Exciting news!!!!

I mention a few weeks ago, that Jon and I have some big and exciting things coming up and now it’s time for the big reveal!

Jon and I became homeowners on 4/4/2014!!!!

We moved in 2 weekends ago, and returned our rental house keys last Tuesday.   Jon and I still cannot believe that we are now homeowners!

It’s funny how life works.  Back in November, I was looking at Zillow, dreaming of what kind of house we could one day purchase, when I came across a house down the street from us and it was perfect! It met all of our requirements.  I showed it to Jon and we talked about how cool it would be if we could buy a house like that.  And that was it, we didn’t do anything else regarding the house, we just went back to our everyday routine.

In January, Jon met a guy named Nick that is friends with one of our friends in Oregon.  Nick mentioned to Jon that he was a real estate agent.  Jon talked to me about mentioning the house that we found to Nick and potentially looking at it. I just laughed and said, yea right, that house has already been sold, since it’s been months since we 1st found it online. Turns out I was wrong! The house was still on the market, so we decided to check it out.  

We checked the house out and we loved it. But nick thought it would be a good idea for us to also look at other houses in the area that we may also like, because who puts an offer on the very 1st house the look at?  He wanted us to be sure about our decision.  

So Jon and I leave on a trip, and while we are on our trip we also take care of the money portion of buying a house and getting pre-approved.  When we got back from our trip, we spoke with Nick and told him that we were ready to put our offer in.  Guess what?  There was already an offer on the house, and it was higher than what we wanted to spend on the house.  And the offer has been accepted! How heartbreaking?? L  So we were pretty disappointed, and I just kept telling myself that God has a better plan for us regarding our 1st home.  So we started looking at other houses, but none of them compared to the original house.  Jon and I felt that the other houses were nice, but that we were compromising what we really wanted JUST to be homeowners.  

In the middle of February, Jon called me and said that he couldn’t stop thinking about THE house, and asked if I thought it would be a good idea if he just called Nick and asked for a follow up on the house, and see if the original buyer had gone through with purchasing the house.  We waited a few hours, and then Jon got a call back from Nick.  Nick then proceeds to tell Jon that the original buying has JUST backed out of the deal and the house would be put back on the market!!! How amazing???!!!!  

Jon and I spoke with Nick, and decided to put in our offer for the house the very next day.  We did not want to lose out on our dream house again! So we did the whole back and forth thing with the sellers on the price, and finally got our offer accepted! It was such a crazy, stressful and lllooonnnggg process, but it has all been worth it, because now we have a home that is all ours! We still feel like we are dreaming!

We have a long list of projects/updates we would like to make to the house, but for now we are just over the moon about the fact that we actually own this home and can redo it to fit us and our lifestyle.

So our home is 5 bedrooms / 3 ½ bath with a large basement.  Jon can finally have the man cave he has always wanted!  I know it’s a lot of house for just the 2 of us, since we don’t even have kids, but we have my little sister living with us and when we do finally have kids, we have plenty of room to grow.

Here is a little peak of the house, I’ll be back tomorrow with pictures of the inside!

Our Move to Arizona!

Well Jon, Miley and I made to Arizona and are now adjusting to our new life! And as you can see, not only did we change the state that we live in, I also decided to change the look of my blog :)  I love the way it turned out! It sums up our life so well! And I of course have to thank Kristen from Whisky Tango Foxtrot! She is so easy and fun to work with.  I am a very happy customer!

Now back to our moving adventure.  Of course, Jon and I try to plan everything to make sure that big events run smoothly, but of course that NEVER happens! lol.  The day before the movers arrived, they called us and told us they would be arriving between 8:00 - 9:00am.  So Jon and I were up bright and early ready to get to work, well they didn't actually arrived until 10:30, but they happen to have brought a ginormous semi truck with them, when Jon had already told them that it wouldn't fit in the apartment complex.... So they had to leave and get a smaller truck.  We didn't actually get to work on moving everything out until about 12:30.  I did feel bad for the movers because we lived on the 3rd floor of our apartment complex, so they poor guys had to run up and down those stairs with boxes and furniture and it was a hot day out, but we got it done!

