivia home, scarfed down as many calories as I could, and then we were off to Island Park Elementary for a tour of Elyse’s school.  BUT, we arrived late, and the tours are in progress, we try to hop onto one, but then Harry starts crying loudly, and we have to bail.  We go outside, the girls get cookies and lemonade and I am handed the Ultimate Parent Guide to IP Elementary.  YIkes.  There is so much paperwork, even just for Preschool and 1st grade.  What do the parents have to read when your child goes to College??!!   So yesterday we spent the better part of the day traipsing around Bellevue looking for school supplies (had to go to 2 different places) only to get home to find out that the PTA has already purchased all the supplies and you can just write them a check and they’ll deliver them to the school (oh and by the way, it’s at a discount since they buy in bulk).  UGH.  Then, last night, Chris and I and Harry (we left the girls with Olivia) went on another home tour.  Chris saw the one we put the offer on and then we saw homes in Seattle.  Big contrast.   There were 2 in Seattle that were AWESOME, but definitely had their flaws.  For example, we saw this one built in 1914  http://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/7406-28th-Ave-NW-98117/home/166671

It was absolutely beautiful, with lots of stained wood and character galore, even had a finished basement for extra play space, but it had almost no green space for the kids to run around.  Also, there was a scary thing in the basement where you open a door and push back a curtain and there was a huge mound of dirt.  The outside was in??  Hard to explain.   Then there was my favorite built in 1929  http://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/7535-20th-Ave-NE-98115/home/309235.  This home is just a NEAT (and I don’t mean tidy, although it was) interesting old home.  Chris and I both loved it, we really loved it, until we got to the basement.  It was damp, unfinished, and scary.  Also, it’s sort of on a busier street.  But GOSH i loved it.  Darn.  Anyway, we are still struggling about what to do.  We are trying to see if Amazon will give us any more time to look (and pay for storage and our apt.).  All for now…

House and Weather

Hi, this is Chris in Seattle.  So it’s raining (ha ha).  I actually heard there were a couple of tornadoes out this way too today, and there was even thunder and lightning.  It must be Cleveland weather following us or something?  It was actually really nice (if a bit warm even) on Saturday and was nice for my soccer game on Sunday morning.  I’ve been trying to find a team to play on and it seems that the only people that need subs right now in mid-season are on Sundays .  Which means I missed the girls vacation bible school songs in church.  I’m sure Emily mentioned before now, but they were in vacation bible school near by for a week. I think it was good for everyone.  House hunting is truely exhausting.  At first I thought seeing 6 houses at a go sounded pathetic.  However, it’s definitely a good amount; even if you don’t have 3 kids in tow.  Don’t get too excited, but we put an offer in on a house. Now Emily probably didn’t jump in and say anything, because the likelyhood that we get it is small.  It’s a Mercer Island house. Definitely a stretch.  It’s a real deal (I think, and I think Emily would agree) even at it’s listed price now.  We’re going to try to hammer them down to 6-8% off list.  We’ll see.  When you ask for a 6% discount in a buyers market, that’s not much right?!  We gave up 6% on our house in the first week.  Oh well, water under the bridge on that one.  So cross your fingers and we’ll let you know if anything happens.  Otherwise, we do have some good other choices in hand.  Emily has a neighborhood tour on Wednesday (about 2 months late from my relocation company), and we can do more tours if she finds any she likes.  We are reaching the end of our comfort zone based on time though (temp housing runs out).  It’s crunch time to settle on a house and make the purchase.

Rain

There are some things which would have been nice to have here in temp housing.  Number 1:  raincoats.  Number 2:  Harry’s raincover for his stroller.  Number 3:  more umbrellas.  Yes, I know Seattle is known for rain, but the funny thing is that even the seattle people are complaining about the rain.   Summer is usually nice and sunny I’m told.  Anyway, the family went out this evening for a stroll in the rain with Chris’ makeshift trashbag rainslickers.  The girls thought that was pretty funny.  Wish I had pictures.They served their purpose.  We also checke out the apt. complex’s garden.  Pumpkins, tomatoes, herbs, etc.  cool.  The other 2 items I wish I had are a phillips screw driver to put in new batteries for Harry’s kick and play bouncey seat, and a wrench so Chris could assemble my bike (not that i’d have time to ride it mind you).  Chris uploaded some new pictures into the “temp housing” file on Picasa.  Some of the sights around the apt. complex (the gazebo and gardens on a sunny day), swimming and walking through O.O. Denny Park which is near where he lived for the month of July, and our walk in Ballard yesterday. http://picasaweb.google.com/chris.browder/TemporaryHousing

