That One Time When We Bought a House

Nothing makes you feel like an adult like buying a house. I think it has something to do with the thousands of dollars that are no longer in our savings account. It's such a huge decision, and there are so many variables and so many things to think about. And every aspect of the decision is stressful. You have to find a good realtor. And then you have to find a good lender. And then you have to find the house itself, taking into consideration the style, the age, the neighborhood, the yard, the condition, and about a thousand other things. A lot goes into buying a house, and understandably so. This is the place we're going to live for the next ten years or so. We're going to bring kids into this place, man.

But I digress. This story isn't just the story of finding the house that we want to spend a good chunk of our lives in. This is also a perfect example of how when God says, "Do this thing!", you end up doing that thing, even if you didn't think you were ready to do that thing quite yet.

As of about the beginning of April, Andrew and I were thinking about buying a house. In a year. It just felt like it was the right next step for us in our lives. We had had a whole discussion about how we felt a strong prompting that we needed to get into a house (all at IKEA, while looking at [and drooling over] their awesome kitchens). The lease for our apartment was ending on May 31, so we figured that we would sign for another year contract and save up some more money and do a really thorough job of looking at houses and finding what we really wanted. It felt like such a good plan that we even went to the office to re-sign our contract, but we were told that they would write up the contract and deliver it to us. So we figured that was fine and went on our way.

But because we were thinking seriously about it, we wanted to get some of the process started: Find a realtor, get preapproved, etc. As we got into that process, we realized that there might be a benefit to buying a little earlier. So we talked to our apartment office again and discovered that we had the option to sign a six-month contract instead, which was great to hear. We thought that might be a better timeline for us so that if we found a house earlier than expected, we wouldn't be stuck with an entire year-long contract along with our mortgage.

We continued looking into things more, and I started getting a little anxious. Mostly about that six-month timeline. I wanted to make sure that we wouldn't have to buy out a contract or pay rent and a mortgage. To make matters worse, we only had until April 15 to sign a contract to get a lower rate on our rent. I hated that we had to decide so soon what our timeline would be. We then went into the office again to find out if we could sign a contract up until our current lease expired, even if we had to pay a higher rate. At this point, it had been a couple of weeks since we were told that the office would deliver our contract, and it still hadn't happened. We ended up talking to the same girl who promised to get that done, and she immediately recognized us and felt all sorts of bad for being a slacker. She then promised that we could sign for the lower rate up until May 31. I felt much better about this because it gave us some breathing room in making a decision.

Our next step was to meet with a realtor. We met with Shauna, who came highly recommended. She came over to our apartment and got an idea of what we were looking for and what we could afford. Then she asked us about the lease at our apartment. When we told her that our contract was up on May 31 and that we were trying to decide how soon we wanted to buy, she told us to buy now. Interest rates are still really low, and they are projected to go up by the end of the year. She also said that spring is when all the houses go on the market, which creates good competition for buyers. Shauna said she could get us into a house by mid-June.

The whole time Shauna was talking, I just felt like we needed to follow her advice. I felt so good about working with her and about buying a house now instead of waiting. Once she left, Andrew told me that he felt the same way. So we decided that we were going to start looking.

We met with Shauna on Monday, and that Thursday, we started the hunt. We looked at quite a few houses that we absolutely did not like. There was one that we liked, but we didn't love it, and there were a lot of things that needed to be fixed. We had gotten a good idea that day of what houses looked like at what we thought was in our price range, and they weren't fantastic. So we went home and took a really hard look at what we could afford, and we upped our price a little bit. On Saturday, we spent four hours looking at nine houses, and we found a couple that we really liked. But in the end, we decided not to put an offer on either of them.

So the next Monday, we went and looked at more houses. The first one we looked at was cute, but the backyard needed to be completely redone. It didn't even have sod; just a bunch of weeds and a wooden fence that was falling down. The next couple were definite no-gos. Then we pulled up to this adorable little blue rambler in West Jordan. It was at the end of a cul-de-sac, and the front yard was beautiful. We walked in, and everything just felt right. We loved the paint choices. The kitchen wasn't super up to date, but it was nice and well cared for. And the backyard was AMAZING. It was so big, and the landscaping was so perfect we thought the owners had to be professionals. Everything about the house felt good. The basement was finished, and finished nicely. It had a formal living room upstairs and a family room downstairs. It had a pretty big laundry room. It even had a room for cold storage. It was obvious to everyone that this was the best house we had looked at so far.