That night Jon and I slept in our empty apartment, on an air-mattress.  Friday morning, we were up and on the road my 5:15am.  Jon and I took turns driving, I drove the first 5 hrs of our trip, which im glad that I did because on Jon's half of the drive, we had to drive through a dust storm which was pretty scary!

The pretty views on our drive to Arizona, I didn't realize how pretty the desert truly is. 

Miley did a great job on this trip.  She did not have any car anxiety and was such a good girl.  So proud of my baby! 

Family pictures on our 11 hour road trip! 

Our road trip companions! 

The dust storm after we drove through it 

I was very happy once we were out of it!

Miley was such a passenger seat hog! 

We arrived to our new home in Arizona at 4:00pm friday, and we were SO happy!!! I was even happier when I open up our fridge and saw this from our new landlord!

Champagne & chocolate, yes please! :)  She also gave us tickets to a nature park near by.  We are very lucky to have such an awesome landlord! 

Jon and I have already found his "go to" bar for the Oregon Duck games.  The bar is part of the alumni association, so they have lots of goodies and raffles during the games which is always fun.  They also have the whole downstairs of the bar reserved for only duck fans and food specials during the games.

Miley loves the backyard and she really enjoys laying out in the sun.  There have been plenty of times when I let her out to go potty, and instead of going potty, she lays down in the grass and enjoys the sunshine, so sometimes I have to remind her to go potty before she can relax, lol.

She is usually pretty attached to my side, but with this move, she is 100xs more attached to me.  Its really cute, but she does make it pretty hard to get anything done, I love her sweet lil cuddles!

Hanging with me while I look for  a job.

Jon wanted to jump into the pool one night and we found this lil guy enjoying the pool also.  

Jon and I have been enjoying our new place, especially the backyard.  Jon already loves living here and is very happy with his new position.  We are very happy with this move and excited to explore our new surroundings!

Jon is out of town this week training for his new position.  Traveling is a big part of his new position, so I'm gonna have to get used to this, sad! :(  But hopefully this will give me more time to blog and craft!

Arizona

Jon and I got back from our trip to Arizona late last night.  I did not want to come back! I loved it out there! The weather, even though hot, was great and the place was just awesome! I love how clean and pretty everything was and there were no crazy drivers! Which is a huge change compared to life out here in California :0) Jon was the crazy California driver this time, lol.

We caught our flight out Thursday night.  Miley stayed back in Cali with the dog sitter. 

Miley was sad Wednesday night when she saw me packing my bags.  Just look at those eyes!

Jon and I arrived at the airport pretty early, so we grabbed dinner and some drinks.  The we headed towards our gate.  We cut it super close, because by the time we got to our gate, everyone was already boarding.  We were pretty much the last ones to get on the plane, oops!

Ready to do some house hunting!

The temp outside when we arrived.... craziness!

We were up bright and early Friday to start house hunting.  My only requirement for our home was to have our own pool. 

This was the backyard for the 1st house that we saw.  The backyard was awesome BUT the inside was not.  Lame!

We saw lots of cactus!

Jon and I were VERY happy to see that they have Dutch Bros. in Arizona, so we had to make a stop for some fuel!

Happy Wendy! Reminds me of home!

After house hunting we just drove around the area.  We then stopped in at a sushi restaurant so Jon could get his sushi fix.

Jon made me pose for the picture, I don't even know how to use chopsticks! lol

Saturday morning, we already knew what house we wanted, but thought we should look at more houses just to be sure.... but we were also afraid that the house that we loved would be snagged up by someone else, so at 10:57am we made the call for the house that we loved! Yay!!! We made plans to meet with the landlord (Denise) at 5:00 that evening to sign the paperwork and make it official!

 The house and Denise are awesome! She has no problem with holding the house for us until we move in at the end of August, and already gave us our house keys.  We told her our horror story about moving to San Jose and the big scam we had to deal with.  And she even took us over to meet our new neighbors.   Jon and I are very excited for our new house! We got the perfect lil 3 bedroom house, with an awesome backyard, with not only the pool that I wanted, but also with a hot tub and an orange tree! Yay!

