WARNING! This is a very long post with no pictures. Pictures of most of these adventures and our Texas trip are coming soon! (We hope!)
House Hunting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
We arrived at our extended stay hotel on June 2, 2010 only to find that someone had decided to stay an extra day, so there wasn’t a two bed room available. They had us in two one room rooms across the hall from each other. Andy assured them that that wasn’t acceptable. We did stay in a one bed room the first night, but moved to the two bed room the next day. With that finally taken care of we turned our full attention to house hunting!
Andy found a house we had been looking at buying a few months ago that was for rent. We were super excited about it and went to drive past it. The yard wasn’t exactly what we had imagined, but we decided to walk through it anyway. We made an appointment for the next day (June 4). We decided it wasn’t too bad and that we wanted to put an application down on it. Then we found out we would be 3rd in line! Needless to say we kept looking. We drove over 300 miles in Chapel Hill and the surrounding area in the six days we looked for houses!
It seemed like every time we looked at a home we liked there was already an application on it. We went to church on Sunday June 6, 2010 very discouraged because we had NO prospects on any houses. We had toyed with the idea of going to a ward in Morrisville, NC but decided to go the Stake center in Chapel Hill instead, since we hoped to get into a house in that Stake. The people in the 9 am ward were very nice. Andy introduced us in Sunday school and told them we were looking for a house to rent, and asked if anyone knew of any houses for rent. A man approached him after church and told him about a house down the road from where he lived. We decided to go check it out on our way home from church. As we looked for the house we found two others that were for rent that were not shown on line.
We felt blessed to have found these other homes. One was a cute little old farm house with little yellow siding and green shutters. We called the agent and asked if we could walk through the home. We made arrangements for Monday. We walked through two homes on Monday and liked a two story in a nice neighbor hood better than the farm house, but we found ourselves second in line for it, so we decided to go with the farm house. It had a very unique and fun floor plan with space for us to grow. Did I mention it was on 11 acres? We had all kind of plans to get a riding mower, and washer and dryer. It was starting to get exciting.
Now a break from house hunting to the more exciting things…Monday night about 11 pm just before Andy and I were going to bed we saw flashing lights outside. We looked out and saw a cop car. Soon there were more cop cars and fire trucks, so Andy went to investigate. He came back a couple minutes later and said we needed to get the kids up and evacuate the hotel. We dragged the kids, who were peacefully resting, out of bed and outside. There were about 6-8 cop cars and 5 or 6 fire trucks around the hotel. Some bright person had started a kitchen fire and got enough smoke to set the fire alarms off. Fortunately it wasn’t in our building so after about 20 minutes they let us go back in to bed. (How exciting!)
We kept negotiations going with the agent about the farm house on Homestead rd. going for a couple days trying to get everything arranged. We were planning to sign our contract on Friday, June 11, 2010, so Andy started calling around to schedule the movers and get the utilities hooked up. He finally got our house hold items scheduled to be delivered on June 17, 2010, after talking to three different people, and started on the utilities. He discovered that the home was not well insulated and that they gas and electric bill averaged $500 a month! We definitely didn’t budget $500 a month for utilities, so we had to start all over again from scratch.
We found ourselves on June 9, 2010 with no house lined up and our options were very limited. All the houses close to the school were small and expensive, and the larger more affordable ones were either farther than we wanted or not available until July or August. In desperation Andy went back the computer and started searching for anything on line we may have missed. He found one on Kilbreth Ave, isn’t that a great street name for a dentist to live on?, and called about the availability of the home.
