Searching Sarasota

   I keep thinking to myself, "Alright, good. Once I get these last posts done, then I can take a break from blogging for a while." But I'm not burnt out on it yet. So I might as well keep posting about all of the big, fun things I never wrote about last year. Especially since 2022 is only up to 28 posts so far, and in 2019 I wrote 48! (I don't think I will ever top my original blog, when we lived in California in 2013, and I wrote one hundred and forty four posts that year!! All while working full time at an alarm company for seven and a half months of the 11 months we lived there.) 

   Since we are getting closer every day to moving into our house, I thought it would be fun to reflect back on when we were on our search for this house. ~ It was more stressful this time since we had to find weekends available to come down and get a hotel. I worked every other Fri/Sat/Sun then, and also we wanted to build a house, versus moving into a pre-existing home like we did in 2016.

   In January 2021, Michael was sub-contracted by a medical simulation company and worked from home in his spare time. He was also working part time, on my week days off, as a special makeup effects instructor for VAMP FX, a vocational academy in Orlando. In April, he was able to focus full time on working for the medical simulation company. Every couple of months, his boss would drive up from Sarasota to see and praise the work he had done so far. Each time he made a comment about how he wished we lived closer to Sarasota so Michael could work at their headquarters. They'd both laugh. 

   Finally around June, after Michael and I had a very exciting hypothetical discussion, he sent his boss an email, asking if there actually was a position for him if we did move to Sarasota. His boss said yes! He said Michael would even be in charge of his own department! Then, after several super long weeks (it felt like it to me) of back and forth emails, and phone calls discussing the details of the job position and what was expected of him, we officially had the green light!!

   When we knew we were going to move, I immediately sent a message to Anita Wise, the realtor we used to find our house in Orlando, asking her to help us sell that wonderful first home. We liked her a lot. We were surprised, yet thrilled, to find out that she was also willing and happy to travel with us to Sarasota (two hours South) in order to help us find the new house too! We did a bunch of budgeting, cleaning, and vacuuming the day before Anita arrived, and she gave us tips on what needed to be updated, such as touching up paint along the trim in the front.

Anita meeting Emma! :)

   It was actually about a year ago that we started looking- August 5th, 2021. The first time we went down it was just by ourselves, to get a little familiar with the different areas and see what communities were under development. There were a lot!! Many of them were way over our price range, or had HOA and CDD fees. We had never heard of CDD fees, but Anita later told us that it's basically an extra bill tacked on in relation to your already expensive mortgage. She later narrowed down all the places and made sure we lived somewhere that did not have CDD fees, as well as low HOA fees. Oh man, she was so helpful, and she is super nice and fun. Anita Wise with EXP Reality is the best!! I am excited to see her again soon when we close on this house. She gave me permission to post her business card:

   While Michael drove around last year (first stopping by to show us his new work office! -the photo above), I took lots of notes and pictures, including which communities had pools and playgrounds. Of course, those places usually had higher HOA fees and often CDD fees as well. A lot of the places had community mailboxes like in an apartment, which I thought was weird, instead of individual mailboxes at the end of each driveway. Is that the new thing now?

We really liked this house/neighborhood, but it was super duper expensive. ^^

   We went out to eat at a barbecue place called Stottlemyer's Smokehouse, and at the end they even gave us two very yummy free pieces of pie (of our choosing) to say "Welcome to Sarasota", since we told them we were down for the day, looking to buy a house! Such nice people.  

Goodnight & Good morning!!

** I accidentally cracked the vent filter a little bit and Michael didn't have any extras
in the medical bag, but luckily it still worked well enough that we didn't have issues
overnight or on the way home. He replaced it when we got back to the house. **

Picking up Sasha Renee from the "Paws & Play" pet boarding facility.
They got very familiar with her in August and September before we moved away.

   When we got back the next day, there was a For Sale sign in our yard and a lockbox on the front door. It's happening!! The race was on. Michael put a couple fresh coats of paint on the deck out back, which was an addition that he (and his friend, Brian) added to the house six months after we moved in. A couple days later, the pictures of our house were up on the MLS website, and a few days after that we scheduled the three showing days. It was so much much easier for us to fully be out of the house at that time, than to leave for an hour every time a potential buyer showed up. And the timing worked out perfectly because my parents were on a vacation at a beach not too far away, and they had an extra bedroom! You can see a bunch of those pictures in >> this post "We're Moving!" which is one of the nine big highlights that I did post last year. 

   Here are a bunch more pictures of the fun we had at Daytona Beach when we stayed with my wonderful parents during the days that people were touring our house with their realtors. I love getting to spend time with them, and Emma getting to spend time with her grandparents. I spent a lot of time with mine (on both sides) growing up- and made a point to visit them as I got older too!
   I guess some of the families touring had kids and let them sit and play with Emma's toys because when we got back, her things in the corner of the living room had been moved around. So I Clorox wiped her whole area and all of her toys before we let her play with them again.

I love how Emma has her hand against Michael's cheek! :)

   We got a lot of compliments during the tours, from several people interested in our house, from what we heard. One woman even said that the house looked staged. Nope- my husband just loves HGTV and knows how to decorate. This is how our house actually looks when it's clean! The only added thing was that I bought flowers the night before we left. By the end of the three tour days, Anita said (maybe my memory is exaggerating this?) that we had 43 people come through the house and 15 offers were over asking price!! Woohoo!! That family that we decided to sell it to had already sold their house as well, and they were currently living in a hotel, so we agreed that we would be completely moved out by Sunday, September 12th. Their closing/ move in date was signed and set for the 13th.

