We moved!

You may wonder no more, I will now tell you about our move and how/why I left the salon.

So for the last 3 years, we lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, in Fullerton, 701 square feet. If we had lived there right after getting married, it wouldn't have been so bad. But we lived there after having lived in a 2 bedroom, and collecting 5 years of marriage worth of crap. We purged A LOT of it before Declan came to make room for him, and we were making it work. It was getting hard though. And Trevor was driving about 45 min to and from work every day. And over the course of the 3 years we lived there we had problem after problem (and we're still having problems) for example: I can't count how many times the water was turned off without ANY notice, we didn't have hot water for about a week once with no apologies made, the police were there at least once a month if not more, including the time they came because our car was broken into, and other inconveniences. (The current problem is that we are being charged for carpet cleaning and dyeing for stains that were there before we moved in. It's even on the move-in checklist "Stains on carpet throughout apartment." I'm in loose contact with someone about this, with promises of calling me back not being followed through on. Grr.)

It was pretty obvious that we needed to get out of there, so we started looking. For reals.....we had been constantly looking for the last..um, I think....2 1/2 years...ish. Going back and forth between looking to rent and looking to buy. Considering the way the economy is going, we decided that we should still rent and wait to buy when we could get a house instead of a condo. Although it's a MUCH higher rent market, we decided on Irvine, because of it's proximity to Trevor's work, and figuring I could ask clients to drive to Irvine easier than anything further south. We found a couple of options, closer to our budget, but decided on a one-bedroom with den at Solana Apartments. (We wanted something with more room for Dec, or even a room of his own.) We were lucky when we were looking because week by week the rent was going down, and we finally caught it at it's lowest price! It's still significantly higher than where we were, but SO worth it!

December 13th, we moved into our new place. It's 975 square feet, HUGE kitchen, nice size walk-in closet, den (room for D), a private enclosed patio, back door with access to stairs leading to our 1 car garage, came with fridge and microwave, and.....the best part.....a washer and dryer! In our own LAUNDRY ROOM!! I LOVE IT!!! We are also real close to the Marketplace, and walking trails. We LOVE Irvine, it even feels nicer just driving around here. Needless to say, we are really happy!

Oh yeah, and I left the salon. :) I hated leaving Declan everyday, and a lot of the time I wasn't that busy. And not being that busy and only working a few days a week, the rent was just too much, it hurt to write that check everyweek. So we made the decision that I would not work at the salon anymore. But I did (do) have a good handful of clients that were hard to let go of, so we're making it work and I still do hair in our new place! It's working out real well so far. I'm also hoping to really start doing more weddings. I have a few already coming this spring, so I am hoping for more, it's what I love doing the most!

So yes, we are REALLY happy! We finally feel good about where we live and feel like we are providing Declan with a clean and safe place to live! We haven't finished putting everything together, like pictures up or anything, and Declan isn't even in his room yet, but we are working on it! :) When it is all done, I will definitely post pictures....cause it's freaking awesome!

As you can see, Declan wanted to make sure he was coming with us! :)