A Series of Fortunate Events #5: In which we find a rental

If you'll remember back on Series #3, we moved. Because of a wedding. After Captain America accepted his new job, the company set us up with a realtor to help us transition. We brought the girls with us for a marathon day of rental and house shopping. No really. NINE HOURS STRAIGHT.

We weren't sure at first if we wanted to go ahead and buy a new place, or if we should rent for a while to make sure we liked the particular area and sold our other house. So we spent an entire day looking at various housing options. With a 4 yr old and an almost 6 yr old. Our realtor was incredibly patient, and one of the first I've ever met who seemed to have no desire to push us out of a price range we were comfortable with.

We found a house we really liked. But we had no idea how long our house would take to sell. And we had no idea if it was a neighborhood we'd want to be in. The yard was the size of a postage stamp, but that really appealed to Captain America, who had to spend 2 hours to mow our yard.

We decided to check out plenty of rental options as well. Quite a few were easy to dismiss. Funny smells. Strange layouts. Too small. No place for me to work. We found one that we liked. Nice layout, nice looking neighborhood, nutty landlord. He spent the entire time talking about how much he hated DirecTV, and if we rented from him we were banned from ever getting it. We'd be tied to a year lease, which was a little tough since we wanted more freedom to buy something once our house sold. One more place to check...

The last place was a side-by-side duplex, split level. It was a little tough to look real closely, because the family that currently lived there was home (awkward). But it was nice, too, because we could ask them questions. Our realtor smooth talked the landlord into a 9 month lease by offering to help him rent it again when we were leaving. We had lunch, looked at a few more places, and decided to go with it. He had another appointment to show it at 5, and we knew it would rent quickly.

At the time we were just looking for a place that would work for the short-term. But what ended up happening, is it put the girls in the most amazing school! They've had two years of the most fantastic teachers, in a really great facility. That was the only place we looked at in 9 hours that was in the right zone for that particular school. We knew nothing about the schools in the area, so we had no idea to try and choose it. There's a lot of good schools around here, but I can't imagine a better one for us.