A bunch of nothin'
The train!
Anyway, the reason I made this one-day impromptu trip to Clovis was to check out a house. We've been house hunting for awhile and I finally came across a great deal that seemed to fit all our needs. So I dropped Ethan off at daycare Wednesday morning and headed east.
Well, sadly, once I was actually in the house (as opposed to just looking at pictures), I was WAY less enthusiastic and generally bummed about the whole thing. I called Matt to tell him my disappointing news and he suggested I wander around (since I had driven 3.5 hours to get there) and see if I could find anything interesting. So off I went a wandering!
The first house I checked out that I wasn't crazy about
I ended up finding a different house, which I reeeeally liked, but it was at the tip-top of our budget and we had to sign the lease to start much earlier than we had hoped. While the second house was better than the first, it still wasn't just right for us, so we decided to hold off.
The second house I looked at that I really liked
While in Clovis, though, I also made a trip to Cannon AFB to check out on base housing. We're currently on the waitlist, but hadn't seen any pictures of what the houses looked like. The housing office personnel were all super nice and took me to view a house that is the same exact floor plan as what we would be offered, just probably not the exact house we would get. It was an older house and would fit all our needs, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) they are renovating/building all new houses on base and I was told about a year to a year and a half after we move in, we'd be forced to move so they could demo the old house. So the good part is we'd get relocated to one of the newly renovated (or newly built) houses, but the annoying part is we'd have to move. Again. I mean, I totally get that military and moving are synonymous, but let's not add fuel to the fire here, ya know??
Base housing...
While the trip didn't have the end result I had hoped (i.e., choosing a house), it was really helpful to get out there and see what our options are. I found a few neighborhoods I really liked and will now focus my house hunt specifically to those areas. It also inspired Matt and I to have a very in depth conversation about our move to Clovis and I feel like we actually have a game plan now, which is awesome. I will say for anyone keeping tabs on when we're moving, that "game plan" of ours doesn't have an official date, so don't even bother asking, lol. Matt's training is still totally up in the air. Our game plan is more along the lines of, "If ABC happens, this is what we will do, but if XYZ happens, then this is what we'll do."
As the weeks pass, we get closer to figuring out what's right for us. And when more time passes, we'll get that much closer to figuring it all out with solid answers. We just don't want to make any rash decisions that end up obligating us or hurting us financially. So for today the game plan is to wait, and waiting is just what I'll do.
