Washington bound!

I'm sitting here feeling kind of awkward as the movers are packing up my house...shouldn't I be doing something?  Actually, I have been until now.  Clayton is now napping, Jackson is playing outside with the neighbor, and all my pre-packing packing is done (whether I was done or not, it's kinda too late now).  I can't start cleaning yet because there is still stuff everywhere.  Tomorrow they load the truck, tomorrow evening and Friday morning we clean, and then we'll drive to GA to spend Christmas with my family.  We'll fly to Utah on the 26th to see the Shirts crew, then to Washington on the 1st to (almost) begin our new life there!

Jack and I took at trip out to Washington last week to find a place to live.  When we went, I wasn't quite sure if we were going to be buying a house or finding a place to rent (like we've done for the past 5.5 years).  We had a realtor assigned to us and he sent us a link with about 200 houses on it.  We went through that and narrowed it down to around 20 favorites.  We spent the morning of the first day there driving around, looking at the neighborhoods and outsides of the houses and then narrowed it down to about 10 that we then walked through with the agent guy.  Of those, we had 5 possibilities, all with their own good and bad things about them.  All but one was a little bit older and needed some work done or some serious updating.  We finally made a decision and we're buying a house!

We went with the one that doesn't need any fixing up or updating (because let's face it: we have great intentions.  And then they never happen.  It's kind of a running theme in our life). It is also the one that is closest to Jack's work...just a 20 minute commute, vs 30-50 for some of the other houses.  The plant where he'll be working is in a tiny little town with a population of 3,000 people.  We decided not to make it 3,004.5 and to live elsewhere.  The "big city" (there is a Target. No Walmart though) is about 35-40 minutes away from the workplace.  We ended up right about in the middle of them.  20 minutes to work in one direction, and 15 minutes to Target the other way.  The house is in a normal looking neighborhood, something that we found quite rare out there for some reason.  You just have to go through some farmland and interesting areas to get there.  The church is about 2 minutes away from our house.  From what we hear the ward is small in that area, even though there are tons of other large wards nearby.

I've been accused of showing a lack of enthusiasm regarding the house purchase...and about everything else in life.  Let it hereby be known, I AM EXCITED TO BUY A HOUSE!  *cartwheels* *squeals of glee*  *fist-pumps*  *more cartwheels*  There? Did that prove it?

Because they have been requested by a few people (and because I AM SO EXCITED AND ENTHUSIASTIC! *WWHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee***  here are some pictures:

Living room to the left as you walk in the front door.

Dining room off of the living room...kitchen is to the right.

Kitchen

And the kitchen again, from the family room.  And a bald guy.

Family room from the kitchen...or pool table room, if you're into that sort of thing. That's the laundry room door on the far wall.

Deck off the family room/kitchen

Storage in the family room under the stairs.  You can see the front door and the bathroom door to the right.

Laundry room off of the family room

Other half of the laundry room goes out to the garage.  Not the most idea set-up, but maybe I'll not "forget" about the laundry piling up this way?

Jackson's room.  When I was showing him the pictures I told him this was his room and he said, "I like it...but...it's kinda missing the floor and carpet."

Family room, breakfast area, and kitchen

Stairs going up.  They go down too, as Jackson pointed out.

Technically I think this is the bonus room.  It'll be Grandma's room and storage probably. Sorry Grandma.

The movie room.  I didn't get a picture of the guitar room.  Did I mention the guy living here was single and had quite a nice bachelor pad set-up?  This will be a little boy's room.

Master bedroom.

We really are excited!  If all goes according to plan, we'll close on Jan 25th and then move in as soon as we can after that.  All our stuff is going to be in a warehouse storage place and then will be delivered on the 28th probably.  I was just sitting here wondering to myself why we are moving so soon if we're just going to be in temporary housing for 4 weeks before our house is ready.  Why didn't we just wait to do all this craziness of moving until after Christmas and New Year's, and just have them come in the middle of January and then we'd go out when the house was ready.  Then I realized the little detail of Jack working there, and how that might play a part in all of this.  Oh yeah.  He'll start on the 8th, so we really could have waited until after Christmas at least, but we didn't know what our housing situation would be when we started all this.

We're really going to miss North Carolina and all the friends we've made here!  Everyone who hears we're going to Washington says how beautiful it is and how much we'll love it, so I'm counting on them to be right.

 Gig Harbor, here we come!