Achy, Tired, Happy and Grateful

This past week has been one crazy week! It all started a week and a half ago when Mike came home with a phone number for a townhouse that was for rent nearby. We've been looking for housing for people who are coming here for medical or dental school who want to move into our ward. When Mike told me the townhouse was a 3 bedroom 1.5 bath for the same price we're paying here in our 2 bedroom 1 bath apartment, I said "Let's look at it, just for fun." So we did. And guess what? We loved it! It's just about as close to the med school as you can possibly get and just down the street from about 5 other families in the ward. The 3 bedrooms are upstairs, the living areas on the main level, and a partially finished basement downstairs. The basement isn't shared either, so plenty of storage room and possibly a little play room. :) The backyard is really cute and there's a garage space for the car. So we talked about it and decided to put in our application and pay the security deposit. Then there was a bit of an issue when we found out the neighbors have a cat. Esther is severely allergic and so she can't be exposed to cats at all. But the owner called the neighbors and told them they needed to keep their cat indoors (which apparently they said wasn't a problem at all) and so that was all cleared up.

So this past Monday we got the call from the owner saying we passed our credit check with flying colors and we could move in anytime, but we didn't have to start paying rent until August. Isn't that so nice? They said it would be sitting empty anyways, so why not start moving some of our stuff over earlier. So we got to work and started packing up everything we could. We had so many friends come help pack and move stuff over to the new place. It was crazy and we're all exhausted, but we got out a lot of our furniture and so much of our stuff over to the new place (I can't believe how much we've accumulated!). Then we staged our old apartment to make it look open, clean and homely. Some people laughed at me, but I promise, staging your home makes the world of a difference!!! Last night we had an open house for people who were interested in the apartment (who we found through craigslist). 6 couples came and 4 of them were interested in renting. One guy is doing his pediatric endocrinology fellowship here and his roommate is a 2nd year med student. They were so excited about the place that they called our landlady last night and said they wanted to rent the place. They're signing the contract this Sunday and they'll move in on August 1st. Many people were asking why we were finding renters instead of letting the landlady do it. Well she didn't exactly accept our 30 day notice that we were moving and so she was going to make us pay for August rent. We can't afford to pay rent at two places, so we worked hard to find renters.

All in all I feel so blessed with how things have turned out for us! I know we don't need the 3 bedrooms yet, but since it's the same price we're paying now, we figured we should snatch it up while it was available. Who knows if there will be anything like this available when we need it? The owners at the new place are so nice! They've been so accommodating. They obviously take really good care of the place and seem to want to have us there as much as we want to be there! :)

So now we get to finish packing things and getting them over to the new place. Our new place is a bit of a mess right now with everything just thrown in, but I'm so excited to make it ours. :)

Thanks again to everyone who has helped us and to those who will help!