I know that I loved it. Andrew did too, but it was at the very top of our price range, and that made him a little nervous. But Shauna talked to the seller's agent and told us there was some wiggle room on the price, so we decided to put in an offer. Which was nerve-racking, but so exciting. And then the next morning, I got a call from Shauna telling me that our offer was accepted with no issues.

So after three days of shopping, we found our house. We had met with our realtor a mere week before we signed our offer. It was insane. And everything from that point on went insanely smoothly. No major issues came up in the inspection. There were absolutely no hiccups in processing our loan. The sellers had no problems on their side, either. We could have closed a week earlier than we did because of how easy everything was. It's still so surreal to me that we own a house, but I could not be more excited about it. I can't wait to be done with moving and to make this place our home.

Collections

Andrew has this really cool collection of cameras. He's got quite a few. Some are really cool antiques, like this one that we used as a prop in some of our wedding photos:

I am more than okay with his collection. The cameras sit on top of our bookshelves, and they look great displayed that way. He's come home with a few new ones since we've been married, most of which have been old Polaroid cameras. Just a couple of weeks ago he came home with a late 1950s early 1960s Polaroid camera that he got from DI complete with the owner's manual, which had some amazing pictures in it, let me tell you.

I've always kind of wanted my own really cool collections, but I never really knew what I wanted to collect. A while ago, I mentioned in passing to Andrew that I've always wanted a typewriter. Before Christmas, he asked me if I was serious about that. I instantly said yes. I didn't know if he would be able to find what I wanted, but of course he did. Because he's amazing like that. He ended up getting me a 1930s Royal typewriter that is so cool. Little did he know that he created a monster.

Last weekend, Andrew and I wandered around downtown Salt Lake looking for antiques stores. We found one called Jitterbug Antiques, and sitting outside the doors were two typewriters in their cases. Of course, I had to look at them both before we even went inside the store. I was able to pull myself away, mostly because it made me excited to see what was actually inside. There was one more typewriter set up inside, and I just fell in love with it. It had this amazing leather case that was in great condition, considering it was from the 1940s. So we bought it. And I still just love it.

The green one is the one Andrew gave me for Christmas. The black one is the new addition.

We also found this incredible 1887, four-volume edition of Les Misérables at a little rare books store we found. Andrew and I both absolutely love books, especially pretty books, so it was a little dangerous for us to go in the store to begin with. But I am so glad we did. These are by far the coolest books that we own, and it's given me the itch to find even more. Oi vey.

But I am so excited to have a little collection of my own. I can't say that I think the typewriter collection will grow a ton more. It's hard to collect a lot of typewriters; I mean, where would I keep even five of them? The antique books collection, on the other hand, could grow a lot more, especially since Andrew and I would both be contributing to it. I can't wait until we have a house and the room to really display the cameras, typewriters, and books to do them justice. 

The Problem with Self-Esteem

I have struggled with self-esteem issues my whole life. I'm always incredibly hard on myself, and I've never particularly liked my body. I always want to be skinnier, to be maybe a little bit taller, to have straighter hair, to have clearer skin (because, really, at 26, these stupid breakouts need to just end already).

And while I was single, I always seemed to have this persistent, nagging thought hovering in the back of my mind. It was a thought that I knew intellectually was ridiculous, but I couldn't keep myself from believing it a little anyway. That thought was this: "Once I get married, these self-doubts will go away. My insecurities will be gone because I'll have someone there who loves me for me."

Well, I am now married, and I have been for nearly a year. I do have someone who loves me for who I am and is always there for me. But I can now say from personal experience that that persistent little thought is a complete and utter lie. All those self-esteem issues I had before getting married still exist. And that's the problem with self-esteem; no outside force can create it, regardless of how effectively outside sources can tear it down.

Two years ago, I spent six months working diligently to lose weight. I knew I was out of shape, and I knew I wasn't as healthy as I needed to be. So I made a major commitment to myself to do better, and I succeeded. In about six months, I lost roughly 25 pounds. I only needed to lose 5 more pounds to hit my goal weight. But then I started dating Andrew, and I stopped tracking my food because we would go out to eat and get ice cream and seeing the calories rack up was depressing. And going to the gym started falling by the wayside because I just wanted to spend time with Andrew. In the roughly year and a half since Andrew and I started dating, I have gained all the weight back that I lost, and then a little bit more. I had to put my favorite pairs of jeans away because they just no longer fit. And the more I thought about how much weight I had gained, the crappier I felt about myself.

