Steve with his advisor Kiel Christensen and fellow graduate from lab Rowan getting his long awaited cupcake post ceremonies Grandparents are the greatest! So glad Steve's folks could come out for graduation. Our kids wouldn't have made it through the ceremonies without them.
This month is insane. It's even more insane that I'm blogging about it instead of doing laundry, unpacking from our trip, packing for our move, and remedying the disaster that is currently my home. We have Steve's parents coming in 2 days and graduation ceremonies this weekend. My house looks like it imploded. That's one elephant I don't feel like eating.
Speaking of elephants that people eat, this is Steven eating his dissertation that he defended on Friday.
I'm very grateful to my friends who helped me with the refreshments and watched my kids so I could go and watch him defend his dissertation. He was classic Steve- plugging jokes in while making strong points and being the great teacher that he is. Whenever someone from the ward hears that we are moving, all I hear is "oh we'll miss Steve! He's the best Sunday School teacher!" The guy has a natural talent for infusing subtle humor into any topic and he keeps me laughing through the craziness of life.
Did I mention he passed? Congratulations Dr. Luke!
I made homemade donuts and blueberry muffins. Tiffany Peterson provided some yummy apple coconut ones. Before I got to take a picture, some treats had already left the table- a good sign.
Our bags were packed and ready to go after Steve defended. We left right after he was done to go to South Carolina and find a house to rent. Unfortunately, we had the misfortune of going through Kentucky during the Kentucky Derby. Not only was traffic awful, but our Priceline hotel in Lexington, KY ended up being a king sized bed in a smoking room. It was awful. Steve slept on the floor (he joked that this was some way to celebrate getting a PhD) and I was crammed in the bed with two squirmy kids and the stench of smoke. I will never again count on Priceline where there is a major event going on in the area where we want to stay. Lesson learned.
Kentucky was beautiful though. I never expected the South to be so LUSH. My favorite parts of driving through it all were the Thoroughbred Horse Retirement Farm and aptly named sites like Stinking River Road and French Broad River. I've never seen so many Waffle Houses and Cracker Barrel Stores in my life.
The Smoky Mountains are breathtaking. We need to go back and camp there someday.
The kids were pretty good on the trip down or I should say Rowan was. Nadia had a lot of meltdowns on the trip and was generally grumpy, but it was manageable. It's impossible for a 2 year old to understand "We are going to where we are moving and you need to stay in your car seat for 12 hours" or "We are going through random houses all day and you need to be patient." Did I mention Steve had a terrible cough and Nadia had diarrhea? Good times.
Once we arrived at South Carolina, we decided to go see one of the houses on our list. Columbia is a tough area to find decent housing. They have one of the worst crime rates in the nation and the public schools are pretty bad. All of the apartment buildings I was able to find had horrible reviews and poor schools, so apartment living was out of the question. Rowan is starting kindergarten and a good school was one of our top priorities. We narrowed our search down to three areas: Forest Acres, Irmo, and Lexington. Rosewood was on our list, but after finding a lot of comments about the area like "it's a great place-no one shot at me, but my car was broken into a couple times" we quickly crossed that one off our list. Anyways, this list we had was the result of hours of researching and scouring the Internet by yours truly.
The first place was a duplex in Irmo and looked very nice on the website. When we got there and were waiting for the landlord to come, we noticed that the neighborhood was not as diverse as we would have liked and we kind of stuck out like a sore thumb as evidenced by the looks we got. We didn't run away immediately and waited to see the inside, but were greeted with an interior that was filthy, old, and had several water leaks in the ceiling. Not a great start. We also tried to get a hold of a bishop who had a place for us to look at, but his phone rang busy all day, so we gave up and just went to our hotel. Our clean, non-smoking, two queen bed hotel room with a lovely pool. You redeemed yourself Priceline.
The second house we saw was an older home with a 2 car garage in Forest Acres. I was initially excited to see it, but then I saw the neighborhood. First there was the decrepit Pet Supply store across the road and "Arnie" who lived in what more resembled a junkyard with a welcoming sign that said "My dogs can make it to the fence in 3 seconds, can you?" The house had a weird layout with broken intercoms. The landlord suggested "just putting a picture over it" on one that had been ripped out of the wall with exposed wiring. What sealed the deal was on the way out we saw a sign on another neighbor's house that said "This property is under regular surveillance by the Sheriff's department." Next!
We went to two wards in the area and felt more welcomed in the Irmo ward. It has a lot of younger couples with kids and it's huge! One of the couples we were told to talk to when we mentioned we were looking for a place to live invited us over for dinner. Did I mention it was Mother's Day? Super sweet of them. They were trying to sell their house since they were moving out at the end of the month and were entertaining the thought of renting, but weren't sure about it. They introduced us to a neighbor who had been trying to sell her house for a year and wanted to rent, but needed to hear if she had been accepted into a graduate program. She wasn't expecting to hear for another 2 weeks, so we weren't able to move forward on either of those houses.