So we are still searching and searching for a home and feeling a lot of pressure to get something quick.  We are trying to find a balance of something that is kid friendly, but also not total suburbia.  OH, and for a reasonable amount of money.  The biggest thing that I am having to adjust to is that there are a lot of people who don’t care about their yards and that there are million dollar homes next to complete dumps (of course, the dumps are worth over $500K).  It is not at all uncommon to have a brand new 3000+ sq. ft home next to a 1950s rambler that doesn’t get a lick of attention or maintenence.  To me, that would be undesirable, but that is just the way it is here.  Even on Mercer Island, the homes vary GREATLY!  And MI is definitely upscale.  Yesterday afternoon we spent traipsing through an area of Seattle called Ballard.  It is a nicely kept area with tree lawns and modest homes (av. around 5-600K) mostly 2 and 3 bdrms.  But we did find one we liked that was 4 bedrooms 2 1/2 baths.  I really like the neighborhood, and the elementary school is rated a 9 or 10 I think.  SO, good elementary schools.  We didn’t get inside, but hopefully early this week.  We spend yesterday morning driving around Bellevue (which is huge) checking out the exterior of homes and their neighborhood to see if we want to have the realtor take us inside.  Friday night we spent driving around Issaquah to see if we liked the downtown/shopping commercial area.  We are concerned that Issaquah might feel too rural or far removed from the city.  The nearest grocery to 2 areas we liked (called South Cove and Colingwood) was 2 miles…seems kinda far to me.  As you can imagine, the kids are getting really sick of all of the driving around.  Harry is developing an aversion to the car seat.  The girls are good and we have been stopping at a park every time we go out so that they have a chance to burn off some energy, but you can imagine how fun it is to drive around with 3 kids all weekend.  Harry will start to fuss, Chris will be trying to pull up a map on his laptop (while driving) and someone always is hungry or has to go to the bathroom and the whine level really gets bad.  (I try to wait until we get home to start my whining).  Anyway, after we get home, we usually try to go through our flyers, look for more info on the computer, and search for more homes in the areas we like.  Today I will look for open houses and we’ll get back into the car again!!  Chris is playing soccer this morning and the girls and Harry & I went to church so they could sing their Bible school songs to the congregation.  All for now

this blogging is hard…i feel obligated to write, but sometimes when I just want to complain, I feel like I shouldn’t put it in the blog because who wants to read a whiney post.  Yesterday (well actually tues night), started out really badly.  Chris and I decided to go to bed early after a fairly successful evening of house hunting.  At 11 pm we woke up to Harry coughing and the smell of burning something.  I nudged chris and asked him if he forgot about something on the stove.  He was trying to make broth and forgot about it.  Our apt. reaked of burned asperagus.  It was aweful  SO we had to move harry from the living room pack and play to the crib in our room (it’s a 3 bdrm and the girls each have a room).  He ate at 11, then again at 3 and 6 so I started the day tired.  Camille woke up to a soaked bed, it was POURING rain (i know, i know this is seattle but geez!) it was just that kind of day.  But the day ended well…we were talking to a mom & her 2 girls who were collecting orange rasberries in our apt. complex.  YUM.  The girls were in heaven collecting and eating these rare rasberries.  Oh and I met a new friend and she is from Chicago and we are going to meet for coffee so I can drill her on everything from the street naming/numbering system to local pediatricians.