   Here are some of the professional "staged" (but not staged) photos that were taken of our house and then put up online for everyone to see. I remember sitting in a fast food parking lot, continually refreshing the page, waiting for our address to update from how the house looked before we moved in to how it looked currently. I was so impressed with the photos! The brightness and wide angles:

   I thought it was so interesting that the family that bought our house hadn't even gone into our house because her realtor wasn't able to open the lockbox for some reason. She loved it so much just from walking around outside and seeing the pictures online! However, one day they came by again and we got to meet the wife, and gave her a tour ourselves. She was super nice- and even extra super nice when a few months later some of Emma's medical supplies from a new company got delivered there on accident -twice! She texted me about it, since my phone number was under the address, then mailed them to our new address in Sarasota. I paid her back via CashApp, and also sent her a Christmas card. I need to send her another one this year.

   On Friday, August 20th, we went down to Sarasota again, this time with Anita, and we had to find a house to buy (build) and an apartment to rent, all before driving home on Sunday afternoon! But, no pressure.. The first day, we met up with Anita to look at a few pre-owned homes. The first one was really nice, but since it was a two story, I think only the master bedroom was downstairs and we would definitely need Emma's room on the bottom floor too. Anita also told us that we could build a brand new home for the same price as that pre-owned one. Still, we looked at a few more, and it was fun. 

We had Emma sleep in the beach cart -on a pillow- during this trip, since she rolls around
so much on the bed, even though I sleep next to her. She seemed very cozy in there.

   The next two days were for meeting with sales consultants. On Saturday morning we enjoyed a delicious family breakfast at Bob Evans. I liked their sign that said, "Phones down, Forks up!"

   The first model home that we walked through overwhelmed my senses and I could not control myself. You would think I had been homeless most of my life. I was like, "Oh my goodness, this is sooo nice, especially with the super high ceilings!" And once I walked into the big open living room/kitchen area, I could not stop laughing with excitement. At least Anita was smiling at me and didn't seem embarrassed. I kept apologizing to the consultant and promised him it was because the house was so nice, and made sure to verbally point out everything that I liked. He said that he was happy to hear it. I even said things like, "I just can't believe this is our life now!" as if we had won the lottery after years of pinching pennies.

   But that is really how I was feeling, and sometimes I still feel that way. Maybe I'll feel that way more/ again when we're actually in our house and not living in a small apartment. The fact that I got to "retire" from my "regular job" at age 34, to be able to spend all my time with our daughter! I had literally been praying for that for two years! I had been trying to come us with all these different ways we could rearrange our schedule, or me going to part time so Michael could work more, or me switching to night shift, but nothing ever would make sense with her doctor appointments and making sure I kept the insurance. But it was finally all happening! And I could not stop laughing with excitement.

  However, my reaction probably confused the nice sales consultant when Anita later called to tell him that.. spoiler!.. we were not picking that house. I got all my crazy amazement energy out with the first house and had pretty normal reactions to the rest of them, including the one we bought. And those were even nicer than the first one! We actually knew which one we wanted before we drove down. Michael had been looking at it online for a while, and I liked it a lot too, so I was extra excited to walk through the model with him (and Anita)!

   The next pictures I am posting - most are from the company we picked, but I don't think any of them are from the same model. If we had a higher budget, I would have probably wanted a different model and a pool, and would have asked to keep everything from the interior design plan in the house because it looked like a celebrity lived there. But of course, to a celebrity, this five bedroom house we took our time walking, through was tiny! I also thought the black tiles in the bathroom were super sleek and modern, and if we were able to pick things in our house (I'll explain shortly), I probably would have asked for that in at least one bathroom.

Celebrity bedroom!! ^^

Celebrity shower!! ^^

   We had a few specifications for what we wanted, and the house Michael wanted already had all of those. Including a big one for me- a guest bedroom! We didn't have one in the previous house, so his parents always had to stay in a hotel, or when my friends or mom stayed over they used the blow up mattress. Not as inviting. We told Anita and the sales consultant that we were very interested in the house. There was another (same model) in a different neighborhood, but it wasn't an elevation and exterior paint color that we liked. Both houses were "inventory homes", meaning everything was pre-planned. They already had everything picked out from tile colors, every knob, faucet handle, countertop, wall colors, cabinets, etc. We wouldn't get to spend all day at the Design Studio, starting from the ground up. But it also meant we wouldn't be on a long waiting list. It meant we could already have a grass lot, and they would start building the house in the next few months. So that was a big plus for us, and we went for it! We wanted a new NEW house as soon as possible.

Again with the black! I feel like normally that would not be a color I would choose,
but in this model, I think they made it look so "cool and hip". (How old am I?)

   The consultant showed us that some of the things in the model home (in the kitchen) would be what is in the plan for the inventory home. He showed us many more things on the computer- like the flooring in the master bathroom shower, and the backsplash in the kitchen, since that was different. Emma fell asleep on Michael's lap during the long meeting. We signed all the papers and were unofficially "the owners". To become official we had to pay a chunk of money within a few days to hold the lot under our names, and then pay a bigger chunk another month later (from what I remember). Then the rest at the end during closing.

   That night before going back to the hotel, we met up with some of Michael's friends, Gabby and Bri, along with Gabby's husband and daughter, at a yummy little Italian place. Gabby and Bri were both previous students of his at VAMP FX, and after graduating a few years ago, they began working at the same medical simulation company and would now be fellow employees, in another department. Michael says that I often tend to be awkwardly quiet when we go out to dinner with people, but he said I did a really great job talking a lot that night! 

   On our drive back to our house in Orlando the next morning, where we would only live for a few more weeks, Michael called Anita at 2:59pm and told her, "We've got a decision on a house." And officially let her know that we wanted the inventory dream home!!  Hooray, such exciting times. :)