I'm Home

I got home Sunday afternoon from my Oregon trip to find the "for sale" sign in the yard and 9 cards from realtors on the counter top. I guess last week was pretty busy.

I started this morning with a simple cleaning up: making the beds, wiping the sinks, cleaning the stove top and of course starting the piles of laundry that were stuffed in the hampers. Our realtor called and said we were scheduled for two showings starting at 4 so I also made sure to wash the floors, vacuum, wash the windows, empty the trash and continue working on the piles of laundry. The rest of the garage had been cleared out by my husband while I was gone last week and it looked really nice. I learned that he put a lot of the stuff into the truck to hide it from view.

As the appointment time approached I used my husbands trick and stowed the dirty laundry that I had previously sorted in the garage to the trunk of my car and moved it out of the garage. I moved the truck to the street, put the dogs in the side yard and sat down to wait.

Meanwhile my husband called and said there would be an additional showing, so that meant three showings altogether.

The house and yard looked really good and the people that came through seemed to like it. One of the couples had been here once already and when they left their realtor poked her head in and said they would most likely be writing an offer tomorrow.

I can only hope it's a full offer.

This whole thing is a new experience for us and a little scary, I must admit. I did find two good properties in Oregon. That was kind of a different experience in itself which I'll go into a little later.

Here's to hoping there will be a bidding war for our house!! ;-)

Good Morning

Vicki and I were with the realtor yesterday from 10:15 in the morning until 7 PM. For the first hour and a half we went over my stack of properties (I think there were 22 of them!) and we were able to dismiss a few of them for various reasons. Then they were distributed into areas and while the realtor went to map them out Vicki and I grabbed a quick bite of lunch.

We decided to look at the furthest properties first and as the week progressed make our way closer to her office. Yesterday's pile had about five properties for us to look at.

As it turned out we missed the turn offs for the first two properties and had to do quite a bit of back tracking. And once we got to the first property we weren't able to even view it because although we called first we never received a call back and the road in was all locked up. I was sorry we couldn't see much from the road either. So on to the next one.

The second property had a shared driveway with about five other places and it was pie shaped. It was quite overgrown and pretty impassable. In fact the road to the pad at the very beginning of the property had a large trunk fallen half way over it. We could barely squeek underneath. I wasn't crazy about the layout and especially having *renter* neighbors. We discovered that when we talked to the young man at the driveway entrance. He had written in the dirt on his truck "bow hunting opens in four days". Lovely.

We tried calling on the third property and again didn't hear back, though we found out it was because we had been in a no cell reception area when that properties' realtor tried to call back. Fortunately we tried calling that realtor again from the driveway and arrangements were hastily made for us to see it.

It was a beautiful 90 acres, according to the owner about 1,000 feet across and about 1 mile deep, so it was a long narrow rectangular property. The house itself was not much to jump up and down about but I did fall in love with the property itself.

I can't get too excited yet because obviously that's the first home I was able to actually view and we still have quite a few to look at.

Meanwhile, back at home, my husband told me last night that since Monday morning we've already had four showings and there are three scheduled for today! Wow! Keeping my fingers crossed.

Here's what I saw this morning when I woke up at six am:

The full moon was just going down. Time to start my full day today!

In Oregon

Both Google Maps and Mapquest were showing me driving to my sister in law's house in Oregon would take 12 hours. Additionally they showed that to get to Redding it would take 6 hours so it stands to reason of course that the remainder of the trip would take 6 hours.

Vicki and I got up and had a simple breakfast at the hotel and we were on the road at about 9:00. I figured that would put us in Eugene around four or four thirty, with a quick lunch break.

We crossed the Oregon border (which I had planned on taking a picture of the welcome sign but I was yacking too much with Vicki and I missed it) and soon we were passing through Medford. As we were driving we noticed one of the mileage signs indicated we had about 120 miles to go, yet it wasn't quite noon yet.

Something wasn't computing and I think it was the Google Maps and Mapquest distance/time calculators.

We ended up having a nice little lunch at the Apple Peddler in Sutherlin and headed back on the road. We got to my sister in law's house around 2:30, a full two hours ahead of our projected time.

We took a little walk around part of her property. My goal is to be able to have a similar type of set up. About half of her property is wooded and she cut a lot of little trails throughout.

Here we are at her garden heading for the woods.

A main trail.



Here's her cute house in the middle of her property.
And obviously there is a lot of wildlife there. Here she is feeding "her girls".
We won't meet up with the realtor until tomorrow so I'll have more later!

In Redding

My friend Vicki and I left Bakersfield this morning at about 8am headed for Redding. We stopped for lunch at an In N Out Burger for a quick lunch just north of Sacramento and started back out. We were just passing through Anderson (about 7 miles south of Redding) when we saw the Shasta Outlet Mall so we had to stop and do a little shopping.

An hour and a half later we were back on the road and in less than thirty minutes we were safely ensconced in our hotel room.

Here are pictures of our room.

From the entry just passed the bathroom is the "kitchen" area which consists of a microwave, refrigerator, ice bucket, and coffee machine.

Just passed the "kitchen" is the "living" area, showing the tv...
...and the sitting area, with the desk on the side.

Now for the bed area. Vicki is calling her husband to let him know we made it to Redding.

Looking back through the bed area towards the sitting area.
The tv in the sitting area from the sofa.
And of course the bathroom.
Just lovely!
So there you have it! So exciting, I know.

Tomorrow we head for Oregon and my s.i.l.'s place. We are half way there!

Lock Box

The realtor attached her lock box on our "hose bib", aka faucet, this morning. We wanted to do a recheck of the square footage prior to listing, just to be sure. Also the realtor's photographer came out this morning to take a bunch of photos, inside and out. I hope some of those boxes aren't showing!

So this means after the square footage is double checked (sure hope it's not LESS than we thought!) we will be officially "FOR SALE" on Monday!!

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Oregon with my friend Vicki to go scout out some properties. Our Oregon realtor should have a bunch set up for us to go view. I'm excited about that. I may have to set my sights a little lower than what I originally planned for, as it's just so hard to be able to jack up the price on our house with the way things are right now. (That's one reason we wanted to double check the square footage.) But if we can get our kids weaned off of the financial assistance called the Bank of Mom&Dad I wouldn't have any worries. Well, you know how that goes...

I'll bring my computer with me and hopefully I'll be able to get a post in here and there!

Hasta la vista!

Day Off On Sunday

Sunday we took a well deserved day off from all our working around the house. We had the baby with us so it was just as well.

I took her for a spin around the pond on the kayak.

While we were cruising we saw tons of dragonflies and their nymph shells.
Click on the pictures to enlarge and see them better.
So serious!

Smile for Grandma!
Then we played at the edge of the water.

Even the dogs joined in the fun. (From left to right: Neighbor dog Shelby, Gus, Clyde, neighbor dog Al, and Chester in the background.)

Birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CARLI!