The 4 days we were homeless.....

Our 1st 4 days in San Jose, Jon & I were homeless and living in a hotel.  It really was pretty nerve wrenching, thinking about the fact that we packed up our lives and moved about 850 miles to California.  Of course, when we 1st planned our move, we DID have a place to live! You can read about all of that excitement here and here.

It was pretty hard living in a hotel, especially without Miley, and also just living off of faith that everything would work out and that we would find a place to live.  I felt so lost and out of it those 4 days.  I was homesick, and didn't have my baby with me to make me smile, talking about Miley, not Jon, lol.  I think that was the hardest thing for me, because I didn't want Miley to be sad and feel abandoned by us.

We arrived in San Jose Thursday night, and Friday morning, we began our search for a place to live.  It was a LONG day of driving around the area and looking at different apartments, it definitely was shocking hearing how much a small 2 bedroom apartment rents for around here!

Our fuel on Friday morning! It was a yummy start to our day! :)

By the Friday afternoon, we found the perfect apartment, well perfect enough.  Rent for the apartment was still insane BUT it was cute and met all of our needs.  Spoiler alert:  We ended up getting approved for the apartment Tuesday morning, so I checked out of our hotel that morning, picked Miley up and headed to our new home! Here is a sneak preview of our new living space

Cute right? :)

We spent most of our homeless time hanging out with Tom, he showed us around to the local bars and introduced us to his friends.  Something great about this area is that everyone is so friendly and welcoming, its been great!

Saturday, Jon and I decided to spend some time with Miley since she had been living with Tom.  We took her to PetCo, walked around and bought her some treats :)  Then we headed over to a park near our new apartment to enjoy the sunshine.  

My 2 loves!

As you can see, Miley enjoyed the park.  She was a very happy girl :)

The awesome park near our new apartment!

Saturday evening was the 1st Duck game of the season, so Jon search for Oregon Duck fan bars in San Jose and he found one! So we headed out  to "Rookies" and Jon was SO happy the moment we walked in! Everyone was decked out in Duck gear, the bar even has Duck game specials, where they give you discounted food and drinks if you are sporting Duck grear during the game.  Rookies is definitley going to be our go to bar during Duck season! 

Gotta sport my Hello Kitty Duck shirt! 

Monday was Labor day, and Tom had a pool party at his place with friends.

Even though Jon and I were homeless and without Miley.  We did our best to enjoy our 1st weekend as California residents, and I think we did a pretty good job! :)  We pretty much felt like we were on vacation!

More about our moving adventure to come!

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!

Our road trip to San Jose.... Part 1

Since I've already filled everyone in about how we got scammed off of craigslist, Ill now write about the fun part and our road trip to California!

We started our trip bright and early Wednesday (8/29) morning.  The movers arrive and guess what??!! We encountered more issues.....at this point we weren't sure if moving was a good idea! lol.  

The driver and movers that arrived had planned to drive & deliver our things in San Jose that Saturday. That would of been find IF we had a place to live..... Jon had called the movers as soon as we found out about our living situation and told them that we didn't have a place to live and would need our things delivered at a later date, at the time, he was told that this wouldn't be a problem...... sure! lol 

Anyway, long story short, the driver and movers that had originally arrived  end up leaving without doing anything.  One guy stayed behind and worked his butt off getting our things organized and took inventory of all of our belongings.  We were told that new movers wouldn't arrive until after 5:00, Jon and I had planned to be in Portland by that time, so we could spend time with our family and friends before we started our drive to California, so we weren't very happy about that! 

We decided that we would stay and get things finished up and wait for new movers, hoping they would arrived early.  By 3:00 we decided to just hit the road to Portland and trust that the one guy that was at our place would take care of everything and lock up our place once they were done.  He was a really nice guy and were so thankful to have had him there to help us out as much as he did! 

1st Miley and I had to have one last photo shoot in front of our place :)

Tired and stressed Miley & Wendy.....

And now were happy... 