Monday we went house hunting all day. Either they were too old, next door dogs were too vicious and noisy, too small, neighborhood was too scary, back yard wasn't fenced- needless to say, by the end of the day I was feeling like nothing was going to work out. Most of the homes in Forest Acres had kitchens with only 6 small cupboards in a 5x5 space. The last house we saw in Forest Acres was $25 over what we wanted to spend, but acceptable in every other way. Finally, success! We also went to see a house in Irmo that I had been able to negotiated down the rent into our budget if we signed a 2 year lease. Did you know you can negotiate your rent? I didn't until my friend Jessica told me. This house was newer, in the ward we wanted to go to, GREAT schools, nice neighborhood, and had a garage- something we weren't even trying for.
The end of the day left us with two great options and two more that we hadn't even seen yet. Then I called the utility companies asking what the electric bill averaged for each property. The house in Forest Acres was older and the bill was $200 more than the one in Irmo, putting it completely out of our budget.
In the evening the realtor on one property we had yet to see called and told us they had just leased it out to someone else. Frustrating! We decided to go ahead and sign the lease on the house in Irmo even though we had one more house to see in Lexington because we didn't want to lose it. The final house to see would become a back up plan.
After a crazy morning of grumpy kids, trying to get our daily limit raised at our bank so we could get the funds out for a money order deposit, thinking I lost my wallet at Target- we were done. We had wanted to take the kids to the zoo, but didn't have enough time, and everyone had been pushed to their limit that morning. So we went to a place full of bounce houses. Isn't that what you would do?
Rowan was his own worst enemy when it came to air hockey.
We needed to decompress that morning and this did just that. After we relaxed a bit, we got the money order and put down our deposit. On our way back to the hotel after looking at the place one last time, the realtor for our last showing (the back up place in Lexington) called to tell us that the tenant had changed their mind and would not be moving out anymore. Which is just as well since we found out their electric bill had been $400 in the winter.
I'm hesitant to put up pictures in case something else crazy happens, but we were approved for the lease and will be moving in June 1st. The backyard needs some work, but we are really happy with the place overall. It's a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home with a 1 car garage and fenced backyard. Rowan will be going to one of the best schools in the state, the crime rate is low, the neighborhood is really nice, the ward is great and we back up to the YMCA. Did I mention the people who invited us over for dinner mentioned that the garage sales are great around here? ;)
Steve started to play a "Stephen Cartwright" ploy with a hidden bunny instead of a duck in each picture, but as you will see, Nadia did not take kindly to that.
Walking into the living room.
Kitchen/dining room
Two bedrooms and hall bathroom (Nadia melting down)
Master bedroom and bathroom (Hello garden tub and dual sinks! The master bedroom also has a nice walk in closet)
Everytime I look at these pictures, Guns 'n Roses "Welcome to the Jungle" comes into my head. There's hardly any trees (the one and only downside to the house), but the yard is really overgrown.
Our good friends the Bybees have made a few trips down in the past two months or so. Every time they come, our kids are in play date heaven. On this last trip, Mike was able to come to and so Steve was also in play date heaven. They played Lego Batman every chance they got. Boys never really grow up. Admittedly, Jessica and I were in play date heaven too. Garage sales were a must despite the fact that there was a marathon going on in town, which took some extra navigating at times. I got an awesome antique trunk that I absolutely love and a couple of other good finds.
We also played Settlers of Catan, a graduation present from Jessica and Mike. Steve and I love that game! Hopefully we can sucker people into playing it with us down in SC. Later on Saturday we went to Allerton Park because the Bybees had never been and we wanted to see it one last time before we left Illinois. It was a perfect day for it- not too hot, not too cold. The river bottom was the most flooded I've ever seen it.
Nadia was a bit too enthralled with the lawnmower to strike a smile.
We ventured on a little hike to see the centaur statue. The little kids did pretty well for the most part. Nadia ended up on Steve's shoulders for the majority of the time, which wouldn't have been so bad if she had kept her tongue in her mouth. I think she liked the feel of the wind on it- Steve didn't care for the feel of her drool on his head though. I'm a little camera happy it seems.
Rowan carried these sticks most of the way back to make a "frog jail". Sadly our stay at the water was short lived due to these next pictures.
Nadia decided to get a little up close and personal with the fish in the koi pond. It wasn't intentional, but it seems like she's prone to these kinds of experiences. Luckily it was at the latter end of our excursion. She fell asleep pretty quickly once we were headed back home and missed out on some Jarlings on the way back. It was a pretty calorie laden weekend. I also learned to make deep fried Twinkies.
We're big fans.
Nadia also made a surprising new friend this weekend.
Maybe she does like other people's daddies after all.
Illinois has one of the most romantic springs I have ever seen. There are so many trees that blossom and then rain petals for only a day or two. With our weather, it's been more like a few hours because of the storms and constant rain. Nadia and I took a few snapshots before she went to a friend's house and by the evening the petals had all fallen and turned into brown mush on the ground. For those few hours though, you feel the romance of the season.
