Welp, the verdict is in. Our next chapter takes us to Kansas City, a sprawling metropolis spanning two states. Kansas City, MO is technically where Dylan got his residency so now the planning starts. House hunting, finding a job, planning a big move, yadda yadda.
Because of this, we spent the last week in Kansas City off of flight tickets we purchased about a week prior to the tune of $1,255 + hotel for 5 nights + rental car = ouch! Our goal, find a house. I’m 31 and sick and tired of throwing money away on renting an apartment, may as well tear up those Benjamin Franklins and throw them into the wind, I’ve been doing it all my life. Now that we have a new baby, we need a house! Raylan will have a yard, a nursery, I’ll have a kitchen, Dylan will have an office and a garage! Our mind was made up.
But…and there’s always a but, isn’t there? The market was on fire, like hot molten lava flowing through the city. In the week preceding our trip I was glued to my computer. I had a Zillow account, a realtor.com account, and a Remax account. I was saving homes left and right and they were all gone within a couple days! Literally, I would save a home one night and the status would go from ‘active’ to ‘pending’ by the next morning. Meanwhile prices on others would actually rise instead of drop. Our realtor told us a long-distance sale would be really challenging…great!
This rapid turnover was extremely intimidating and frustrating. As anyone who’s purchased a home undoubtedly knows, it’s impossible not to look, even though I wasted hours on homes that would be snatched long before we arrived there to view them. The good news, we managed to find an awesome realtor through one of Dylan’s fellow resident-mates.
We were slated to arrive Wednesday at noon and our realtor set up a tour of homes for us starting at 3p that afternoon. He finalized the tour Wednesday morning at midnight in order to get the most recent list of ‘active’ homes and by the time we met with him that afternoon at 3p 2 of the 8 he scheduled had already sold!
Hold up just a second. Can we please talk about how intimidated I was to fly with my 10-week-old son? Even though Dylan was going to be along, I was still terrified! I just knew he would scream and cry the entire time! Well, turns out a sleeping baby’s ears pop on their own without waking them up, or at least his did! Our flight was 3.5 hours and he slept during take-off, was awake and very happy mid-flight, and slept again during landing. Thank goodness!
Day 1 we viewed 6 homes, since two of them had sold by that afternoon. That night we squeezed a new listing in around 6p. It was a 5 bedroom, 3 bath raised ranch in Blue Springs, MO. It was beautiful, by far the best one we’d seen all day. It had 2 living rooms, a formal dining room and huge kitchen right as you walk in along with a main floor washer/drier room. There were also 3 bedrooms upstairs. Then, in the basement, there were 2 bedrooms and a bathroom, Jack and Jill setup with a huge safe room used for storage. You could just tell it was a well-cared for home.
Day 2 I had an interview with a potential job prospect in the morning and then we looked at 6 more homes. We saw old homes and new homes, cathedral living rooms, vaulted living rooms, and flat living rooms. We saw raised ranches, side-side splits, front-back splits, true splits and California splits. I think the only splits we didn’t see were the ball-busting splits! Some had pools, others had hot tubs, wood floors and carpeted floors, fresh homes and cigarette homes! One thing Dylan and I started to realize by the middle of day 2 was how sad we would be if we found out our cute little 5 bedroom home were to sell out from under us.
On a commute between homes 2 and 3 for the day, we decided we wanted to make an offer. It would have to be competitive and fair if we were to stand a chance at getting it. It was in a great school district, the neighborhood was really nice, it had everything we wanted in a home. Between houses 2 and 3 we signed the paperwork and our realtor ran to the office to fax over our offer. They had 24 hours to accept or decline, 5p of day 3.
On day 3 I woke up early for my second interview with a different vet clinic. When I returned we loaded up the baby and again went on a parade of homes. We viewed 5 homes in 2 hours that day and while some were nice and we did decide on a few potential back-ups, I just kept thinking about our little raised ranch with its gas fireplace, it’s nice walk-in closet space and wood floors. But, it was 4p and still we’d heard nothing.
My mom and brother and Dylan’s parents were on their way into town to see us (or more importantly to see our baby!) and help us look at houses. Around 4:15p my mom texted me that they had arrived and gave me their room number. I told her we’d be up when the baby awoke.
At about 4:30p Dylan’s phone went off, it was our realtor. Sure enough they had decided to accept our offer! I was so excited and the first thing I wanted to do was run upstairs and tell my mom (who of course had viewed this home several times online already). But Dylan wanted to surprise them, to plan something cool and make it a surprise. What, or how to do it, we didn’t know.
We met up with my mom, brother, and his parents shortly after and boy was that a hard secret to keep. Instead of rejoicing in our accepted offer we were busy showing them our ‘back-up plans.’
That night, around 3a Raylan woke me up to nurse. All of a sudden Dylan sat up and said, ‘I have a plan.’ He proceeded to tell me about LeBron James making his announcement about ‘taking his talents to South Beach’ and wanted to do something similar. Since we’re hanging chalkboards in Raylan’s nursery he thought if we did this on a chalk board it too could be used in his nursery.
The next morning Dylan ‘went to Wells Fargo’ and made a pit stop at Hobby Lobby to buy supplies for our little project. After breakfast and a short pit-stop in the hot tub, I was unable to ditch mom so I snuck in the bathroom to ‘shower’ and quickly prepared the board. That afternoon before our tour of homes we showed them the sign. It was pretty exciting. We all went over and toured our new home and let me tell you Raylan’s pretty excited about his new nursery! That night was spent celebrating our little victory.
jenessalynn 