House hunting (and more) in Durham!

This weekend has been SUCH an adventure!

We flew out on Wednesday. The plan had been to explore Duke's campus on Wednesday evening, but the flight was a lot harder on me than expected (as I mentioned on fb, airplanes + pregnancy = swollen everything). So we just had some dinner and crashed at the hotel. Which meant lots of HGTV for me, and computer games for James.

(Side bar: Have I ever mentioned that I absolutely love HGTV? I never ever watch TV, except when I stay in hotels. For some reason, watching stupid TV shows is something that I equate with being on vacation. Like how when James and I went to NYC right after we were married, and our last night there we were tired from everything we'd been doing, so we spent the evening eating New York pizza and watching the Food Network? Yeah...)

Thursday morning starting at 9am we met with our real estate agent, Maggie Considine. Incidentally, we really really like Maggie. She had little booklets printed up for each of us with all the houses we were going to see, and a map showing where they all were located in relation to Duke. We soon got on the road to start looking at houses. As I'll talk about momentarily, we had some other appointments on Thursday, so we had to work around those.

We saw six houses on Thursday morning. James and I were pleasantly surprised to be presented with several pretty solid options. By the time Maggie dropped us off, we had eliminated three of the six, and as we drove over to Chapel Hill, we discussed through the three remaining choices. One had a gorgeous property, but so-so interior, plus was pretty far out from Duke. One had a stunning interior, but a crappy yard, and was pretty far out from conveniences like grocery stores and whatnot. The third was a middle ground--a decent yard, a good interior, and a reasonable location. We decided to go through our appointment, then return to the hotel and pray about the choice before making a decision.

Our other appointments on Thursday were at the two local birth centers. Home birth is essentially illegal in North Carolina, which was pretty heartbreaking to me when I first learned of it. But as I considered our situation--away from all family and support system, with James in school--I came to feel much more at peace with having Baby X at a birth center. So a major to-do item for this trip was to check out the two birth centers convenient to Durham to determine where I'll be giving birth this fall.

Post-birth center tour, we returned briefly to our hotel. After prayer and consideration, James and I decided to make an offer on the middle-ground, "Woodside Park" house. After meeting with our loan officer and then with Maggie, we decided to go back and look at it one more time.

From there, we drove down to Cary for our second birth center tour. I have to tell you, this second birth center was the most impersonal place! You don't really think of birth centers of being sterile and cold--especially the people! Fortunately, I had really liked the first place, so it made the decision easy!!

We waited and waited on Thursday night to hear back on our offer...in vain. Maggie went ahead and set up appointments for us to see more houses on Friday morning, in the event of us needing a backup. We met at her office this morning, and she had news--the Woodside Park seller had countered our offer--he wanted us to pay all the closing costs. We countered back asking him to pay half, and then took off with Maggie to see more houses.

This morning, we looked at five more houses. The first one was small, but a decent prospect. The second and third were immediate rejects. The fourth house was interesting--it was enormous, with huge vaulted ceilings and some other nice features that we liked. But no yard to speak of, and over budget. So that was no.

The last house we looked at today--"Stoney Drive"--was darling. It's in a great neighborhood. It has a .22-acre lot, backed by trees. (Not fenced, unfortunately.) The interior was lovely. The kitchen wasn't super up-to-date, but it's in good shape and looks nice. The bedrooms were all decent, and the master was great. Besides the fence, there really wasn't anything we'd need to do, no painting or anything, which is super nice. We immediately declared it to be our back-up house.

At that point, we returned to Maggie's office and parted ways. James took me to Duke for my tour. PS guys--Duke University has the most gorgeous campus imaginable.

While there, we got a call from Maggie--the seller of the Woodside Park house had accepted another offer. James and I were both remarkably unruffled by this news. We told Maggie right then that we wanted to make an offer on the Stoney Drive house, while remaining a backup offer on Woodside Park. And then the waiting game began again!

We spent more time on campus, then returned to our hotel for awhile (I was pooped!) We couldn't bear it any longer, so texted Maggie, but she still hadn't heard anything. We went out to dinner, and had some quick back-and-forths between us, Maggie, and the seller's agent over little details of the offer. We decided to go to the movies, unable to deal with the pins and needles. But just as we were about to walk into the movie, we got good news--the seller was going to accept our offer! I was a bad movie-goer and left my phone on vibrate. Halfway through Pitch Perfect 2, we got the official signed contract back in our email. HUZZAH!

So tomorrow morning we're going to go walk through OUR HOUSE one more time, then we're headed home! It's been a whirlwind trip. I can't even tell you how relieved I am to have these things settled. Now time to get back to our Smush!