I cant believe that we actually left our place still filled with everything, BUT Jon and I had already been through enough, we were stressed and tired, and just wanted to get our trip started! (Turns out everything went smoothly with moving our things out.  The guy that stayed behind called Jon as soon as he locked up our place and told him that everything went smoothly, yay!)

Love him!!

California here we come!!! Well 1st Portland but then California!!! lol

Our trip to Portland was GREAT! We didn't deal with any traffic, which is hard to believe coming from Seattle!  We made it into Portland at about 6:30-7:00, this last trip from Seattle to Portland went by SO quick! We had done that drive many many times, this one felt the fastest...... maybe it was all of the excitement?! 

We had originally planned to visit friends and also family, but with everything we had dealt with, we only had time to visit my mom and sisters in Portland.  Of course, when we got to my mom's house, she had a delicious dinner ready for us! Im really going to miss my mom's home cooking!

My mom only broke down and cried once during dinner, which is a success because she fought back tears the entire meal :(  It was nice to spend time with my mom, sisters, niece & nephew before we had to say goodbye.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to take any pictures, but it was a very sad and emotional goodbye.  As I mentioned before, all 4 of my sisters live about 5 mins from my mom (well my little sisters actually lives with my mom, lol) So having me so far away is really hard for her.  We call cried, hugged and said goodbye for 1 last time :( I didn't think saying goodbye would be so hard! 

After our visit with my family, we drove another 45 mins into Salem to stay with Jon's parents.  We had ice-cream and had a great time spending time together chatting, and looking at the San Jose map, and talking about our new life out there.  Miley had a great time getting spoiled by Jon's dad, it was so cute!  

Can you believe all of this is just 1 day??!!! This entire post is about our Wednesday, next post will be all about the second half of our trip!

I thought this would be a fun picture to share!  The day Jon, Miley and I arrived to our new home in Washington, December 30th 2010

And the last day living in Washington, August 29th 2012

Notice I'm wearing the exact same pair of jeans??!!! lol, I did NOT  plan that! They are now my "lucky moving pants"! lol 

The big scam......Part 2

If you haven't read part 1 of "The big scam" you can catch up on that here.

So I left off with Monique calling my coworkers phone number back.........

I answered the phone and said "Hi, Its Wendy" and she totally acted like she was calling ME back and that we were friends!!! I asked her what was going on and why was she posting OUR rented condo onto craigslist???? She of course was FULL of excuses.....

1st, she said  never got our calls or emails because she travels a lot for her job and was out of the country....
2nd, she said that she texted me (which she didn't have my number until I started calling her that day) to tell me that the bathroom renovations would take longer than expected......

I didn't even know what to say to this woman, but I knew that I needed to keep my cool (no matter how hard that was) in order to try to get our money back.  I pretty much told her that she should of called, emailed or responded to the numerous emails and phone calls that Jon and I had made her to let us know of the situation and that we needed to get our money back immediately.  She told me that she planned on returning our money to us in a few days..... YEAH RIGHT!!!

For the next few days, i continued to google her phone number and kept finding NEW craigslist ads that she was posting.  Each one asking for a different amount of rent but listing the same information, and each time, I flagged the post and also emailed them to myself.  She also went ahead and started listing her name as Nicole, but continued using her own personal cell phone number, the same one that I have.

I then proceeded to email criagslist about the situation, but of course, they weren't any help.  I also spent about an hour on the phone with the police station filing a report and guess what they told me??? After spending so much time on the phone with them, they pretty much that there was nothing they could do, since this happens all the time, and not to expect to get our money back.  I couldn't believe it!!! I thought that they would be a little more help than that.  I have Monique's home address and her phone number, I would at least expect them to escort us to her house so we could talk to her about getting our money back or something, but no, we didn't get any help.

So at this point we were a week away from moving to San Jose, had no place to live and were $1,500 short.  We definitely had to have faith that everything would work out with our move and that we would fine a NEW place to live....

So that was the beginning of our adventurous move to California!

