That's what we called it when we first noticed the house on our Iowa realtor's website. We'll call it home in January!
Last weekend's trip to Des Moines was fun, enlightening, and extremely busy! My awesome mom flew into Columbia on the 15th to keep the kiddos, and Billy and I flew out at 6:30am on the 16th. We met our realtor at 1:00 and looked at homes in five different suburbs until after dark. On Saturday, we focused our search on two communities and again toured possible homes. By the end of the day, after reviewing our notes on all 16 homes that we'd seen that weekend (our realtor was very patient!), we narrowed it down to two and walked through those one last time. Humorously, the final two were the same two homes Billy and I had marked as our 'favorites' at 5am Friday morning while waiting to catch our plane.
We're very excited about the house - it has three bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a large lot (1/3 acre) and a finished family room in the basement complete with a separate toy room! We made an offer and worked through the details on Sunday, visited a preschool on Monday morning and then flew back to Columbia that afternoon!
The city of Des Moines was a pleasant surprise...especially after the plane ride in. When flying in to Utah, you see mountains...in Texas and South Carolina, you see big evergreens and water. When flying in to Iowa, I saw nothing. Nothing but color-blocked earth separated by sparse roads. I began to panic. While I'd always heard Iowa was 'farm country', I had expected trees, and what about the rivers??? Then, as the plane began to descend, trees and buildings began to appear along with rivers and houses, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Des Moines is actually a really pretty place - it reminds us of Salt Lake but without the mountains. There are rolling hills and beautifully landscaped parks, trees that change colors with the seasons, as well as all the restaurants and shopping you would ever need while still maintaining a rural feel with spacious lots.The home we chose is located in West Des Moines and the community has interconnected biking/walking trails that wind throughout the entire city. It will be hard to leave the friends we've made in Columbia, but after visiting Des Moines, we are excited about this latest adventure and the opportunity to explore a new part of the country. I do find it funny though that Billy and I seem destined to live in state capitals - Salt Lake City, UT; Columbia, SC; and now Des Moines, IA!
We had a great Thanksgiving, spending it with John and Misty at their new home in North Carolina. It is somewhat bittersweet that just when they are able to move three hours closer to us, we find out we will be moving over 1000 miles away in a mere six weeks. But I guess that is to be expected with this new career path. We just try to make the most of the time we do have together - something we should try to do whether we live ten minutes or ten hours away from our families!
3 comments:
I was just thinking about you and wondering how the house hunt went. It looks great! Yall work well under pressure! Can't wait to see you!
Oh, and as far as the "house with no front door," it reminded me of another home with "the door that never slams"... and that one worked just fine! :-)
Good luck with the moving adventure. Your new house looks beautiful! One nice thing about all of this moving... when you eventually do settle down, you'll know exactly what you want in a house!
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