Learned and Found

Miss - Green. Everywhere. All year.
Not Miss - Rain. Often. Allergies. Can't breathe.
Actually it's all relative. It's just a misting rain not a virtual downpour. And no tornadoes or extreme weather accompany it. Allll relative.

Miss - The biking trail.
Not Miss - Car break ins from trail thieves.

Miss - Open floor plan in our house and friendly neighborhood.
Not Miss - Squeaky (I cannot emphasize that enough) floors in our house and a certain mischievous neighbor kid.

Miss - Small town (4,000 people), good people and open spaces.
Not Miss - Everything closing down at 6 pm. Grocery stores with salad dressing priced at $10 or a longer drive to better prices.
Not excited for - Big City (4 million people). Claustrophicly close houses and no open space not inhabited with 25 other people.
Excited for - good weather and fun!

We found a house!!!!!

I looked on craigslist at rentals once briefly before everything was nailed down. (I vowed not to waste time looking into anything until it was a done deal. I've made that mistake before. We didn't know for sure until Ben passed his boards.) I at least wanted a feel for places and prices (high! sing that in a falsetto it sounds more dramatic). From looking on a map I found an obscure little area that looked promising. I also found a house that looked perfect and noticed it had a temple hanging up on the wall. Curiousity piqued I called the realtor for the house. Found out he was lds. That house was rented but we arranged for him to show us other rentals while we were in California. I went without doing a lot of research (I didn't have much internet access since I went a week after we were sure we were going and we were out of town that following week.)

He showed us several homes. One area, as we drove up, just felt like home. The house we looked at there, which was already rented, was perfect! We found out it was near impossible to get a house and started panicking. With three weeks left I told the realtor just to apply for every home in our price range. He called that very day saying he had the perfect house. The new renters were moving out. As he sent me the info on it I realized it was the very house I had first seen online. It has a similar layout to the house I loved, in the area that feels like home, of the town I loved.

A small answer to a lot of prayers! Now we'll start praying that our neighbors are not drug addicts and a small band of thieves do not routinely break into cars! ;)