Welcome to our Home!

We have been in our new home in Logan, Utah for 3 weeks now...

sometimes it feels like a lot longer than that,

and than other times it feels like we got here yesterday.

The town we now live in has about 50,000 people,

which is a huge difference from Denver.

But the people we have met have been amazing!

I won't lie,

I was having nightmares about what the people

were going to be like.

I had heard horror stories of what people in Utah

are like...and we were basically given

a pat on the shoulder and a good luck wish from a lot of 

people before we moved.  

It was as if

we were headed off to war....

and I was scared to death,

but I knew this was "right"

for our family.

It has been quite different than everyone had described to us,

We have never been more welcomed

or given an extended hand of friendship like this ever before.

Several Neighbors brought over cookies

and introduced themselves...

friends came over and helped us rake the leaves in our yard for HOURS..

more neighbors came over and helped us prep the garden for winter....

The church members came over and helped shaun unload the tuck....

We are slowly making the home "ours",

but here are the before pics of almost everything:

Front of our home (West Side)

Side of our home (north side)

Dining room

Family room

Dining Room

Main Level Hallway

Main floor Bathroom

2 nd floor hallway

Shiloh's room

Shiloh's Room

Caden's Room

Kitchen

Kitchen

Kitchen

Stairwell

Stairwell

the view from upstairs window

Master Bedroom

Master bedroom

Playroom

Playroom

Living Room

Disclaimer:

to all our colorado friends comparing this to colorado prices....it is much cheaper to live

in Utah than Colorado!  We were able to cut our home buying budget by about 40%

The Scariest month of my life

The past 6 weeks have been

A roller coaster....

And not one of the smooth roller coasters

With it's exciting ups and downs and twirls...

But more like one of the old wooden coasters

That tweaks your neck

And sometimes goes off the tracks.

(Aka Lakeside amusement park).

This roller coaster of emotion was all

Due to some health issues

I started having  (again) about 3 months ago....

Here is a little back story:

I have epilepsy.
I have been on and off seizure meds since i was 11.

I decided to wean off my anti seizure meds back in March,

They have a lot of side effects that are 

Pretty crappy and growing up I only had about 10 seizures....

So I figured I could go off my meds again.

Well, I was wrong!

It took several months to wean off the meds,

And I did great for a while!

But things started happening again in august,

And things got really bad last month.

I was having between 8 and 30 seizures each day

(Most of them taking place during the night),

I was exhausted!

Imagine the tiredness you feel after having a baby and waking up 

Every 2 hours, and multiply that by 100.

Every time I had a seizure, I would wake up in a panicked

Aura and than the seizure would start.

We couldn't find a natural way to stop

Them....

This went on for 2 weeks before my neurologist said I needed to start the meds again.

Back in march I swore I would never take those meds again

Because I hated the side effects.

Well, after two weeks of living like a zombie I went on the meds again.

But this time they didn't work!

My seizures got worse and one night I had 8 seizures in a 30 minute time span.

I was sooo scared, I really thought I was going to die 

Because they would not stop.

We ended up increasing my meds to a higher dose

And it finally started working after about a week

Never before have I been so grateful for medicine...

Because until that medicine started working, 

I was wondering how I was going to function in Utah...

How were we going to afford

An adult babysitter who

Could sit at our house all day

While Shaun was at work.

I couldn't have a seizure alone with the kiddos...

What if I fell and hit my head and the boys were home alone with

An unconscious mother for hours?

All of these thoughts went on for almost 3 weeks, and I felt I was losing my independence 

At the worst time possible....we were moving to another state,
and I started to think it was not a good idea,
but it was also too late, cuz we had a contract on a home.
An awesome lil home, that I wanted so badly to live in.

Anyway, things have finally stopped seizing!!!

The inspection on the home went great!!!

The closing went smoothly!!!

And Shaun got the job at USU!!!

It was a scary month,
it was the scariest month of my life.
I am soo ready to settle down!

Shaun moves out on Monday and I will fly with the kiddos
on the following Saturday...if you have ever met our lil Shiloh,
you know why I am flying and not driving with him!

Why Logan Utah?

THE INSPECTION OF OUR HOME PASSED!
so you may wonder why we chose Logan Utah...this is why!

Any new home buyer in the denver metro area

Can tell you that

A mediocre small home will

Cost you around 250k.

And that usually doesn't include 

Too many updates.

