I don't have any actual pictures from our Virginia adventure so I'm ever so cleverly sticking in pictures from my baby shower from the week before instead. You are welcome.
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| The shower started out as a "sprinkle" but due to everyone's excitement over this being a girl it quickly morphed into something much, much fancier. |
Can I just say house hunting in DC is the worst.
Just really the worst.
There are so many options and you are constantly having to check how close you are to the metro stops or the Pentagon bus and looking at google maps to see if you can figure out how long the commute would be and you could be ten miles away from your destination with an hour long commute or fifteen miles away with a a thirty minute commute and nothing makes any sense at all. And then everyone tells you that google maps is always wrong anyway and there's no way you can use it to calculate your real commute time so I guess your only solution would be to hop on your public transport of choice at rush hour and just see how long it takes you to get to your destination so you could really be sure---well, we didn't do that.
I think we ended up looking at almost twenty houses and we didn't find our house until the very last day of the trip when I was in full on panic mode and Chris had dropped his requirements to "does it have a roof?"
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| See.....fancy.
You see Chris wanted to live as close to the Pentagon as possible given our budget constraints and my desire to not live in a condo and I wanted to live in the country--I mean google maps said you could take a Pentagon bus from Leesburg and be at the Pentagon in an hour so it must be true!
We compromised by living as close to the Pentagon as possible given our budget constraints and my desire not to live in a condo and found a place in North Alexandria that has a metro stop on the corner and is close enough for Chris to bike or run to work.
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It's a freestanding house with a fenced in yard in a super cute neighborhood but living that close to the Pentagon comes at a price. An actual super expensive for the size of your house price that is.
The house we ended up with is probably about the same size as our current house but there is no garage and not a lot of storage so we are going to be doing some major downsizing of all of the things and extra furniture we have squirreled away. Also, probably some of the boys larger toys.
And of course I didn't think to take any pictures while we were there so that was smart.
It was a difficult choice because you can get almost double the square footage and a garage for the same price if you live further west but you are definitely sacrificing your time the further out you go and Chris has a desperate aversion to long commutes. But I guess I can't be too upset at him for wanting to maximize his time at home with us :)
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| There was a lot of time spent watching me awkwardly unwrap gifts while everyone stared at me. |
We feel really good about the house though--it was the only one we saw that we both really liked. It's charming, has been very well taken care of, has all hardwood floors and the neighbors sound amazing--we've even heard rumors of Halloween parades, block parties and children congregating in the culdesac behind us to play. We think the location will more than make up for any smaller house living difficulties--and I'm sure the three boys will love all sharing one tiny room :)
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| A LOT of time. |
I'm actually getting pretty excited about the prospect of a forced downsizing of our things. I always feel guilty that we have too much as it is and I hate knowing there are things stuffed in all our nooks and crannies however well organized they may be. But when you have the nooks and crannies to stuff things in, things will be stuffed. Now we won't have the option and we will have to make the call on a lot of our possessions that are in the nice to have and occasionally use but don't really need category.
Now I only wish we had taken measurements of the rooms while we were there so I could actually know which pieces of furniture will fit and which will have to go. Have you ever been in full pregnant nesting mode with no actual nest before? It's making me a little crazy. I think I'd feel better if I could at least hypothetically nest while drawing floor plans.
I'm sure everything will work out in the end--the move has been officially scheduled and as long as this little girl arrives in a timely manner it should be smooth sailing--well as smooth a sailing as can be expected when moving from Florida to Virginia with a newborn anyway!