So why am I writing this post? It's not intended to be a wo-is-me post. I don't want anyone to feel bad about me or tell me how great I am. I'm writing this to remind myself that the only person who can change the way I view myself is me. Though I have let outside forces form my perceptions of myself, it's time for me to stand up for myself to . . . well, myself. I've been thinking about this post for the past week and how I wanted to go about it. I have a draft of a giant post detailing all the things that helped fuel my poor self-esteem. But then I realized that's not what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about how I could improve myself, about how I could learn to love myself. Because someday probably sooner rather than later, I'm going to be a mom. I might have little girls who look up to me. And I don't want those little girls to learn from their mom that it's normal to hate yourself and your body. I don't want them learning that they should be fixated on the scale and how many pounds they lost that week.

I want my little girls to learn from their mom that it's okay to love themselves for who they are. I want them to look at me as an example of how to accept themselves and improve themselves without negativity. I want them to want to exercise because it's good for them and because it's healthy, not solely to fix some problem they have with their thighs or their stomach. I want them to have a real person be a good role model of beauty for them instead of being swayed by the media and the unattainable ideal we're always sold.

If I want my daughters to learn those things from me in the future, I need to start implementing some changes in my life right now. So I'm making a list of things I need to do to improve my own self-esteem, since no one else is going to do it for me.

1. Stop the negative thoughts. When I look at myself in the mirror and see something I don't like, I'm going to stop the thought in its tracks. I'm going to pause and think something positive about myself instead.
2. Continue my efforts to be more active. My goal right now is to lose some weight, but I need to make that a goal that is more about my health than it is about my appearance. I am not the healthiest I could be, so I need to make efforts in that regard. I also need to focus on how good I felt when I was so good at keeping up my goals two years ago. I felt better about myself then than I have at any other point in my life, and that is a goal worth achieving.
3. Eat healthier and watch my portion sizes. This falls into line with being more active and getting healthier in general.
4. Attend the temple more often. Andrew and I met with our stake president this week, and he talked about the temple in a way I had never heard before. He said that as we attend the temple and make it a real part of our lives, we feel better about ourselves because we begin to view ourselves through Christ's eyes. That struck me to the core, and I knew it was something I needed pretty desperately at this point in my life.

I am also hoping to have some updates on these items that I will post in the future. Now that I've written these goals down, I need to account for them in some way, and I figure this blog is as good a way as any. In fact, here's a quick update already: I started working out and tracking my food on January 1. Since then, I've lost 3.4 pounds, and I've exercised at least three times a week. This, my friends, seems like a promising start.

In doing these four simple things, I think I will be able to overcome my self-doubts. Because the truth is, I am pretty awesome. Andrew must think so, or he wouldn't have married me in the first place. I have a pretty dang amazing life right now, and I have a Heavenly Father who loves me and is involved in every part of my life. That is the most important thing to remember: I am a daughter of God. He knows me and loves me despite my many flaws, of which he knows every tiny detail. It's time for me to start loving myself, too.

Moving Is the Worst

The move is officially done. Meaning that all our stuff is in our new apartment. That does not mean, however, that the unpacking is done. Not by a long shot.

I've never really enjoyed moving, but I never fully appreciated how much it sucks to move when you actually own all your furniture. All the other moving I've done in my life has been as a single person in student housing where the most furniture I owned was a TV, a piano, and some bookshelves. I never had to move a washer and dryer or a bed or a dresser. With this move, we had a washer and a dryer, a bed, two dressers, two TVs (plus their stands), four bookshelves (with the books to fill them), and assorted shelving units. I know it could have been worse (we could be moving with kids and all that that entails, or we could be moving from one house to another), but this was still abysmal.

But we did it. We managed it with a ton of help from our family who helped us load, unload, and unpack. We have even cleaned and completely checked out of our old apartment. Though we didn't technically have to be out until the end of June, it's so nice to just have it be done.

The unfortunate thing is that the frustration doesn't begin and end with the move. We have a balcony/deck, and the previous tenants had some dogs that they didn't let off the deck. The turf had been destroyed and smelled awful, so it had to be torn up. Under that was rotting wood, so for the first two days, we had a tattered deck that looked terrible. We also only have one garage door opener, which means that one of us has to park our car and get out to get into the garage and open it up before we can park in the garage. It's more than a little annoying. Then there have been the issues with the cable and internet. Comcast has been a beast to work with, and poor Andrew has been so frustrated. A technician is coming out this afternoon and will hopefully fix everything up for us.

