House hunting

Last weekend we went house hunting! No, Rob and I aren't buying a house right now, heck we don't even know what state we'll be living in in the next 5 years. By 'we' I mean me, my mother-in-law and her husband. Rob was busy running and studying, or he might have gone too.

Long story short, Ann and John (the in-laws), met and got married in Rob's home state of Michigan in 2007. A few years ago they bought a second home in Savannah. Soon after, Ann was offered a great job at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and they moved from the Midwest to the South. Then they decided to move out of their Atlanta apartment and live in their Savannah house full time, so Ann started a new job in Savannah. Turns out she missed her old job in Atlanta, and they missed her a lot too. She is going to have her old job back starting in October, but they decided not to go the apartment living route this time. Which brings us to last weekend, when I went house hunting with them in the NE Atlanta area.

We looked at about 10 homes that day, and they were all lovely homes I only dream of living in some day, but I really got to see what a stressful process finding the right house can be. Ann was all ready with her self made spreadsheets so she could rate different things about each of the homes. I teased her a little that "Christmas Tree" was one of her categories on the chart (as in where you could put the tree in the house), but I realized she had a point. A few weeks ago, something on TV got me thinking about the holidays and I looked around our apartment and thought wow, even with more space than we had in Boston we still don't have a good place to put a Christmas tree!

After seeing each house Ann would ask us for our 'overall wow factor' rating from 1-5. Lucky for us, well I should say them, our wow factor ratings went higher and higher as the day progressed. The first few homes were 2-3's, and then we had a few 4.5's in the middle, and the second to last house we saw was the first and last to get 5's across the board. It was the only house we saw that had a dog in the backyard for us to visit with, and though Rob will say I gave it a 5 because I fell in love with the dog, I promise you that was not the case! It was the perfect house for them- very open 1st floor, super fun basement I know us 'kids' will enjoy and of all the homes it had the most character/uniqueness to it.

Sunday they put an offer on the house, Monday they reached an agreement with the seller, and the closing date is set for October 15th! Living in the same state as them made us feel close to them already, but in reality 4 hours isn't close-close. Now they will be 20 minutes away, that's close! I'm lucky to have a mother-in-law that I would rather have living 20 minutes away than 4 hours, because I know that isn't always the case! Yay for having more family in Atlanta, and cheers to the Pekarek's on their new home :)


Ann and John at their wedding in May 2007