Or should that be “first, sell your house”.  Well if it is, we did it backwards.  We bought a house in Kansas City and still have to sell our house in VA.  {sigh}

The house hunting trip was obviously a success.  We saw 16 houses in two days.  Not all of them were in the same condition.  One was obviously occupied by angry renters.  I can’t think of any other reason for the state of the house (dog shit on the kitchen floor, bath tub full of water, toilet not flushed, toys everywhere) because there was no way that anyone was going to buy it in the state it was in. Good thing that was the first house we saw so it had to get better as the days went on. Several were just not workable for us (no closet space or no en suite for the master bedroom) and others just needed more TLC than we have the energy to provide. Two of which were serious contenders and there was a third that would have worked out as well. We bought the best one – of course. It’s less than 6 miles from my work – a 15 minute commute – and walking distance to shops and restaurants.

Not only were we looking for a house, we wanted to see how Kansas City felt as home so we dragged Jesse-the-college-student-daughter-who-used-to-go-by-Gillian along with us.  She was a fabulous help keeping us sane and her set design skills were invaluable (“No mom, the dining room table will not fit in this room.”) But we also wanted to see if she liked the city itself.  We’ve decided that it’s a good fit for us (don’t ask if that decision came before or after we decided to move there) but how horrible would it be for the kids to come visit?

Apparently not too horrible.  We ate barbeque, walked all over several neighborhoods, went to the theater, had Christopher Elbow hot chocolate, eavesdropped on an open air heavy metal tribute band, had dinner with with a friend from the Bank and his family, visited the world’s largest furniture store (Nebraska Furniture Mart – holy big box store Batman), ate delicious gluten free pizza while guessing at old Trivial Pursuit cards, visited a few outlying towns and squeezed in a winery as well. All in all, not a bad weekend.

Now we have to figure out how to figure out what is going with us and what is not.  Apparently, you can’t fit the furniture from a 3600 sq ft house into a 1900 sq ft house.  Keep your eyes peeled for the furniture bargains once we get it all sorted!

/san/