Our new backyard! I cant wait to hangout here and enjoy the sunshine! I also love that we have a grassy area for Miley to hang out at :0)

Our 1st picture together outside our new home in Arizona!

After getting out home finalized, we met up with one of Jon's friend from college, Curtis.  Jon and Curtis were roommates when Jon and I started dating, and we hadn't seen him since our wedding 2 years ago.  So it was fun catching up and listing to their college day stories.

Sunday, we had the whole day just to enjoy the city.  So we checked out a mall near Jon's new office.  That was a little different, they were having a concert, so there were lots of people there for the performance.





Then we also checked out Scottsdale, and found the Oregon Ducks bar, which is very important for Jon to have a bar to go to during football season.  We hung out there until we had to head to the airport.

The have pineapple beer, which was super yummy!

Now I'm back to work


Booo work!

I'm excited for this next move, I think we are really going to love living in Arizona!  I seriously did not want to come back! lol

The Burnside Adventures Continues......

I have to take a moment and just say how truly proud I am of my husband.  He is such an amazing hard worker and truly puts his heart into his work.  And all of his hard work is starting to pay off! :)

Lets go back to the beginning of this new adventure.... well, we didn't realize that it would become an adventure until now, lol. 

I turned 30 back in June, and we had friends from Oregon fly down to celebrate with us.  On Sunday afternoon, after we had dropped our friends off at the airport, Jon and I were talking about life and what would come next.  Jon mentioned how something needed to change, either with his job or our living situation and our finances.  We didn't really talk much about it after that. 

That Monday, I was in a meeting all morning, and came back to my office to an email, missed call AND text from Jon, all with the same message asking me to call him ASAP.  I did not know what to think! So I call him, and the 1st thing he says to me is "Our world just got turned upside down", a statement like that sounds like BAD news is coming next, so I totally had a mini heart attack and asked him what was going on.  He then proceeds to tell me that he is being considered for a promotion, which will relocate us to Arizona! They wanted to know if he was interested in the position before setting up an interview, since we would have to move AGAIN, we still haven't even lived in California for a year.... So we talked about the opportunity and I told him to go for it, and that I supported him in whatever he wanted to do. 

So the next day he did a phone interview with his potentially new manager.  That was July 2nd and then we waited.... and waited..... and waited!!!! Seriously, we spent the next weeks, just waiting for the call.  He had already heard that he had gotten the job, but he hadn't received his new offer letter yet, and that's what we were waiting on before we let ourselves celebrate or get too excited about the move.  Then on Tuesday, the 18th, Jon came home with his offer letter! And it became official that Jon and I will be moving to Phoenix, Arizona at the end of August!


My cute husband with his offer letter for his NEW position! YAY Mr. Burns!!!!

Jon has been his with company for 5 years now.  He started working with this company a few months after we started dating. They have been so great to him.  He started off as a sales guy in Oregon in 2008, then in 2011 he was promoted to manage an office in Seattle, Washington.  Then last year, he didn't get a promotion, but was offered a manager position here in San Jose, CA.  And now, he will be leaving all of that behind, and moving into a whole new position as a trainer!  Which is such a perfect job for him.  Jon is a great people person and is great at what he does, and now he will be training new sales people to be as great as he is! :)

The one thing that makes me a little sad about his new position is that he will be traveling a lot, which means I will be spending a lot more time on my own, which will be a big adjustment, because Jon and I are ALWAYS together.  Moving around so much has made it hard for me to make friends, so Jon is pretty much my only friend, besides all of my awesome best friends in Oregon, and now he'll be leaving me too.  SO I'm gonna have to be a big girl and put myself out there and find some friends of my own, which will be hard, because I'm so socially awkward! lol  But that also means, ill have more time for my blog, reading and crafts! Yay!

Jon and I are jumping on a plane tomorrow night and heading to Arizona to find a place to live! Hopefully we don't have a repeat of what happened to us when we moved here! Check out THAT adventure here & here!

We are hoping to find a cute lil house to rent with a pool in the backyard! Im already dreaming of hanging out in my new backyard with my toes in the pool! Fingers crossed that everything works out for us on this move and that we find the perfect lil home!

