Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Our New Digs

Finally, oh finally- we've moved. I never really knew how much living in North Bonneville affected our lives until this past week when we moved to Camas. For the past month (actually two years but we got obsessive about it last month) , Jarred and I have been trying to figure out how to get out of our North Bonneville house and into a house closer to where we work. Jarred should really be a financial advisor if the teaching gig does not work out for him as he looked at every possible angle of how we could get out from under our North Bonneville house and purchase a house in Camas. We've had our North Bonneville house for sale for TWO, that's right TWO, years now and after waiting and waiting for someone to snatch up the gem (don't a lot of people want a half acre of grass?), we finally realized the market is too depressed (we are among those whose house is now worth less than we owe) and we should rent the place out. Thanks to my awesome parents, we were able to put an offer in on a foreclosed house in Camas and in the mean time rent the place while the offer went through. The minute we had the keys to our Camas house, we packed up and moved. We were tired of spending eight hours a week in our car that had traveled 14,000 miles to and from work in the last year.

Holy shit, what a difference moving has made. Let me just list some of the highlights.
1. I have a two mile bike ride to work.
2. Jarred rides seven miles to work.
3. We're five minutes from a grocery store.
5. I'm ten minutes from the horses.
6. We can ride up two blocks to great running/biking trails.
7. We're 20 minutes from Ikea.
8. We can go to Portland after work and not make a day of it.
9. I mowed the lawn last weekend, took me 20 minutes (1.40 less than in North Bonneville)

As you can see, we're obsessed with how close everything is. The house is not too exciting and has some issues like the fact
that every room has mood lighting, forget bright rooms but everything that needs to be fixed is cosmetic. The important thing is that we are not married to the car anymore and we have so much freedom in what we do during the work week.
Posted by Picasa

3 comments:

Gina Lillie said...

Congrats! Can't wait to hear about all the great things you will do doing to your new place.

Matt, Colleen, McKenzie and Ben said...

So glad you guys are happier! Sounds like the perfect setting for you guys - everything available by bike!

Noni said...

So happy for you guys!! Need more pictures of the inside of the new house as well as your outside area.