We decided to move to Logan Utah

In order to have a more affordable

Cost of living....

And less expense would also equal 

More time together as a family

Another thing we wanted to minimize was 

Shaun's drive to work...

He is currently leaving for work

At 6:45 am,

And doesn't return home until 6:30pm.

Which equals about 60 hours in drive time each month.

Overall we wanted a more

Convenient lifestyle

Where we could spend more time 

As a family and have less money go towards expenses...

(more play money and play time!)

Here is the cost comparison that made this decision

A little easier...cuz don't get me wrong, I

Love colorado.

I am a colorado native!

But the cost of living here had become 

Not worth the time or effort we were putting into it.

Home insurance colorado $1300/ year

Home insurance Utah $350/year
money saved=$950/year

Property taxes colorado $1600/year

Property taxes Utah $900/year

money saved $700/year
 

Cost of an average home colorado $246,600

Cost of an average home logan, Utah $159,500
money saved $87,100

Cost of gas for driving to/from work colorado $293/month

(Shaun Has a 1.5 hour commute, each way)

Cost of gas to/from work Logan Utah $0.,,, the buses are FREE!
money saved $3516/year

And to put the cherry on top,

Our water bill for watering our yard will average $30/ YEAR!

Because We have partial water shares on this property,

Which means we get free yard water from the canal!

That will come in handy cuz the yard has a lot to water.....

When Shaun and I got married I told him he had to 

Agree to two things....

#1- we will never live in Utah 

#2- I will never do daycare in our home

Both of those items have now been done,

We are moving to Utah and I did daycare at our old house for a

Couple months to cover some extra unseen costs we incurred.

Today's lesson,

Never say never!

 

UNDER CONTRACT!! (round 2)

We gave the sellers a counter-offer to their counter-offer on

Tuesday...they had to either counter-offer it again, or agree and

Go under contract.

They had to make a decision by 6 pm Wednesday....

At 5 pm Wednesday I started to worry. 

 Had they received another offer?

Were they considering keeping it, instead of selling?

But at 5:45 Shaun called and said they had accepted our counter offer!!

So for the second time this summer, we are under contract.

Hopefully this home can pass its inspection!

If all goes well, we will be closing between the 3rd and 16th of October.

The bank we are getting our loan thru processed our info months ago when we were under contract on The Provo Utah property....so they said we could probably have a 10-21 day closing!!

Home details:

Built in 1917

Home style: bungalow

3 beds, 2 baths

Unfinished basement

2486 square feet

How I knew it was "the one"...

The porch,

The yard

The old style of the home

I have not seen the home in person, and I Won't until

The day we move in....

So excited to start this new adventure!

Utah bound (again)

A ton has happened in the past

Few weeks, we made an offer on a home in loveland colorado..

But there were multiple offers and it

Quickly became out of our price range.

After this happened we really assessed

What we were trying to accomplish.

We started off the summer wanting to buy a home

On the lower end of our budget,

And than be able to invest some of the extra money

Into turning the home into

An income property (and renting out part of it, while we lived in the other half).

We were not going to be able to find a property like this

In loveland, or anywhere in colorado with the budget we had.

So we turned again to Utah....but this time

We were looking north of Salt Lake City.

The housing costs drop drastically when you get

Into the northern part of Utah.

We were considering Ogden for a while,

And than my dad suggested Logan....

Last weekend we sent Shaun out to Logan for the weekend 

To look at homes.

He spent almost all day Saturday looking at homes...

Most of the properties needed too much work, or they were on a busy

Street, or they were next to commercial properties,

One of the homes even had a sink in the hallway

Because the bathroom was too small to fit a sink.

The second to last home they looked at was

A 1917 brick bungalow.

It had a huge porch, .33 acre lot, tons of trees and 3 beds 2 baths.

(And an unfinished basement with space for a room and a bath).

The agent that was showing Shaun the homes

Had added this home to the list

We had sent him....

So I had no idea what the home looked like.

I tried finding it on websites but couldn't find one that had it

(It was a new listing, and most of those home sites are delayed a few days).

Finally Sunday morning a website had posted it and

I was able to see the home.

I quickly texted Shaun who was driving home from Utah 

And said I really liked that home!

When he got home that afternoon we made an offer,

And have been negotiating with the buyers since than.

We should find out today if we are under contract.....

Wish us luck!

Moving to Utah will allow us to buy a modest home for

A good price!

We were able to lower our house buying budget by about 40%,

Just by moving one state over....

