As you probably know, we decided to add Little Slominski #3 to our family through adoption. We began the process back in February of 2011 with Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota and are adopting from an orphanage called Los Pisingos in Bogota, Colombia. We are ecstatic to be able to add to our family through the miracle of adoption and can't wait for the day that we get the exciting news about our little one!
With a third child on the horizon, Shane and I started seriously discussing the idea of moving. We loved our home and had just completed a huge remodeling project a couple years ago. But with only 3 bedrooms upstairs and two little boys that did not like to share a room, we thought now might be the right time to make the move.
We had been toying around with the idea of moving for a couple years, looking at houses online and stopping by open houses, but nothing really sparked our interest. Not being able to find exactly what we wanted, we started looking at lots for sale. We had our eyes on a couple in particular for some time. In February 2012, we finally got more serious about this whole moving thing and made a couple calls to inquire about the land. We had many, many discussions and meetings over the next few months, and finally in May we decided to move forward and build our next home.
Although the exciting decision to build was made, the logistics to make it happen were rather overwhelming. At the end of May, we made an offer on the land, contingent on the sale of our home. We went back and forth negotiating with the land owner and eventually our offer was accepted. But at this point, our house wasn't even on the market and we only had until August 31st to sell it.
So the month of June was filled with packing up and moving things to get our house ready for the market. We were blessed to have family and friends willing to store all our extra stuff. And thankfully our 4 legged family members were able to stay at their Grandma and Grandpa's for a while. Keeping a house clean with two very messy little boys was enough of a challenge, to add three very rambunctious and furry kitties was just too much for me to handle!
The house went on the market on June 21st. We had one showing that night and three the next day, and the third day, we got an offer!! After a bit back and forth negotiations, we accepted the offer. I was happy knowing that the new owners loved the house and would take good care of the place we had called home for the past 6 years. And as an added bonus, the wife was a vet and a huge cat lover, which was icing on the cake for me (I sure do love my felines!)
Now that our house was sold, we had to get moving on finding a rental home, which proved to be a much more difficult feat than I had imagined. We needed a three bedroom home that would be approved by our social worker (since we were in the middle of an adoption). We also needed a place that would accept 3 cats and only require a 6 month lease. I searched online, in the newspaper and on Craigs list. I must have contacted at least 40 places. Almost no one wanted to agree to a 6 month lease. Several of the Craigs list ads were obviously scams. The "I'm out of the country but really want to rent you my place, so can you send me the first month rent now" kind of thing.
Although one of the Craigs List ads almost duped us! Something didn't feel quite right when the person responded to my inquiry to see the place by saying "There's a key hidden in the electrical outlet outside. Let yourselves in and take a look around." Hmmm...sounds fishy. We pulled up to the townhouse which was supposed to be vacant and the garage is wide open and full of someone's stuff. I'm not sure if there were squatters that had just moved themselves in or what the deal was, but we quickly got ourselves out of there. I will never use Craigs list again!
After being discouraged that we may never find a rental, a couple things happened to turn our luck around. A friend, whose family was in a similar situation, told me about a rental townhome out in Plymouth that accepted pets and short-term leases. We took a look and by far, that was the best option we had seen. We definitely could have made it work out, but another opportunity came our way.
During a conversation with one of Cole's teachers, she mentioned a co-worker that had just bought a new house in Shoreview (crazy coincidence #1) and would be renting out their current home. They were also in the process of adopting a baby from Colombia (crazy coincidence #2!!) Knowing that they had gone through the rigorous approval process to adopt made us feel much better about them and the house after getting burned by Craigs List. We were so excited at the thought of having an actual house with a two car garage, a big fenced in yard, and a newly remodeled basement and they were okay with the cats and 6 month lease! The catch was that we wouldn't be able to move in until September 1st and we had to be out of our house on August 11th!
So once again, our family came to the rescue. The plan was that I'd take the kids to visit my parents for a couple weeks while Shane stayed with his grandparents. The boys and I would come back to celebrate Owen's 5th birthday and we'd stay in a hotel for a couple nights. And then Shane's parents would move in with his grandparents and let us have free reign of their home for our last week of homelessness.
Things were definitely looking brighter! We had a rental setup and movers arranged. We were scheduled to close on the sale of our house on August 10th. As the days trickled by, we were a bit nervous that the deal would fall apart. Our buyers were very strapped for cash (they had both just started up their own businesses) and their purchase of our home was contingent on the sale of their home. So many things could have gone wrong and blown apart the deal.
Finally the week of closing had arrived, and we came to find out that the buyers of our buyers home did not have their financing approved! The bank was questioning their length of employment. So we held our breath and waited. We had the entire house in storage at this point and had signed a lease agreement, so if the deal fell apart, we were in trouble! But thankfully everything ended up working out. We closed on August 10th as scheduled and turned over possession on August 11th.
Our 3 weeks of homelessness could not have gone better. The boys adjusted well to the transitions from place to place and before we knew it, September 1st arrived and we were finally in our rental home. We unpacked and settled in over Labor Day weekend and were all set for our Home Study visit with our social worker on September 4th, just days after moving in. Our Home Study had expired in July, so we were anxious to get it updated ASAP. Sarah, our social worker, was shocked that we had just moved in. There wasn't a box in sight! She approved our Home Study so now we continue to wait. We received our official acceptance letter from Los Pisingos in the midst of all the chaos on July 24th, so we could get our referral any day now, or several months from now. Ahh, the joys of adoption!
So, back to the land and more issues! The plot we decided to buy is just under an acre and located in North Oaks at the end of a cul-de-sac. There are several acres of wetlands and easements surrounding the property lines, so there will be no houses on either side or behind us. Being a small town girl, I loved the openness and rural feel of the area. There are acres of grass, trees and blue skies everywhere you look and it's only a 15 minute drive to downtown!
During this entire process, we had been working with a designer to come up with a floor plan. We (or I!) spent countless hours tweaking the floor plan trying to get it just right. We have a set area to build on and due to the wetlands, over half of the acre was unusable. These "wetlands" are actually very dry. They were designated as wetlands when the area was first developed about 8 years ago. During this time, the wetland area had receded. So we hired an wetland scientist to re-delineate the area.
It took much longer than we had hoped to finalize the wetland delineation. On September 18th, I got the call that the delineation was finally approved (18 days past the date that we were supposed to close on the land!) giving us anywhere from 15 to 45 extra feet of yard and build area. With this change, the house and future deck fit on the build pad. What great news! Then our realtor gave me the next tidbit of news...the land owner had another party interested in the land so we needed to get the deal closed ASAP! A few phone calls later and we were scheduled to close on the following Friday.
On September 21st, we finally closed! The land is ours! And now the exciting part can begin. We hope that from this point on, everything will go smoothly and that by the end of February we will finally able to move into our new home (hopefully just in time to receive the referral of Lil' Slom #3!)
1 comment:
I am so excited for you and the crazy journey you are on! You know... It's like pulling off a band-aid. Just do it all at once. Kiddo, sell house, move stuff, build house. Throw a new job in and it's almost identical to our insanity! My only sadness is your bad relationship with Craigslist. I have never used it for housing, but otherwise have only had good experiences. Bummer!
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