Back to Blogging: A Title I Am Particularly Proud Of - "Tuesday, November 04, 2008 - "Tragic Ending to our House Hunting Saga"

NOTE: As part of SITS Back to Blogging event, here's one of my best titles (certainly not a blogging strongpoint of mine). This was originally posted on November 4, 2008. We have since moved away from the apartment. :-)

After much back and forth with the City of St Paul, we decided to forego buying a house and continue renting.


Luckily, it only took less than a week of searching on Craigslist to find a fantastic place.

Our new address is:
2254 Benson Ave
Unit E
St Paul MN 55116

We have conveniently relocated to the W 7th area. We're about 10 min from school, 10 min from my parent's house, and 15 min from church. Perfectly located!

We rented a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom condo from a nice young couple. It's an upstairs condo, and we're nearly completely moved in. Everything's here but not quite unpacked just yet.

Of course, Sallie moved with us. There was no way we were going to give her up. She's way too cute and adorable, so that was one of our criteria in our apartment search. She's adjusted very well to our new place. While we are nestled in between two very busy streets, our condo is located in a wooded area right next to the railroad tracks and lots of other housing complexes. It's very residential, and Sallie loves going for walks.

All Settled In

Well...nearly.

We've still got a few totes in the livingroom. Most of them are empty and just need to be moved out to the garage.

It's really beginning to feel like home.

For those of you who may not know, we recently moved (again). Our new address is:
2057 Laurel Ave Apt 3
St Paul MN 55104

We LOVE our new apartment so much!! It is right across the street from campus, which makes it very easy for us to walk to class or the shuttle to Minneapolis (that's where my classes are). Plus I've been taking advantage of walking to the gym a few times a week to workout. It's been fantastic! I've discovered that my shins can actually handle running on a treadmill. Yeah! I can only hope that one day they'll be able to handle running on the street again. I miss running. Wow...what a tangent!

I've seriously been neglecting this blog, but I hope to get much better...starting NOW! Jeff and I have done lots of fun things this year that have not been documented, so I hope to get some posts up about some of our adventures this past summer (and maybe even earlier in the year as well).

I may not be able to blog every day, but hopefully at least once or twice a week.

Come back soon!!

Tragic Ending to our House Hunting Saga

After much back and forth with the City of St Paul, we decided to forego buying a house and continue renting.

Luckily, it only took less than a week of searching on Craigslist to find a fantastic place.

Our new address is:
2254 Benson Ave
Unit E
St Paul MN 55116

We have conveniently relocated to the W 7th area. We're about 10 min from school, 10 min from my parent's house, and 15 min from church. Perfectly located!

We rented a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom condo from a nice young couple. It's an upstairs condo, and we're nearly completely moved in. Everything's here but not quite unpacked just yet.

Of course, Sallie moved with us. There was no way we were going to give her up. She's way too cute and adorable, so that was one of our criteria in our apartment search. She's adjusted very well to our new place. While we are nestled in between two very busy streets, our condo is located in a wooded area right next to the railroad tracks and lots of other housing complexes. It's very residential, and Sallie loves going for walks.

Holding Pattern

So...

We are in a crazy holding pattern. We have less than 2 weeks until we need to be out of our apartment, and we have no home. We will be staying with my parents for a short, indefinite time.

The day after the bank accepted our offer on 1323 Randolph, we found out that St Paul, who is financing our house, did not have any money. They will get more money, but they do not know when. As of right now, they are not showing the house to anyone else, so chances are still very good that we will still get this house, which is very good news.

I'll keep you updated!

WE GOT IT!!

I'm very excited to announce that our offer was accepted! Our 3rd pitch was a HIT! Whoo hoo!!

They have us down for a closing on August 29th, but we're hoping to get everything done sooner. We do, afterall, need to be out of our apartment by the 31st, so the sooner we can close the better.

Our new address will be:

1323 Randolph Ave

St Paul MN 55105

We will be directly across the street from a grocery store, Copper Dome diner is on one corner, and PJ Murphy bakery is on the other corner. So much convenience within walking distance!

Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we work towards a closing.

Strikes

In the last post, I mentioned that we were going to put in an offer on a house in St Paul.

I'm disappointed to have to report that we didn't end up putting in an offer because there were already two offers in, and we knew we wouldn't be able to outbid them.

STRIKE ONE!

So...we decided to put in an offer on our 2nd choice home. It wasn't in the same location, but we thought that it might be the house for us. We sat down with our realtor and filled out all the paperwork. And we waited. Last week, we found out that another offer had been accepted.

STRIKE TWO!!

We are going out house hunting with our realtor again tonight. Hopefully, we'll find something that we love! And we'll put in an offer! And they'll accept it! And we'll be able to close in a few weeks!

If we strike out again (three strikes, you're out, right?), we'll probably just look for a cheaper apartment--one closer to campus. You see, on June 30th, we put in our 60-day notice to vacate our apartment at the end of our lease. On July 1st, our apartment was rented. August 31st is our last day, so hopefully we'll have something lined up before that day comes...and it's fast approaching.

Wish us luck!

Update / Restaurant Review

OK, so I guess I've been pretty lackadaisical about updating our blog.

We've even taken some pretty cool road trips complete with great photos! We went to Lutsen, MN, in the beginning of May, and Nauvoo, IL (for my cousin's wedding) in the middle of May. Hopefully I'll take some time to blog about them soon.

About a month ago, Jeff and I found ourselves in a Slumberland Clearance center. While waiting to check-out, I sat on a couch by the register. I immediately fell in love with this couch! So comfortable, so soft! Too big, really, for our apartment.

So...we began again the discussion of whether or not to buy a house in MN. After much discussion, the search began. We found a house that holds lots of opportunity for us to really make it exactly what we want and that will fit our needs.

