March Madness!

This blog entry is titled March Madness and that is simply because that was what the month of March was for us in reality, Madness!  In February we made the decision to hire a realtor and put our house on Bellflower St on the market again.  We were hoping with the housing prices rising in our neighborhood and the low inventory coupled with low interest rates that we would be able to sell our house and get a good amount of equity from it.  We attempted to sell it way back in April 2012 and after lowering our price quite a bit was unable to sell it then during the recession.  This time around we did our research and found a realtor from a co-worker who had a lot of experience and success in our neighborhood.  Our realtor put us to work right away and gave us a pretty large punch list of items that needed to be done.  Most of the items did not cost anything, they were removing clutter and items in the rooms to make them look larger and to get them staged.  We did paint Sean's green "man room" a neutral warm beige ourselves which was such a pain that we both agreed that we hope to never have to paint again!  We also had our fence that blew down during a recent windstorm replaced and those costs were shared with our neighbor, had our front door repaired and painted and put new hardware on it, and had some of our warped siding replaced.  I laid new bark mulch in the front and back and put some pretty flowers in pots.  And then we just de-cluttered and removed tons of furniture from the rooms and put them in the garage (Sean had to park in the garage).  All of our hard work paid off because in less than 36 hours after putting our house on the market (it went on the market the first Saturday afternoon in March) and after 40 people came through our Open House on Sunday we had two offers on the house including an all cash offer that we accepted for above asking price!  The asking price we got for our house ended up being $65,000 more than what we ended up asking for at the end when we took our house off the market in 2012.

Our house all ready to go on the market!

All ready to go-our living room just before the open house

Our freshly painted den/office

Our front door freshly painted with a new lock set

We were blessed with some really nice and warm, almost early summer weather in March with some really sunny and bright days.  We tried to get outside the most we could with the kids on those days going to the park and the zoo.  We also went down to Corvallis the weekend of our Open House and stayed at my parent's house and saw Pumpkin-their dog.  It was bittersweet because my parents are in the process of selling my childhood house and it likely will be our last time staying in the house that they have owned for 25 plus years and most of my entire life. 

Being silly on the floor in early March with Daddy tickling!

Just walking down the street with her stroller and her new baby doll from the consignment sale

She loves her new baby doll

Olivia sitting and fitting in her doll's high chair and Brandon

Playing outside at Durham Elementary school park one gorgeous day in early March. The kids had PJ day at school which was why they were wearing their PJs.

Olivia loves going down slides!

Love this picture at Avery Park-I have several pictures of myself at a young age at Avery Park at the same dino bones area

Walking with Pumpkin Corvallis

Love my new iPhone 6 camera!

Brandon at Avery Park

He still loves the train at Avery Park

Watch out Brandon's the conductor!

Up high climbing the train

Olivia and Pumpkin have exactly the same hair

Pumpkin and I

Olivia at Ci Ci and Baba's house

St. Patrick's Day this year fell on a Tuesday.  While Sean and I did not have the fun bar experience with St. Patrick's this year with the two little ones, we did make a yummy Lamb Crockpot Stew for St. Patrick's Day and drank some Guinness's.  The kids got all dressed up in their St. Patrick's Day outfits for school and of course I could not resist to take tons of pictures!  I love taking pictures with them in their holiday gear!

Olivia on St. Patrick's day at School

All dressed in green and ready for St. Patrick's day

These two are festive in green

Olivia even has Four Leaf Clover barrettes on

All ready for school

Love this picture of the two of them

Olivia looks very Irish with her red hair

Riding on a carousel at the zoo

Olivia was a bit scared to ride by herself and wanted mommy around

On the lion statute

A beautiful day at the zoo in mid March

She is laughing

Love the sunlight streaming through

Looking at the giraffes

Mom can we keep the giraffe?

We got an offer on our house in Bellflower St. the Sunday evening after our open house and accepted it on Monday March 9th with a closing date of April 9th and an option to rent back the property for 30 days, which meant we had to be out of the house and closed and in our new house by my birthday, May 9th.  We had already been looking at houses quite earnestly before our house went on the market.  So much in fact that the kids were beginning to complain about having to go to open houses.  We found one house at the beginning that we really liked in Tualatin that came on the market before our house was ready to go on the market and we made an offer on it but it was not accepted since it was a contingent offer.  Our realtor also took us out to look at several homes on the weekend to get a feel for some neighborhoods in West Linn.  We narrowed our search down to Tigard/Tualatin/Sherwood/and West Linn after realizing we were not going to be able to afford the size of house we wanted in Lake Oswego.  We also narrowed down our wish list realizing that we were not going to get everything on our wish list.

The week after our house sold I our house search up in high gear and began driving out to properties first to look at the location prior to actually viewing them with my realtor to save time.  After two solid days of looking at about 20-25 properties I found our house!  When I first walked into the house, I knew it was the one.  The house was adorable on the outside with its cedar siding that was painted to look like a Italian village home.  Inside was extremely high quality finishes, including a custom rod iron staircase, high quality trim and windows, and Plantation Shutters.  My most favorite part of the house was the huge kitchen and there was no formal dining room so everything flowed on the lower level.  That day I also saw two other homes (one in Tualatin with a huge beautiful yard and one in Sherwood) that I liked as well and then Sean took the next day off and we looked at all three homes and luckily he liked the house I liked and we made an offer on it at full price (since our relator said it actually was probably worth $13,000 more than they were asking) and we were glad we did because two other people were about to put in offers.  We plan to do a light remodel to the kitchen (replacing the tile counters with Quartz) and the tile backsplash with a glass tile and the sink and the faucet just after we move in.  We also plan on painting Olivia's room and the bonus/entertainment room.  But other than those things, the house is move in ready!  The house is 2700 square feet (so almost 900 square feet bigger than our old house) with a open concept living room/dining room/kitchen, and a den downstairs which we will make into the kids' play room.  There is a good size backyard that is fully fenced and private with lots of trees and shrubbery.  There is a lot more privacy in the house which is what we love and it is near a new good elementary school.  Upstairs we have a huge master bedroom with a large master suite bathroom that had been recently remodeled and a large walk in closet.  We have the two kids' bedrooms upstairs too near our bedroom and the two rooms are right next to each other and the same size and a large bonus room which we are making our Entertainment room.  We also have the kids' bathroom and best of all an upstairs laundry room with a sink and tons of cabinets!  This will make laundry day so much easier for me!  I have never had an entire room dedicated for laundry!

New house!

Olivia just wanted to run all around!

Kitchen on the day of our home inspection

We are going to replace the counters with Quartz

Front of kitchen

Outside area

A much bigger outdoor area for the kids

Site of Brandon's promised playground

Dining room area looking down from upstairs

Office/den downstairs which will be the kids play room

Entry way

Outdoor area

Living room looking in from kitchen

Stairway

Overview of kitchen with our realtor John in the background

We have some privacy trees yes!

Privacy trees on the side of the lot

Playing on the stairs

Fireplace

Master bedroom-more room than I know what we are going to do with!

Olivia's room which we will be painting

Bonus room which we plan on making an Entertainment Room

Love love our Master Bathroom!

Love it

More of our Master bath

Love the huge window in our Master Bedroom and the shutters

Love the tile work on our shower

Shower

Love the huge master closet!

We finished off March saying goodbye to my manager and boss for the last four years, Jerry Thatcher.  Jerry had been with State Farm for nearly 35 years.  He had a nice retirement reception and then we all met outside of work for Happy Hour and to celebrate his retirement.  Here is the gang saying goodbye to Jerry!

Saying goodbye to my manager Jerry Thatcher -the team minus a few people