The bible school that the girls have been attending has been a godsend…they both LOVE it, and Harry and I have been taking walks together in the morning while the girls are at bible school.  Speaking of which, I have to get them ready to go…

Houses, houses and more houses

I am so exhausted from looking at houses my eyeballs are popping out.  The day went fairly well, Elyse joined up with the Lutheran church nearby for their vacation bible school (God love her) and Camille I think will attend tomorrow.  Elyse was there from 9-3 today and even brought her lunch.  The people at the church were nice and welcoming and it seemed smallish like our old church.  We also checked out the library and picked up papers for Elyse to attend 1st grade on mercer island (I’m going to assume we might be house hunting for a while) and since school starts 2 wks from today…i’m thinking she’ll at least be starting her 1st grade from temp housing.  we drove around Issaquah and stumbled upon a community that happened to be having their yearly summer ice cream social complete with several different inflatables.  It was definitely SUBURBIA, but as goes with suburbia, it was a huge hit with the kids and therefore the parents too.  It was a nice community and we will go with the realtor tomorrow to get into some of the homes and check them out.

off to bed.

Back from Latest House Hunt

This is Chris. We just got back and I’m sitting in the parking lot waiting for the girls to get back from the temp “house”. Emily wasn’t very happy with our choices. Didn’t like the neighborhoods or houses of those I chose for today (they were new to me as well). So it looks like I’ll need to filter out the bad ones before she gets involved. That’s the update of the house hunt today.

Back In Seattle

This is Chris in Seattle with the family in temporary housing. Just like Emily said we had two pretty painless flights, first from MYR to ATL and then from ATL to SEA. The MYR to ATL was on a prop plane (two seats on either side). Emily sat with Harrison. The girls were across with each other and I sat behind Emily. Everyone was very good and the flight though a bit noisy wasn’t too bumpy despite being a prop vs jet. We arrived early for that flight and sat about 15 extra minutes on the plane (course with Camille having to go to the bathroom). We eventually got to the gate and were able to de-board (with Camille taking a pitstop in the airplane bathroom). There was no jet way, we just go off the plane onto the tarmac. There was a little (rental car-like) shuttle there, so we asked if we could get to A gates and he said yes. So we jumped on that shuttle rather than entering the terminal. He took us basically right to our gate (A09). We got up the elevator and when we got to A09 they were pre-boarding. So we went right on. Pretty lucky we knew the concourse/terminal of our flight to take the shuttle rather than entering and going around. We might have been late! We worked out the seats with at least 3 people agreeing to move. Emily sat closer to the front/middle of the plane with camille at the window and harrison in his carseat in the middle. Elyse and I were farther back. It was a long flight but overall it went very smoothly. Elyse slept about an hour but was otherwise perfectly fine. We did get to go to the bathroom 4-5 times. This flight was a lot bumpier and it seemed like half the time the fasten seatbelt sign was illuminated preventing us from going to the bathroom (or we’d ignore and get up anyway). We finally arrived in Seattle, used a sky cap (not sure the appropriate nomenclature here) to wheel our bags to the rental place. That went pretty smooth, we have a white caravan minivan. Pretty simple but spacious enough. The drive wasn’t very scenic and I think everyone was out for the hot day as there was a lot of traffic at 2pm. It was definitely hot! 95 deg or so. Too hot for me and I was just at the beach. I’m sure we were all over tired at this point. I know I was very fatigued and had a headache. I hadn’t really eaten at all (no breakfast, lunch was pathetic because we had no time in ATL and an $8 sandwich on the plane is about 1/2 the calories I need at that point). The drive up from sea-tac to redmond went smoothly overall and we found the place to pick up our keys. Our temp housing in on Mercer Island which is closer to the city and Sea-tac airport. However, redmond is up north east and about a 40min drive (up to an hour depending on traffic). HOV works well in this case. So we get to the temporary housing information place where our keys are supposed to be, but hey you can’t pick up your keys until check-in time. Considering the proximity of the keys to the temp housing, I wasn’t very happy to have to wait until 5pm… but the relocation folks were pretty non-responsive. It was a same-day transfer (so they needed all the time to clean up and setup the place). So we killed some time. We drove around a bit. I showed emily the house we put the offer on. We notice a part that was in heavy use, so we went there. It had a beach and a play jungle gym. As emily mentioned I had to back track a bit, but hey I was operating with no map so I thought I was doing well. Considering the lack of sleep and nearly falling over with exhaustion. The park wasn’t all that great. Well, it was very nice. But the girls didn’t take to the water with the 100 kids splashing around and the water being somewhat cold. I held harrison and we tried to stay out of the sun (pretty unsuccessfully) and I was just way to hot and tired. So we didn’t stay long (so much for sitting down in the shade and watching the girls play a while). We drove to find some food. At this point it was 4pm or so. The car airconditioning never seemed to get very cold (despite being on max). We found a Qdoba place and had an ok meal. It was relaxing at least and some food was good even if my head was throbbing and the heat was killing me (perhaps I”m turning into a northwesterner already?). At this point is was time to get the keys, which I was able to find pretty well (just turned around once ). We drove down to mercer island and I showed emily the house she didn’t like but I liked. She sayed “hmm” Who knows what that means. You’ll have to ask her. We just passed by and then it was definitely time to get to the temp “house.” It’s more like an apartment complex. It was about 85deg in the room. I was dying, the girls were whining, harrison was cranky, and Emily well wasn’t happy. We finally got all our bags into the place and all the windows open. It was still hot and it took a while for everyone to get calmed down and cool enough to sleep. Everyone slept well and it’s very pleasant right now with all the windows open. We did find a fan in the closet this morning. We go look at houses in 10 min.