But to end this post on a positive note, I'm blogging from my couch in our new apartment! Thank goodness we found a place to live!  We are actually happier with this new place than we would of been at the condo if it would of worked out.  We still haven't gotten our money back from Monique BUT she does text me back when I text her and she continues to tell me that she will get us our money back ASAP and that she is trying her best to get us our money.  I don't know whats going to happen with this situation, but Im really hoping and praying that we do get our money back without having to take any legal action!

The big scam.... Part 1

I think its time to jump back into the blog world and write about our move from Washington to California.  I would like to start off with how we ended up getting scammed off of craigslist!

When Jon and I finally got confirmation that we would be moving to California, we were SO excited! This has been the move we have been wanting and waiting for.  Jon of course had to put in the work at his office to be given this awesome opportunity, all of his hard work had finally paid off.

Back in July, Jon and I made our 1st trip to San Jose to find a place to live, I posted about that trip here.  We were SO excited about finding a condo on criagslist that was for rent and met our price range, I wrote about our "awesome" apartment here. We thought it was perfect and it was in the perfect location.  This all unfortunately turned out to be too good to be true :(

Turns out the lady, Monique,  we thought we were renting from is a HUGE scammer! Can you believe that?!  We thought that everything was legit, since we actually looked at the apartment, signed a lease with her, and even gave her a deposit of $1,500.

Everything was fine, until about the middle of August, when she stopped answering our texts, emails and phone calls.  I tried to stay positive and think of reasons why she wasn't getting back to us.  But then, about 2 weeks before our move, I just had a bad feeling in my stomach, so I decided to do some investigation on Monique.  I tried to google her name, but had no luck, so then I googled her phone number and I hit the jack-pot! About 3 different craigslist ad's popped up, with her trying to rent out the condo that WE had put a deposit on!!! My heart seriously just sank to my stomach! I didn't know what to do or think!  I decided to call her, of course she didn't answer her phone! So i left her a message asking her to call me back.  I knew she wouldn't call back, so my co-worker called Monique's phone number off of her phone and left her a message saying that she was interested in the condo posted on craigslist, about 5 mins later, her phone starts ringing and its Monique......

Back with the rest of the story tomorrow!!! Believe me, its gets better!!

Guest Post!

I forgot to mention this yesterday, but I did a guest post on friendships over at Lovely life of Leah while she is on vacation.  So head on over and check it out!

Also, Im about to head out the door to my 1st job interview here in San Jose.  I have 2 lined up for today, so wish me luck!!!! I promise to be back in full force in blog world as soon as my life settles down a bit! Thanks for sticking by and reading my life adventures, I really appreciate it!!

Here is a picture of my little princess loving her new life in sunshine! 

A little update

We have arrived to San Jose! YAY!!!! 

Jon and I arrived to San Jose on Thursday night.  Its been a long and stressful adventure, but we are here! I will write a full post on EVERYTHING that has happened to us during this move, but for now, ill just give you a little something to keep you hooked! lol

We are homeless, living in a hotel and we have no idea when the moving truck will arrive with all of our things, BUT we are staying positive and taking it a day at a time.  This move has definitely been the most stressful move of our lives but we are happy to have finally made our move to California, where we can finally settle down and make this place our permeant home! 

Pre move, happy with all of my hard work! 

Miley and I saying our final goodbye to our washington home! We enjoyed our time there but so happy and excited to start our new adventure.  Notice that our garage still has our belongings sitting in there.......

Day 2 of our San Jose road trip.  Quick potty and water break.  Miley was loving the sunshine :)

Our home for the next 4 days.  That moving binder has been a GREAT help with all of this and has kept me VERY organized! I love that binder! lol

our "Finding a home" headquarters! 

Jon and I spent our day yesterday driving around town trying to find a place to live, we found a great place (that won't scam us! lol) so now we are just waiting to hear back.  Hopefully well have a place to live by Tuesday morning!!!!

Today will be spent hanging out and tonight, we will be watching the 1st duck game of the season! 

GO DUCKS!