Our First Home

It all started with a text:

I was running some errands after work when I received it and was very confused! My first thought was that Jake had interviewed for a job without telling me and had quit his current job. When I got home, Jake explained that he was offered a promotion at his current job in the office where he worked before in Utah. I won't go into all of the boring details about this job, and how it came to be Jake's, but it's a testament to how hard he works and how valued he is at his company. I'm very proud of him!

Everything started to move quickly after this day. We went to Colorado as planned the next week but came home a day early and flew to Utah the next day to spend a week looking for a house. The house hunting was unpleasant; everything about it makes me cringe. Let me just put this out there into the universe: if you want to sell your house, clean it. I can't even begin to describe to you the grossness of the places we went to. We weren't even looking at foreclosed homes either! Towards the end of the week, we were getting pretty discouraged and started to wonder if we'd have to rent a place until we could find a house. We'd changed our budget as much as we could, and we had a FANTASTIC realtor who was really looking out for us. We started thinking about what was more important; location or price. It doesn't help that we were looking in one of the most expensive areas of the valley, but that's where we wanted to be, and ultimately we decided location was the one thing we weren't willing to change. The day before we had to go back to Arizona, we went to see a home in a new development that was still under construction. We fell in love with the location (it's 5 minutes from Jake's office and right where we wanted to be) and the house was scheduled to be finished September 21st; perfect timing! The next morning, hours before our flight out, we went to the design center with our realtor and picked out our flooring, counter tops, cabinets, paint, etc. The whole week had been an emotional roller coaster, and to top it all off, it'd been cold and rainy every day we were there. We questioned ourselves numerous times about why we had agreed to leave our beloved Arizona, and we couldn't have been happier to get home. But, after a few days, everything started to settle in and we could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. We'd just purchased our first home, and we would be closer to our family. There are so many things we're going to miss about living in Arizona, and the pro and con list is really going to be skewed for a while, but we are looking forward to this opportunity and what it will bring to our lives. Even though we both grew up in Utah, Arizona has become our home, and just like we'd have to adjust to any other place we could move to, we'll have to adjust to Utah.

Now, for the best part; a few pictures of our new place!

Here's what it looked like when we left Utah at the beginning of August

Here it is a week ago 

We're hoping to be moved in by the end of September. Look out Utah, we're coming back!