Success

The weekend in Texas was somewhat stressful, but ultimately successful. We arrived late Friday night and picked up our rental car. We decided to add a navigation system, which proved very helpful, as we ran into an accident and had to detour before we reached the hotel. The rest of the trip, it continued to prove its worth--some of the residential areas we were looking at seem to have been designed to contain a minotaur.

Saturday morning, we started fairly early with a list of 15 homes and the Realtor assigned to us by the relocation company. She was a Vermonter, but had lived in TX for 25 years, so she had an interesting accent: Yankee with a hint of Southern. We started off with some of the houses that were the highest on our list. The first few either had strange layouts or didn't show as well in person as in the photos. Another looked great until we kicked the siding in back and it crumbled like sawdust. After that lipstick-on-a-pig special, we took a break for lunch, having found one house we could live with, but nothing that thrilled us.

After lunch, things immediately picked up. We toured a house we hadn't considered as much because of its excessively large size, but it didn't feel as excessive in person, and it was quite nice. Then, we stumbled upon The One. It was a home that we'd almost eliminated from our list. I think we'd taken it off and later put it back on as a remote possibility.

Unlike some of the other homes, this one showed better in person than in the pictures. It had a nice layout, a fabulous, updated kitchen, a warm family room with rich wood paneling and a gas fireplace, dental crown molding, and an upstairs game room. It also had enough bedrooms for everyone and seems to have decent mechanicals. More importantly, H and I both just felt good about it, like this was a home we should make an offer on. We saw several other nice homes after that and identified a backup house in case things fall through, but nothing to compare with that house.

On Sunday, we drove through a couple of nearby cities we had wanted to see, but we didn't need to tour any more homes. We drove through the neighborhood, past the schools, and went to church at what would be our new congregation. We weren't ward-shopping, but it seems like a decent ward. We'll be pretty close to the church and closer to an LDS temple than we are now in Utah.

On Monday morning, we saw the house again, then we made an offer, they countered, and we settled on a price 1k less than we paid for the house we are in now, plus they are throwing in the pool table. We celebrated with a lunch of some excellent Texas BBQ brisket and turkey, headed home, and picked up the two kids who were staying with Grandma and Grandpa. (With so many houses to see in such a short time, that turned out to be a huge help--thanks again, Mom and Dad!)

I just faxed back the final paperwork and we expect to have the sellers sign it today. After that, pending a clean bill of health from the home inspection, we'll be moving into our new home at the end of next month.