Christmas Catch Up

Normally, I would start decorating our house for Christmas the middle of November but this year things went a little crazy.  Getting an offer on our house right when I would normally be pulling out the many bins definitely threw my schedule off.  So, instead of decking the halls, we were throwing things in a suitcase and heading off to Ontario to buy our forever home.

Finally, after three weeks, many kilometres, three offers and perhaps a few tears along the way…we were able to check that huge purchase off of our list of things to do.

We arrived back in Pincher Creek on Tuesday afternoon and unpacked.  Wednesday morning the bins, boxes and trees came out of hiding.  By that evening, the house was looking very festive.

The next day, Ron and I both had massages.  I was told that my neck was extremely tight. Stress…perhaps!

Friday morning, we headed to the mountains.  A massage may remove some stress but there is nothing like the view of the mountains to help you relax.  

We took our skis and snowshoes to see what activity the snow would allow us to do.  In Pincher Creek, we have green grass but the mountains shared a little winter with us on that day.  We went further than I expected but it was just too nice to stop.  

Apparently, the warm weather has confused the bears because we did see some tracks of them roaming. And yes, we will miss our mountains when we move!

On Saturday, we had a relaxing day and then on Sunday, we went to church.  It was nice to see everyone.  I went to Tracey’s for an afternoon tea and we visited for a couple of hours.  I’m going to miss her.  I’m thankful for modern technology to help friends from far and wide to connect.  It’s not the same but it helps with the goodbyes.

Another week as gone by since then and it makes you wonder how time can fly by so fast.  Christmas will be here and gone before we know it.  January will bring lots of preparations and February will be our move month but stop, I need to enjoy the moment.  I’m sipping on my last bit of coffee with the Christmas lights adding some ambiance…time goes by too fast and so does the coffee.

We Bought a House!

 Let’s step back a few months…we listed out house in Pincher Creek on August 13th.  We had quite a few initial showings through the month but no offers.  In September, we spent the month in Ontario, hoping for a sale while we were away.  We only had a couple showings through that time.  In October, the showings picked up but still no offers.  Our contract with our realtor was due to expire on November 12th.  We thought at that time, we would take the house off the market for winter and start fresh in the spring.  

We had a request for a second showing on November 3rd and nothing happened.  I was sitting on the couch 3 days later when I received a text from our realtor that an offer was coming in. The first thing that we noticed was that they had picked December 11th as a closing date.  We knew that wouldn’t work for us unless we wanted to be homeless for a while.  We signed it back changing the closing date to February 15th.  On November 16th, the conditions were cleared and by the 18th, we were driving to Calgary.  We flew the next day to Ottawa and arrived at our hotel for a week to house shop.

Some hotel visitors 

Jenn took the day off to join us and the realtor to start house shopping. I had previously sent my organized spreadsheet to our realtor to list the houses that we wanted to see with explanations of why they interested us.  We were prepared.  

November 19th - Day One - we were excited!   We had 8 houses on the agenda. Our top choice sold before we got to look at it.  Our second choice had an offer come in as we drove into the driveway.  Another house owner wanted to change the showing to the next day.  We stumbled through some other showings where we just couldn’t see us living for one reason or another.

November 20th - Day Two - another full day of listings which meant more driving than the previous day.  We looked at some city home with tiny driveways and match box backyards.  We toured houses with no closets and then stumbled on one showing where a tenant had moved in the day before and didn’t allow us to see the home.  

November 21st - Day Three - we pushed our circle a little further out and ended up in areas where we had never been before.  We felt like it was bit of a wasted day.  We did not feel comfortable in any of the homes that we walked into but we did have some laughs.  One house was built in the 1980’s.  It looked like no one was living in it although it did have bed sheets hanging half out of the dryer.  There was a gremlin on the roof.  👻

November 22nd - Day Four - we decided to put in an offer on a house in Kingston.  The house was nice enough.  The garage was a decent size.  The deck was super tiny and the backyard not much bigger and it backed out on a busy street.  It would be a central location between Jenn and my parents.

November 23rd - Day Five - The offer was signed back and when we sent it back, the seller didn’t want to play the game and so we walked away from an empty house.  

It was now the weekend and our time was up at the hotel.  The first week of house shopping was on the RCMP and now the expenses were on us.  We moved to Napanee to be with mom and dad.

Week two began and, instead of excitement, we felt urgency.  We wanted to get this done. Mom joined us to take a look at one house a second time and one other house.  We decided to put in an offer on the house that we had seen twice.  The setting was very nice.  The house felt cozy and the decks were amazing. The owners had added a clause that they needed to get a good well test on their property before we could clear our conditions.  There test was to be done on the Friday.  Our inspections were lined up for the following Tuesday.  

We felt we had some free time and so we did some Christmas shopping, enjoyed a church banquet with mom and dad and went to church with Jenn and the girls.

On Tuesday, we headed to the house.  We were anxious to get the inspections done and be able to get back home to decorate our house for Christmas.  The house inspection was going well.  There was a good water flow but then the quality of the water was drawn to our attention.  I sipped on a glass of water that tasted like I should be gargling.  It had a very high salt content.  

The next day, we searched out some water treatment places and did some online investigation.  We knew that the water consisted of 1770 Total Disolved Solids.  

As we sat thinking about what to do, we got a text from our realtor that the water test came back with some coliform and a little ecoli.  We decided to back out of the offer.

That night, we were more than exhausted, frustrated and felt deflated.

A new house came on the market and so we added it to some of the old listings that we hadn’t looked at yet.  The weather was a little nasty but we continued our hunt for a house.  I think both of us felt that we were going to have to settle for something that was good enough.  We looked at all of the houses on our list.  Our realtor had been so patient with us.  We saw a nice house in a not so nice location.  We saw nice locations with not so nice houses.  We came to the end of our list and I was ready to cry.  Another new listing came on in the afternoon.  Our realtor called and got us in for 6:00 pm.  My hopes weren’t high and Ron hadn’t even looked at the listing.  

We walked in the door and it didn’t take us long to know that this was our forever home.  Our realtor went right home and drew up the offer.  The offer was accepted the next day.  Inspections were lined up for the next Monday.

We were cautiously optimistic that things would work out.  We went to a banquet at Jenn’s church on Saturday night. We did a walk through candy cane lane before the banquet.  We went to mom and dad’s church on Sunday.

Monday arrived and we were at the house with the inspectors.  The water level was good.  The dissolvable solids were in the acceptable range were in the “sweet spot” for drinking! The house inspector was pleased which put a smile on our faces.  We left the house, booked our flights and were off to Ottawa within hours.  We flew home the next morning.

We are not homeless! It only took us looking at over 30 houses.

P.S. next blog will include Christmas decorations and mountain pictures!