So worth it!

Change of plans 2.0

So after the inspection of

Our beautiful 1885 home in provo, Utah

Fell thru...

We had my sister go tour some homes

Near the BYU campus.

We wanted a home that we could rent out part of,

And live in the other half.

Essentially, we wanted someone else to pay our mortgage

(Who doesn't?)

In case Shaun wasn't able to work full time

While getting his MBA.

But none of those homes panned out either.

I became very discouraged with finding a home.

Road blocks kept finding their way into

Our road trip of finding a home

In Utah. 

We looked at surrounding towns/cities....

And still could not find a match.

So, we decided to stay in colorado!!

Which is great, cuz we love this place...

But also sucked cuz housing costs are expensive.

We looked at every town surrounding Fort Collins....

Loveland, Windsor, milliken, Johnstown, Wellington,

And I even spent a day in Greeley....

And that's the town I wanna tell you about....

We found a super cute brick side-by-side duplex

For sale in Greeley.  It was well below our budget, and we could rent one half of it

And not only have it cover our mortgage, but have an income.

We walk up to the duplex, and immediately 

I see an open bottle of beer sitting on the porch...

Their are chip bags etc laying all over the ground,

And the sketchiest guy walks past and smiles...

Our agent open the door to

What smells like a ginormous 

Cat box...

We walk in...

The wood floors are destroyed..

There is a huge metal grate covering a 2x3 foot hole In the floor...

The main bedroom is about 8x9 ft big...

The basement looked like something from the movie saw...

We skipped the bathrooms for fear of getting hep-a.

And on the way out Caden says 

"This one is nice"
looks like I have an optimist on my hands!

On to the next Greeley property...

This was an older home that was built in the 20s and had

Been split into 3 separate housing units.

The main floor was nice (that is where we would live),

The 2nd unit was in the basement.

We knocked on the door

And an older lady opens it...confused she turns to 

A young girl for translation of what we are saying.

We walk into a one bedroom, one bath unit to find a large family 

Living there....it was sad, awkward, etc

And I wanted to leave.

Greeley got marked off our list, and we were

Back to square one.

Loveland colorado,

The more affordable version of Fort Collins 

Aka foco.

Cross your fingers our house hunt ends soon

(And not because we give up).

Inspection gone bad....(tear)

Yesterday was our anniversary....7 year anniversary

To be exact!

Our anniversary wasn't exactly

What I hoped it would be....

And this is why.

We woke up,

Got the kiddos ready for church

And than got the news that 

The inspection that we had done on

The house did not pass our minimum requirements.

It was super disappointing 

And breakfast no longer sounded very good....

I already had a Halloween party and Christmas party planned

For us to have in that house....

I already had spent hours on Pinterest picking colors

And patterns for bedrooms....

I took a shower and felt a little better about the situation,

But it was still disappointing because we made an offer

On this home a month ago,
(and for the past month I considered it "ours")

And we hoped inspection etc

Would go smoothly....

But there were a few things in the inspection

That would cost to much cash to fix.

The main concern was the attic/roof.

The home had a huge roof leak years ago,

And the leak was fixed, but not until a lot of damage was already done.

2 bedrooms in the second floor had drywall damage

(Easy to fix)

And that was the only damaged part my parents saw when they walked thru the home.

We could not see the damage in the attic.

But we found out that Some of the beams and joist had irreparable damage....

Replacing a beam is very costly,

Replacing several beams is super costly....and that was out of the question!

Along with that, the home needed some electrical repair,

Which we could not do on our own...making the cost even higher.

By the time we added up all the costs for the  repairs needed, it was about 30-40 k!

Which isn't too bad for a 129 year old home 

That is 3900 square feet..... but it was out of our price range after we pay

For the down payment and closing costs....

From the looks of the home we thought for sure that this home only needed cosmetic repairs,

Such as drywall, paint, new flooring etc.

That is why you ALWAYS have an inspection  

Done!

A $500 inspection is going to save us from a huge financial blow.

If we had skipped the inspection (as some people do),

We would have been screwed for years and years to come.

Today I feel better about the whole situation,
and I am now ok with saying goodbye to this charming home.
It needs an owner with a decent cash wad and
a strong desire to do a lot
of structural repair.

Here is a link to the home (if you wanna see pics)
 http://www.zillow.com/homes/690-west-300-south-provo,-ut_rb/

And so, the house hunting continues!