House Hunting

So you may already know that we are looking to relocate. We have chosen Vancouver (Washington). Many people have asked me why Vancouver? Well when I think about it we don't have a really great reason. The weather is marginally better than the Tacoma area. The Church is super strong. There are I think five stakes in the Vancouver area. One of the schools districts even supports release-time seminary. There is good opportunity to but houses that some with acreage. It is still in an outdoors-man's mecca. By that I mean lots of great hikes, mountains, water falls, river etc... We know people that grew up there and liked it. It is two hours closer to family in Idaho and Salt Lake and I guess California too (though the two hours doesn't make much of a dent in the California trip). We would be closer to the beautiful Oregon beaches! We would be right across the river from Portland. We have never been so it will be fun to explore a new big city. So nothing really serious, just an all around "like" for the area.

Dave is looking at two practices that are available. One in Camas, and the other in Battleground. Depending on the day he feels differently about which would be a better fit. And I don't blame him. What a loaded decision full of consequences. I don't envy him.

In order to help make the decision maybe a bit easier we went to Vancouver last weekend to look at houses and the two areas. We thought, "hey, if we can't find a place we would like to live than that will make it easier to cross a practice off the list." I was not convinced there was anything that I would be happy with in the Camas area, and so we focused our attention there. Dave was leaning at the time towards the Camas practice and so I really felt I needed to find a happy place there.

We saw like 15 houses. It was a whirlwind real estate frenzy. We had the awesomest agent who had everything all lined up. She had this super cool portfolio all made up for us with pages of information about each house. We liked a lot of them. But only loved three. Two in the Camas area and one in Battle Ground. We did visit my blog house. It was everything I had hoped it would be on the outside but the inside broke my heart. It was so poorly planned and OLD!!!! Dave says we could totally make it work with some elbow grease. But even after years of watching HGTV "Hidden Potential" I couldn't muster up a vision of change.

So here are our three favorites!

This one is in Battle Ground. It would be 8 minutes to Dave's work and all the schools are right down the street. The schools are good (they score mostly 8's on Great Schools.com). It is right on a river, nestled in the woods. The garage has huge finished living space upstairs with a kitchen bathroom and laundry. But I love how beautiful it is. And I must admit the play structure alone sales it for me.

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This next house is near the Camas practice. Though officially in Vancouver (the Fisher's Landing area) it is only 12 minutes to Dave's possible office. I have to say it is my very favorite. I would totally be giving up on our dream to have property, but the house is so amazingly perfect that it might be worth it! The schools are the best. It would be in the school district with release time seminary. It is also only like a two minute walk to the Columbia river.

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This last house is actually in Camas but it is so out in the boonies that it would also be about 12 minutes to work for Dave. But it is a really great house with an awesome 5 acres!!!! The schools are still top notch but no release time seminary. I think we would eventually close off the breezeway for more square footage downstairs. But this is a great house.

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Later that evening we met one of the Docs and his wife for dinner. They gave us a tour around town and took us out to eat. We really enjoyed there company. I got to see the practice which was fun too.