On top of those issues, we have to buy a few things we need for this apartment that we didn't need before, like floor lamps and kitchen cabinet organizers and maybe even patio furniture (our deck is huge and I would really like to actually use it). Then we have to agree on how to arrange rooms and decorate. And decorating is going to require us to buy some more frames and print some new pictures.

All in all, moving is a physical and emotional strain, and it's a weeks-long process. I've been exhausted every day for at least six days, and Andrew and I both come home from work a little ornery. Last night I was so tired I fell asleep before 10:00. It will be so nice to be done with everything and have things set up the way we want them, but the process of getting there is rough.

Despite all the whining in this post, I am incredibly glad that we moved. Our apartment is really nice, and I think we'll love it once we get past the initial issues. I love our new furniture. It's so cute and really comfortable. I love that during the day, we don't have to turn on a single light. There are enough windows to fill the entire apartment with natural light, and it's fantastic. I love having a garage. I love having such a big deck where we can grill and relax in the summer. And I absolutely love how close I am to work now. It takes me at most ten minutes to get to work, and it's wonderful.

So even though moving is horrible and I hate it, I'm glad we did it. And I'm glad that every day we get a little closer to being unpacked and to calling this place our home.

Four and a Half Days and Counting

Well, this is it. The last week that Andrew and I will live in Utah County. And while Utah County has been incredibly good to me over the past eight or so years, I cannot wait to get out. I've wanted to move back to Salt Lake ever since I graduated, and I am beyond thrilled that it's finally worked out.

I am also out-of-my-head excited that I only have four and a half days left of this nasty commute! Only nine more one-way trips. I can do this.

And on Saturday, the move will be complete. Sure, we still have to pack and then load and then unload and then unpack and then set everything back up and then decorate, but I'm choosing to look on the positive side. And once it's done, it'll be done and we won't be moving for at least a year. Which is probably the best part of all.

New Look

I have a few friends that blog, and they always seem to have these really cute custom-made pictures as their headers. I've been dying to do that myself, but I could never figure out how. I didn't want to bug Andrew and make him photoshop a picture for me, so I went to the next best thing: Google.

That is where I discovered picmonkey.com, which is a pretty cool website. I didn't have to download or sign up for anything. I could just create a little collage and edit it right there on the site, which was perfect for what I needed.

And now I have my own awesome header! This probably doesn't deserve its own blog post, but you know what? I'm proud of that header! It looks so much better than what I had before. It basically just means that I like my blog a bunch more now. Maybe that will get me to post more often. But I'm not counting on that just yet.

Our First Apartment

It seems that married couples always have stories about their first apartments, so I thought I would try to document mine and Andrew's first home. I was going to take some updated pictures, but then I looked at the ones Andrew posted on Facebook when he first moved in and realized that not much has changed since then.

There is definitely more stuff on the countertops and we have some more shelving (these pictures were taken prior to unwrapping all our wedding gifts, after all), but it's nothing special. That's what happens when you find out you're moving so soon after moving in. We haven't bothered to put much up on the walls or do much in the way of decorating because it's already starting to look like this again:

Things I will miss about this apartment:

• The giant master bath
• The half bedroom turned mini library
• Playing with our landlord's dog on occasion

Things I will not miss about this apartment:

• The abundance of noise that emanates from upstairs (we can hear everything)
• Living in a basement (I need more natural light!)
• The ridiculous misuse of so much space
• The weird shelving in our closet
• The near-complete absence of kitchen storage and counter space
• The abysmal commute to work

That isn't to say that this apartment is a bad apartment. The family that lives upstairs is super nice, and Holly and Blair have been awesome to work with. But there are always going to be things we don't like about a place. And the fact that I seriously cannot wait to move has more to do with my commute than with with the apartment itself.