Settling into our new life

After Jon and I were homeless for 4 days, we finally got to move into our new place.  Of course, we didn't have much to move in BUT we were just happy to finally have a place to live!

This is what our life looked like for 4 days.

My fancy desk set up! 

We came prepared with our air mattress & bedding!

Our fancy living room living..... I think Miley looks so cute here! 

Poor Miley got sick from all of the stress of moving.  It broke my heart seeing my baby not feeling well.  Good thing she's back to her cute ol self again!

We fancy! lol

We got our place on Tuesday and our things arrived Saturday morning.  So we spent our Saturday morning & afternoon like this!

Spying from our balcony.  So glad that we had movers, I DID NOT want to move our things up 3 flights of stairs! 

Jon supervising! 

Miley and I also had our turn supervising! Our moving binder was SO helpful! I still plan on writing a post all about the moving binder!

Just a small part of all of boxes! Its hard moving from a townhouse to a tiny apartment!

I was SO happy when the truck was finally empty! 

Since we had worked all day moving in, instead of getting started on the unpacking, Jon and I decided to check out the pool :)

Jon and I found the best place to live! Everything we need is in walking distance, the grocery store, target, the mall and great places to eat, like this place!

And this place!....

But Jon and I have been good and been eating healthy, well trying to.... We've only gone to these places once.

We are still settling into our place.  We still have boxes around our place that we need to take to our storage unit, but we are getting there.  The hardest part is not having enough room for all of our things and having to keep half of our things in a storage unit, until we find a bigger place to live.  But we can make it work and we are happy to be finally living in California! Jon and I still haven't gone to the beach or checked out any of the awesome things around us, BUT we will be heading to the beach this weekend and I cannot wait! YAY!

Now its time for me to find a job!!!! I've been searching and doing everything that I can, but haven't had any luck yet!  Im really hoping that I find something great ASAP!!!!!

Our road trip to San Jose.... Part 2

Im back! And here to fill you in on the 2nd part of our road trip to California!

After staying with Jon's parents in Salem, we had breakfast with Jon's dad and then started our 10 hr trip to California.

Originally Jon and I decided to take turns driving...... but, that didn't work out.  When it was finally  my turn at the wheel, it was SO scary! Im not that big of a baby behind the wheel on the freeway, but all of those curves, hills and fast cars put together, really freaked me out, so Jon was amazing as usual and drove the entire 10 hrs.

We did make about 3 or 4 stops for potty breaks, gas and to walk Miley around.  Miley did pretty well on the trip, she spent half of the time on my lap, holding on for dear life, since she has car anxiety and the other half in her crate.

On the road again!

My loves!

Some of our views on the drive...

This is the way she HAD to ride in the car.  Sitting next to mommy but resting her head on daddy's hand.   So sweet!

More pretty views, pretty sure we were still in Oregon when I took all of these

Water break for the princess

Check out Mileys face! She was so happy with the sunshine and wind in her hair :)

California views:

Were almost there baby!

The drive down to San Jose wasn't too bad, but towards the end of the trip we were SO ready to be there already! It felt like time went by more slowly the closer we got to San Jose!

As we got closer to San Jose, Jon called our hotel to make sure they allowed dogs there and guess what??? They didn't! Thankfully, Jon's new manager Tom,  is awesome and owns a dog too, so he said that he would watch Miley for us while we were living in the hotel.

We arrived in San Jose at about 8:30pm and were SO exhausted! But we drove over to Tom's house to drop Miley off.  Miley and Tom's dog got along great! Thank goodness! But instead of heading straight to our hotel, what did we do? We drove to the bar down the street from Tom's house for a drink with Tom.  It was nice to relax and chill out, finally!

After 10 hours of driving, we made to California! Celebrating with some beer, pool and darts! 

We didn't hang out at the bar too long, then we headed over to our hotel, which was about 5 mins from Tom's house.

Our hotel was really cute and was our home for the next 4 days.  By the 4th day there, we were SO ready to have a place to live! Thankfully, we had a place to move in to!