The hunt

For a while now, both my husband and myself have been consumed with looking for two things--a vehicle for him to drive for work and a new house to rent.

At the beginning of the year, when our son left to walk across America, he was unable to find a buyer for his truck and the timing meshed with the incident of my husband's truck needing a new engine which we could not afford at the time. So hubby took over the payments for my son's truck while he was gone and drove it daily. A few weeks ago, our son returned to Tampa to job hunt and needed his wheels again. So Tom drove it down to Tampa and then had to purchase an airline ticket to fly back home again. But that left him without transportation during a time when I was "on call" for the most recent birth. So, he would drive it to work with the stipulation that he had to not be too far away and had to have his phone on his person at all times! Not the best situation and one that made me very nervous.

So for about two weeks, he searched and searched for something we could afford that would meet his needs for work. Finally found a dark blue extended van with all parts working that fit the bill so he purchased it. Not a moment too soon as the baby arrived a little more than 24 hour later.

But in the midst of the vehicle search has been an ongoing house search. Our lease is up the end of September, but that is not a good time to be moving because I have two mothers due then and one of them is driving up from south Georgia to birth up here---at my house! I need to be settled already by then!

So, we found a house but couldn't decide on it right away. It wasn't perfect but it has a lot of square footage, the master is on the main floor, there is a huge basement with finished rooms, including a large area perfect for my office and a hall bathroom that would be great for the office too. Nice level yard, good parking, quiet street, great location, minutes from the interstate. It has 6 bedrooms because there are three on the main floor and 3 more in the basement. But the bedrooms are very small, bathrooms are small and there is no outside storage for Tom's equipment. The kitchen is small with not nearly enough cabinet space or drawers for me. And to top it off, the house is older, no fireplace and it's not "pretty". It's a tradeoff in many ways.

So we have kept looking and looking for something else---anything else that would meet our criteria. We have found other listings that are very nice, but each house has some kind of tradeoff. Mostly the cost! To get all of our "must haves" the rent soars up around $1500 a month. We just don't want to spend that for rent but hope to spend the year saving some money and building up our credit scores again to possibly purchase up here again in a year or so.

So time and scheduling were driving me crazy. We are hoping they will accept our application for the 'not so pretty' but big house and we can start moving in on August 20. Just a few days after I travel to take the NARM in Nashville, TN.

No stress. ;)