Temp housing pictures link: http://picasaweb.google.com/chris.browder/TemporaryHousing

Seattle

We have arrived in Seattle. The traveling started off very rocky. Elyse had some anxiety related gastrointestinal issues at the airport and we accidentally checked the suitcase which had the anti-diarreah medicine and the anti-nasea medicine before giving it to her. Second, all 5 of us were sitting separately on the flights. Yep, Harry was to sit by himself. Luckily, we were able to switch with people so that Elyse and Chris could sit together, and I could sit with Harry & Camille. We had a short flight from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta, and then a long flight from Atlanta to Seattle. Camille slept for maybe 2 hours on the flight, and Harry was an angel on the flight, sleeping most of the time and being pleasant for the rest. If travel could be that easy every time, I would feel very lucky. We even arrived early to Seattle.
Unfortunately we couldn’t get into our temporary housing until 5pm. WE arrived at 1:30. So we had to kill several hours. Much of this time was spent realizing we were driving in the opposite direction we were supposed to, but I guess we have to expect this in a new city. We had to pick up the keys in Redmond so we decided to drive by house number 1 that we had put the offer on. ON the way, we discovered Idlewood Park which was on Lake Sammamish and had a little beach and playpark. The water was COLD, but the girls got swimsuits on and waded around a bit. Then we grabbed dinner and some cereal and milk for breakfast and set off for temporary housing.
Temp. Housing is on Mercer Island. our address is
9056 E Shorewood Dr. #241, Mercer Island, WA 98040. our phone number is 206-275-3926. Someone please call me so I know it actually works.
It is in an appartment complex where all of the buildings are the same design, 2 story. It reminds me of low income housing. Ours is a 3 bdrm 1 bath unit on the second floor and we do have a view of Lake Washington. It has a washer & dryer, a dishwasher, small frige, and a long hallway that the girls can run up and down to their hearts content. Also i did see a playground play in the apt. complex. This unit is probably at least 2x as much as our house in Clev. Ugh. The kitchen is probably 8X8.
It will really motivate us to find a new house…which is where we are headed right now. More updates to come and a pic. of the temp house…

Starting over on the house hunt

Well, we put in our 2nd offer on house #1 and they verbally told us they wouldn’t budge below $650. That was about 20K more than we were willing to offer, so it seems we will have to begin our hunt all over again. We will look on the internet this week, and set up appointments with the realtor for next Sat. The kids will love being dragged all over Seattle to find a home I’m sure.
Harry, my sleeping angel, has picked up some bad habits from his cousin, and woke up not once but twice last night, 2:45 and 4:45. And there is NO sleeping in in this house. Up at 7. I have managed to hurt my back again and although I’m trying to do the stretches my physical therapist recommended, it doesn’t seem to be helping. Here is a picture of the cute baby boys though…