April 12th

The best way to describe the past 30 days is one big whirlwind, although it was 1000 baby steps to get here. Each day brought it's own "to do" list and we just plugged away at it one check mark at a time. Although Erik's checklist was 1000x's longer and more complicated than mine, I still feel like I can just release it all and cry for an hour about now. When you're in the move you just plug away and suck it up the best you can. Now that I'm at a standstill I have time to process it and say, "Wow, one hell of a whirlwind we just went through".

There were days at the first hotel that Kenna would just tug at my heart strings. She'd say, "Mommy, I want to go home". How do you not tear up at that? I just had to tell her Daddy was buying her a big new home soon.

As you can imagine the hotel living presents it's own challenges. It's nice to not have to clean and cook but on the flip side you have to get your toddlers out for each meal and entertainment everyday. The first hotel we stayed in was the Sheraton in Poznan. We got hooked up rather nicely there, helps to know the GM. The second hotel we stayed at was the Aliante Station up in North Las Vegas. It turned out to be perfect. It's only two years old so it's new, convenient and I highly recommend it to my military friends going TDY to Vegas. Well, and for those who might visit us and don't want to stay in our house. If you book far enough in advance you get a sweet deal, I think our room was only $62 a night. The kids and I also had one last hotel stay upon arrival in Spokane with my mom. Our arrival was scheduled late so we set camp for one night and did some grocery shopping before driving 2hrs up to her house. It was a perfect plan.

It's also a great relief to not see another hotel or airport for quite awhile. The next time we see one we'll be headed back to Vegas to hook up with Erik. Speaking of him, he is now at training in the middle of nowhere for the next 10wks-ish. Having to leave his kids for so long was not easy but it's for the good of the family, this job as a whole is what I'm referencing. At least he didn't choose leaving for a year remote for a career move, he would never do that. He loves his babies far to much.

Anyhow, upon arrival in Las Vegas my mom greeted us with a big smile and off we went to our hotel. The next morning Erik has some inprocessing to do and so Mom and I walked the kids to the local Nature Discovery Park down the street. I've read a lot of good things about this park so I had high hopes. Unfortunately our timing sucked, the playground was closed for renovation for the week we were there. It was hard to see the fenced in area and not be able to play!

The next three mornings we woke to go house hunting. That proved to be challenging as well. We had read up and done enough advanced research to know bank owned properties were going to be a pain. The one house we really wanted had three loans out on it. Not all three banks have approved the short sale, so it's been sitting empty for a year!!! Someday someone is going to get lucky, it's a great house with fabulous backyard :( If we had time on our hand then we would offer, sit and wait. But there has been so many offers on it and people pull out because of the dumb banks. Then you run into the issue of the next house we wanted, it was listed higher than it's comps, therefor most likely it's appraisal wasn't going to be high enough. No thank you on paying up the difference. Then a few others we liked got offers them within the two days we had looked at them. The good houses are moving in Vegas, you can't sit and wait. So after looking at 25 houses the first two days it was getting frustrating. The floor plans are whacked on a lot of them, they don't make sense at all. We found some awesome properties as well but the actual house needed some money put into them. Erik's job isn't going to allow time to be renovating etc. It's too bad we aren't in the mode for that type of housing because that's where some of the deals are, the big lots with fixer uppers.

Erik and I sat up all night the last night and presented her with a list of houses we found on the internet to look at on the third and final day. Out of the 20 houses we sent her only four were still available. Lucky for us, we actually like two of them. To bad we couldn't put the yard of #1 together with the house of #2. We had to cave on our requirements to get something. I was adamant about road noise, hate it. But the house we opted to offer on has some noise, ugh. But I'd rather have some noise for a shorter commute for Erik. His drive is going to be painful enough as it is 45-1hr, no thank you. He's anticipating working 10-14hr days, so even an extra 10min drive can be rough. When will he see his kids? It's privately owned, no short sale, so that's nice, although they've apparently have turned down several offers. These people are in no hurry to move, they're retired. We're hoping to hear something back today. Oh, we opted for the pool. We could have easily got everything we wanted in a house if we said no to the pool. There are a lot of those to choose from. There is only a few communities that offer rec center with pool options. We looked at Club Aliante, super sweet fitness, pool and playground, but tiny yards and an extra $200 a month for fees. We would've liked the Summerlin area as well but for the size and options we wanted it was over our budget or the houses we thought we could see already had contracts on them, again houses are moving in Vegas.