Now back to the excitement of an extended stay hotel! So Wednesday morning, mid morning, the boys and I heard and ambulance outside and saw some cop cars. Since Andy was on the phone trying to get things arranged with utilities and houses and everything else, the boys and I decided to take a walk and investigate. As we left the hotel through the front lobby, our room is above the front lobby, and rounded the corner of the hotel we saw the cop cars and ambulance. They were just loading a man in on the stretcher and the police were gathered in the far corning looking at something. They got out evidence bags and starting filling them. We figured there must have been a stabbing or drug bust or something. Things appeared pretty quite though. A few hours later as we were going to drive past some more houses to either cross off the list or make appointments to go see we noticed US Marshalls walking around the halls of the hotel. Exciting! We got back to the hotel a little after 5 pm and met the girl from the front desk. She said that the police were asking them to evacuate the hotel for about an hour. Apparently the man they took away in the ambulance earlier had stolen a car and had drug paraphernalia and had to be subdued. (I think the must have tazed him, but we couldn’t get anyone to confirm this theory.) They police thought he might have an accomplice and had been staking out the hotel all afternoon. We hadn’t had dinner yet and hot dogs didn’t really sound all that appealing, so we went out to dinner.
We came back a little over an hour later, and since no one tried to stop us we went up to our room noticing the increase in police presents as we went. We got the kids ready and into bed. Everything was just getting quiet, meaning the kids were asleep, and the phone range. It was the manager saying the police were on their way with a search warrant and wanted all the surrounding rooms evacuated. Could we please come to the lobby for about 20 minutes? Here we go again dragging the kids out of bed! We waited in the lobby for about 20 minutes; all the while more and more residences came trickling in. Finally the manager says that the po9lice would really like us to evacuate down the street the shopping centers parking lot. Luckily Andy had grabbed his wallet and the car keys on his way out.
We loaded up the kids and headed half a block away to wait in the parking lot. (It is now about 7:40 pmish.) Off to our left about 50 yards were two fire trucks, the haz mat, and halve a dozen police cars. We had front row seats to the staging ground! As the minutes ticked away with Scooby doo blaring on the dvd player, more and more cops showed up. Before we knew it a black armored hmv with about 7 men dressing in black body armor, helmets and automatic rifles hanging off the sides drove right in front of us. Where was our camera you ask, in the hotel with the diaper bag!! We had such a good shot too!
We watched as the drove to the front entrance and stormed in to the hotel. We were out there for about 2 hours before everyone started leaving and the other residence started going back in. As we entered the hotel and got to our room we could hear people talking in the hall just around the corner from our room. We got the kids back into bed and then Andy went to see what was going on. There were police in the hall talking next to a room two doors away from us. He asked it the guy was selling drugs or something and the cop say, “No, it was much worse.” What does that mean? All we could get from them was “watch the news.” Unfortunately we didn’t see it on the news since we watched the poor news guy walk around with his camera from place to place. I don’t think he every got it set up! The manager ordered Papa John’s pizzas for everyone. All we got from him was that the guy they caught earlier that day had a rap sheet a mile long so they were being really precautious since they didn’t know what they would find.
Back to house hunting…we made an appointment to walk through a two story home the next morning, June, 10, 2010, at 8 am. We made it on time, even thought we were up way past bed time hoping to here more about what was going on. The home was really nice and the couple who own it are really great. They answered our questions well and we started making plans to get a contract ready. WE talked a couple times during the day about what we wanted in the contract and then signed it that night. WE are so relieved to have a home! It is farther than we had originally planned, but it is on a cul-de-sac and close to the elementary school. It has a great deck out back and the owners are leaving their patio furniture and grill! WE are grilling steaks for Father’s Day baby!! Anyone who wants to join can feel free to drop in.
Looking back on the experience, past all the frustrations, we can see how we were blessed. Each house and disappointment helped us get to where we are. When we first arrived we wouldn’t have considered this house due to the location and availability date, but since we were desperate we looked into it. The owners have been really good to work with us on our move in date. They have family in the area, so they were willing to move out a little sooner than planned so that we could move it. They are a great couple heading to Austin, TX and we wish them the very best. Now we have a house large enough for visitors and to grow a little. We are excited to start finding neat places to visit so that we can properly entertain anyone blessed enough to visit. :)
Email me for our new address and phone number.