Being city dwellers at heart, this property is less than 1 mile from downtown St Paul, and within walking distance to the Xcel Center and the shops/restaurants on West 7th. We LOVE the location.

Unfortunately, we didn't get approved for nearly as much as we would've liked. Good news is, it is bank-owned, so hopefully they'll accept our very low-ball offer. If you don't mind keeping us in your prayers, we'd really appreciate it.

Last night, we decided to actually go out on a date--something we haven't done in quite awhile. Since I've always considered myself more of a Minneapolis girl than a St Paul, I thought we should go check out the area that we'll hopefully be moving to.

We decided to try El Patio.

This restaurant really helped sell me on the location and St Paul. We dined outside, and it was so relaxing! We leisurely talked about our future as we munched on chips and salsa. Our food was delicious and our server was great! I definitely see us returning to this restaurant and checking out the others that are close by.

Dodsons are on the move...again...

This time we kept our move relatively local. We just moved from Eagan, MN to Minneapolis, MN. That's only about a 15-20 minute drive!

Our new address is:
4540 Snelling Ave #112
Minneapolis MN 55406

We found a lovely studio apartment in a fabulous building right on the Hiawatha Light Rail. You can visit the building's website: Oaks Hiawatha Station.

Our little studio has a decent sized kitchen including a dishwasher plus a washer & dryer in the unit!!

We are back in the ward that we attended when we first got married.

Life is GOOD!!

We are so overwhelmed with excitement about being back on our own in an apartment that we love!

Plus classes are going very well for Jeff--despite all the reading--and Clarinda is really enjoying her job at SC Johnson.

Oh, we will post some pics of our new place once we're all settled in.

Days Four & Five of our Eastward Trek--June 18th & 19th

The mornings on our trip never seemed to start as early as we would've liked. We had intended on leaving Molly's house around 8 a.m. on the 18th, but we didn't actually make it out of the house until around 9:30 a.m.

We drove the 4 hours to Mt. Rushmore. Here are a couple of pics.

Mt Rushmore

Honestly, Mt Rushmore was a bit of a disappointment. It was much smaller than Jeff had anticipated. For me, there just wasn't a lot to do around there. Plus I think we were just so ready to be finished with our trip, that we just weren't all that excited for one more thing to stop and explore.

We didn't stop at Wall Drug in Wall, SD.

We did have a very relaxing camping experience at the KOA in Kennebec, SD.

KOA Kennebec, SD

Jeff built a fire; we roasted marshmallows. We slept in the back of our Scion.

Jeff had a heck of a time sleeping in the car, because every time he'd fall sleep, I'd have him roll over. It was quite a sleepless night for him, made even more frustrating as he watched his wife enjoy a deep slumber.

The next morning, Jeff awoke at 6:30 a.m. and built a fire. I continued to sleep until around 8:30.

In the morning, we played a round of their free mini golf. Take a look at our slide show for a couple of pics of their very elaborate course. :-) We also played several games of table tennis.

Then it was soon time to pack up and head out.

We didn't stop at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.

About 60 miles East of Albert Lea, we thought we were being attacked by a crop duster. Seriously, we thought a plane was right over us, but we couldn't see anything! After a little bit of us twisting and turning our heads to look out the window to see what was the matter, Jeff thought it might be something with the car. When we pulled over, he revved the engine, and we sighed a big sigh of relief that it didn't sound like engine failure. As soon as we got out of the car, I noticed the flat tire!

We just wanted to be home!

Now we had to change to the spare, and it would be that much longer before we would arrive in Eagan.

Once that headache was all cleared, we were back on the road (at a slightly slower pace than we would've liked). We finally arrived at my parents house around 7:20 p.m.

Whew!! We made it!!

Moving Day--June 14th

This was probably the worst moving day Jeff and I had ever experienced--since we've been married and including when we were single. Fate was definitely working against us, as it seemed that everything that could go wrong, did.

It all started with the credit card machine not working properly at the truck rental place. Not as many people showed up to help as we thought would be coming.

Then the biggest road block was that all our stuff was not fitting into the truck!!

We were moving all of Jerilyn's stuff to Trudy's house in Dufur, OR, and all of our stuff was going to a shipping yard in Portland to be loaded into Relocubes(R) to be shipping to MN. What this meant was that we needed to load the truck very specifically. Jerilyn stuff took up a lot more of the 24' truck that we'd envisioned, leaving us with not much room for our own stuff. After much frustration, a LOT of phone calls, and my breaking into tears, we were finally able to finagle all of our stuff into the truck for the drive to Portland. All of our stuff was packed in nice neat totes and boxes, so hopefully that was able to secure our belongings against breakage. We will wait to find out next week when we unload our stuff.

About 12 or so miles into our trip up to Portland, a terrible annoying alarm started going off in the moving truck. I wasn't able to experience this, so I don't know exactly the words to describe it. Basically the alarm was telling Jeff that the brakes were bad. Luckily they seemed to be working fine--unless you're looking at it from my perspective. I was following him, and his brake lights were not working. Let's just say it is quite nerve-wracking to follow a huge truck and not know when he is braking--especially for me with my poor distance judgment.

Finally we arrived at the shipping yard, transferred out stuff to the cubes, only to find ourselves in the thickest of rush hour traffic--1 1/2 to 2 hours behind schedule.

We arrived in Dufur without too many further incidents. Well, there was the gas station...but I'm not going to go into that...

Of course, all of this didn't seem so bad once we got to the restaurant to have dinner with Erin, Joe, and little Anna.

Anna is honestly one of the cutest little babies I've seen in a long time. She is about 3 months old now, and even though we kept her up way past her bedtime, she was still a sleepy cheerful. I even got to hold her for a bit, which was very fun for me. :-)