And speaking of moving, Andrew and I have found a place in Midvale that will hopefully be awesome for us. We move in a mere three and a half weeks, and like I said, I cannot wait. Here are the things I'm looking forward to:

• A 10-minute (at most) commute for both Andrew and me (hallelujah!)
• A two-car garage
• No upstairs or downstairs neighbors (and possibly only one next-door neighbor)
• Vaulted ceilings
• A balcony
• Lots of windows to let in lots of light
• Walk-in closet without the weird shelving
• Kitchen counter space
• Full utility room for our washer and dryer to sit side by side
• Two on-site pools
• On-site fitness facility

I could probably keep listing things, but I'll refrain. I can't tell you how excited we both are to live so much closer to work and to actually settle down someplace for a while. I'm not looking forward to the packing and cleaning and sweating that inevitably comes with moving so much stuff (it's amazing how much crap we have), but it'll all be worth it in the end.

Holy Stress, Batman!

Well, I have now been a Health Catalyst employee for a week and a half. It's been pretty good, for the most part, except that I still don't know what my routine will be and what exactly I will be in charge of. I've been told over and over about how I'm supposed to be engaged and involved with the sales team, but how that is going to happen hasn't exactly been made clear. (It's also weird that I'm part of the sales team. Which is nearly all men. That's a definite change for me.)

Which is where the stress comes in. I hate starting new jobs specifically because I hate not knowing what I'm doing. I have such a hard time when I'm completely dependent on other people to tell me what I'm supposed to be doing every minute of every day. Being told to familiarize myself with a website when I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing with said website makes things really difficult. At KLAS, I went to work every day knowing exactly what I would be doing. And if I ran out of editing, I knew three other things I could do to fill my time. At Health Catalyst, if I don't have content to edit or a proposal to work on, I'm sitting on my thumbs, trying to find new websites that can entertain me until I get something to work on.

I know this phase will end. I know this is just how it goes at a new job. I'm still trying to figure out what the company does and how I fit in, and I know that I went through this exact same phase at KLAS. I had the same frustrations and stresses when I started there over four years ago, but now all I can think about is how much I miss the familiarity.

Unfortunately, knowing that I will become familiar with Health Catalyst doesn't make the process of getting there any easier. It's been a stressful week and a half. Just ask Andrew about the (at least) three times I've broken down into tears at the prospect of going to work the next day. (To be fair, I warned him before I started that I would be a wreck for the first, oh, month or so.) I'm so thankful that Andrew's been so understanding. It is definitely nice to have such a supportive husband to come home to every night. I love him a ridiculous amount.

The good thing is that I think I'll like it at Health Catalyst. Eventually. The people have been super welcoming and nice, and the kitchen is fully stocked with candy, granola bars, caffeine, and other goodies. It's a great perk, especially when I forget a lunch and don't have to go out and spend money. However, it is terrible for my calorie counting. I have to exercise some serious restraint.

Speaking of calorie counting, they also gave me a FitBit, which is pretty cool. It tracks my steps, how many floors I've climbed, and how well I sleep. I've looked into getting one before, but I didn't want to spend the money, and now I don't have to! Woot! Even though I have been appalled at just how few steps I take some days.

Anyway, this is a long post that doesn't say much other than that I'm trying to get my feet under me. And on the days that I'm extra stressed and don't know what I'm doing, I just remind myself that this job is where I need to be right now. I know I was supposed to take this position because everything worked out too well for it not to be right. And I also know that in time, I will become as comfortable here as I was at KLAS. I just have to stick it out and take my time. Everything will work out great. Especially once we move and I no longer have this frigging nasty commute. (It's seriously awful. Rush-hour traffic is devil spawn.)

And because I worry that my text-only posts are super boring, here's a picture of my new work space. Because that's not boring at all, right?

Bittersweet

Well, this is it. My last day at KLAS. It's a little surreal to me. I've been working here since January of 2009, right after I graduated from BYU. It feels like I've been here forever.

I've been packing up my desk, and it looks so sad and empty now that my pictures and everything have been taken down.

I've never been so sad to leave a job. The last two jobs I left were fast food and maintenance, so I can't exactly say that I enjoyed what I was doing. But at KLAS, I was editing. I was working in my field, and though I didn't always enjoy my job, I always enjoyed working with my coworkers.

I think that's why I'm so sad; I don't want to leave the friends I've made here. But I know that it's the right thing to do. I'm nervous as all get out to start my job on Monday, but I know it will be a good opportunity for me. I'll still be using my editing skills, and I'll also be using the healthcare knowledge I've gained at KLAS over the last 4+ years. In fact, I'm pretty sure that experience is the main reason I got this job in the first place.

So now I bid farewell to a place that has been very good to me and head on to a new adventure.