The Move

Today was the big day for packing up our apartment. It has been full of mixed emotions. This place was the place where Michael and I shared our first year of marriage. This apartment was our home away from home. It served us as a place where we felt safe from the outside world aka drunks and rioting in the streets. This place holds a lot of memories. It has seen a lot of tears but also a lot of laughter. It has only been one year in this place, but it will be sad to say goodbye. 

We move all of our things over to the new house tomorrow, and we will spend one more night in our apartment before we leave to Utah for a month and a half. 

I have always had a hard time throughout my whole life of the thinking that the grass is always greener on the other side. That is something that I have to work at constantly. There were lots of times where I hated this place. I wanted to move closer to friends, or just away from this place. Because whenever you walked on our carpets your feet were black and sticky, we didn't share walls with anyone but the doors were so thin that you could hear every word  from peoples apartment while walking down the hall(hearing many things we didn't want to hear), we had to pay 1.50 per load so $3.00 for a wash and dry of laundry and the list goes on. But, this place was our home. I worried so much about the things I didn't like that it inhibited me from living in the moment and being happy with where I am at. This place was where I did my first year of cooking, it was in this home where I have learned amazing lessons and learned to live away from family and all friends, our living room held many dance parties and movie nights. Someone in their testimony at church today said, if you go looking for something, you will find it. That really stuck out to me, If I keep looking for the negative things in life and look at what others have and wish I had it, I will find the negativity and my life wont be happy.  

So as Michael and I move on to the next phase of our life as new homeowners, I will strive to look at how much greener my side of the grass is. I will look at the quarky things that our house has and find it unique instead of a burden. I challenge everyone reading this post to find ways in your life that maybe you could look for the positive and be content. I know that when I have done it, I have been a lot happier and get more joy out of life.

XOXO Sauceda's from St. Louis! 

OUR FIRST HOME!

As everyone basically knows, we bought a house this last week. We had found a house right around the corner a couple of months ago, but it was gone before we could even look at it. We were very sad about it because the location is perfect, literally perfection. It is about a 5 minute drive from our old apartment, so we will stay in the same ward which we are happy about. Then one day I randomly looked at zillow around the area and I found our baby for super cheap. It was seriously crazy because I never look at zillow. So the second I saw it, I called Michael and we were on our way to go look at it. It had been on zillow for less than 1 day when I saw it. So we lined up Raymond the Realtor and got going. Literally a couple weeks after we found it, we were signing paperwork to put in an offer. The listing price was low because the seller knew that there was a lot of work to do. We knew that we had to have a good offer because there would be people coming in with cash offers and just wanting to flip it and sell it. That was one of the hardest weekends just waiting not knowing if we were going to get it or not.
  Well, clearly we did and we were so excited. The day we closed, we were in the house working. That night we were greeted with two leaks in the bay window, this was only the beginning.

this was the result of the two leaks. 

Michael has a couple of left, but he fixed 30 burst pipes on all three floors. ALL THREE FLOORS. We thought that this was crazy! The people left in the fall didn't winterize it of course and so no one had been in there all winter. This resulted in a lot of drywall and insulation being ripped out as well. Our floors look like they are white because it sticks to your shoes and you track it all over the house. (gets really frustrating after cleaning a floor and then it looks exactly like it used to ;) ) He looked up youtube videos and other tutorials on how to do it and saved us literally thousands of dollars, his fingers still are super sore and hurt so bad. I am so grateful that he learned how to do it and put in the effort to save our little family money :) Michael says that he has touched all the piping in the whole house, his head has been in all parts of the ceilings. I think it is time for him to get a hair cut because his hair is a mop with all of the dust and drywall up in the ceilings so we have had many cleaning out the hair parties. (Don't worry nothing get's left in there like beetles or anything ;) Well now we know we don't have any scary critters living in our walls. :) These are just some of the holes

You have to look close in this one, but under the box there is a huge hole and then a long stretch of open. This was taken before we found mold because they had overflowed the toilet and just let the water drip down, so about 1/4 of our garage ceiling is just taken out :) 

The living room

The living room

The kitchen 

basement
We went and cleaned up the walls so they will be easier to put drywall back in. :) 

Like I said these are just a FEW of the holes. Now just imagine about 3 or 4 bursts in each hole and you have Michael's life these last 3 days.

Well, I think that this will be all for today's blog post. We have to keep you interested and coming back for more :) There is a lot of work we have to do to it still, but we have so many ideas and we are getting so excited to start and have our first home together. :)

 XOXO Sauceda's in St. Louis!