For the last year, we have known that Rock Springs wasn't our forever home (hell, we knew that coming here), and with our last move in March 2012, we started talking about where we would want to live and researching employment and housing in different areas. This was not an easy feat for us to agree on, as we both wanted very different things in WHERE we would live. I grew up in a CITY - a large metropolis area with multiple options of things to do, eat, experience... Brandon grew up in Rexburg - the antithesis of where I grew up. We both wanted to live somewhere that was similar to where we grew up.
So we talked about Texas, Colorado, Idaho (shudder), and Utah...
The more we looked into things, the harder we saw it would be to move out of state and switch employers. Brandon has a pretty sweet gig, getting paid hourly - easy to get a home loan with this kind of job. All the companies we researched would be paid by the mile or by the load, also known as COMMISSION, which means we would have to wait to be qualified for a home loan again, and wait is around TWO YEARS... BLECH! So the radius of where we could move to became very small and in my mind I just chalked it up that we would be staying in Rock Springs renting for maybe another year or so.
Then one day, Brandon came home with an idea of where we could move with his current job that would satisfy BOTH of us - I was ALL EARS. He thought about this little town that he had driven through a few times as a truck driver, and that his dad did some truck runs out of sometimes. A little town about 30 minutes outside of Salt Lake City called Tooele (too-will-a). I was skeptical at first, but had to opportunity to go check it out on a quick trip to Utah to take my nephew to the MTC for his mission. I was surprisingly pleased - I liked what was in town, and I liked how close it was to anything else that my tickle my fancy - including my aunts, uncles, cousins, and a best friend or two. Plus, it was a mere three hour drive from Rock Springs where the hubs works - we could easily get a home loan, and a GREAT home loan through the USDA department called the Rural Development Loan for small towns, which Tooele is (no down payment, no mortgage insurance, and it has been the perfect time to buy with awesome interest rates right now).
And happily I began the awful experience of looking for a house while the husband worked. Sure, it was fun to look at all these houses but it sucked when we got outbid on a house, or the husband didn't like a house, or I didn't like an area. Then our Realtor found this house, a little above our price range but she knew we could get it at a price we were comfortable with. And then Brandon got enough time off to come look at it with me... and then walking through it, it became apparent that it was OUR house - and then after they accepted our offer I had a slight fear that it wasn't our house and then I got over it.
So, to wrap up this LONG story... We will be closing on our home in a few weeks and moving at the end of March to this sweet little house:
We nicknamed it the Grandma house - a sweet older couple built the home about 5 years ago with the idea that this was the LAST house they would live in so everything was done to their taste - including the light sage green carpet throughout the house (the wife's favorite color). And then they decided to move to St George. The home is practically brand new, with everything done top of the line and very well taken care of.
The best part is where it's located - next to about 10 acres that the owner won't be selling anytime soon (MAYBE in ten years... MAYBE), and behind an elementary school with a burrow between the school property and our fence. I can look out my kitchen window and see the playground, which means I don't need to invest in a playground for our backyard.
We are SO excited to move and I have LOTS of plans for this house and excited that it's OURS!
CONGRATS jen! and STOKED you'll only be 30 minutes away!!!
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