23. hometown tourist

One of the things I've enjoyed most about having moved is being able to explore our new home town and home state! I originally intended to make a separate post for each new area or attraction that we've visited, but since I've gotten so far behind already, I thought I'd start with this brief summary. If I can stay on top of this going forward I'll do longer descriptions in the future...

HELENA
State Capitol - free to visit, it's a beautiful building with a lovely view of the city and surrounding mountains.
Old Governor's Mansion - a lovely old mansion that costs about $5pp. Your experience will likely vary depending on the quality of the tour guide.
Steve's Cafe - delicious restaurant for breakfast and lunch! I don't even like traditional breakfast food that much, and I loved this place.
Brewhouse - excellent lunch or dinner place with a wide variety of brewpub menu options and many beers on tap.
Broadwater Hot Springs - a gym with wonderful hot springs pools (4 of varying temperatures). Costs about $9pp, plus $1 per towel. A wonderfully relaxing experience! There is also an indoor gym for kids (free with their admission), and the restaurant next door serves DELICIOUS fresh/organic foods.
Carousel - located next to the Exporatorium (children's museum), it costs just a couple dollars to ride. Note that all riders (even grown-ups) are required to be buckled to their horses. Also, the ice cream counter in the building is impossible to skip once you are at the carousel!
Cathedral - modeled after the cathedral in Cologne. So  beautiful! Free to visit.

GREAT FALLS
In Cahoots for Tea - a WONDERFUL tea shop right in the downtown area.
Giant Springs State Park - state parks are free for anyone with MT license plates. This park is on the north side of town and showcases a lovely warm-ish spring right along the Missouri river.
Ryan Dam / the Great Falls - about 5 miles outside of town (you'll need a map to find it!), there is a lovely picnic area overlooking the dam and the falls. Also a fun suspended bridge to walk across to get there!
Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center - super informative! It costs about $8pp (or free if you have an annual parks pass or a senior parks pass, since this is a national park site) and it is totally worth it. They have a great display describing everything about Lewis and Clark's expedition to find the boundaries of the Missouri River (since that's what the US had gotten with the Louisiana Purchase) and to find the Pacific Ocean. I learned a lot! The movie was a bit cheesy, but worth the ~20 min if you show up at the right time. There are also some lovely paved walking paths outside along the river.
River's Edge Trail - a long paved trail along both the east and west sides of the river. With the bridge crossings, you can have jaunts of a few or many miles. Very pretty.

THE CANYON (between GF & Helena)
Recreation Road - a beautiful drive! A little slower than the interstate, but definitely prettier.
Izaak's (in Craig) - who would have thought that a sleepy little fishing town like Craig would have such a fabulous restaurant?! A little on the pricey side (we had been expecting bar food based on the outside of the building), but totally worth it for the culinary masterpieces they have. The interior is really classy. (Note that they close for the winter each year.)
Tower Rock State Park -  located at the Hardy Creek exit along I-15, this state park (free to anyone with Montana plates) has a path for about half a mile, plus visitors are free to explore anywhere beyond that / off the path. There are beautiful views that will make you thankful you're not portaging like Lewis and Clark were!

BOZEMAN
downtown - this is an affluent area, probably thanks to the college. The downtown is many blocks long and has many, many interesting and independent shops. The jewelry stores selling Montana sapphires have really beautiful things! Kid also highly recommends the toy store. :)
Missouri Headwaters State Park - outside of town a bit, this is worth the slight detour off the interstate in order to see the headwaters of the Missouri. Not quite as impressive as walking across the headwaters of the Mississippi, but fun nevertheless.
Wheat Montana - also outside of town a bit, this restaurant/bakery is to die for! They have great pastries and wonderful sandwiches. They also sell a lot of crockware, flour, etc. Definitely worth a stop!

We're looking forward to many more adventures under the BIG SKY of Montana!

22. living off-grid

Back when we started dreaming in MN about our future lives in MT, we were really excited to pursue off-grid living. We wanted to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels, to be more mindful of our energy expenditure, to be first-hand stewards of our environment, and to save a little money on our monthly expenses. One of the draws of our current house was that it seemed to be set up perfectly for just that! Solar powered electricity, water from the (very deep) well on the property, and a wood stove for heat. Perfect!

It was only after we moved in that we realized how naive we had been.

Not that we regret it, mind you, but there has definitely been a HUGE learning curve. And a realization that no one (the previous owners, the inspectors, our realtor, or the neighbors) pointed out the incredible blinders that we had on as we imagined this idyllic life for ourselves. For example:

1. There is no lumberyard nearby. So wood for our fireplace involves driving about an hour each way to fill up the back of the pickup with scraps. The wood is cheap (less than $25 for the full truck bed), but when you add on the time and the cost of fuel there/back, it adds up. And since we didn't want to risk running out (see previous post for fear of what the winter will be like up here), Husband ended up getting seven full loads. A pretty big up-front cost in order to have "no" heat bill for the winter.

Two loads. (And building a wood shed is definitely on our to-do list.)

2. The solar power doesn't work so well on cloudy days. I mean, we always knew we'd have to run the generator a bit, but no one told us just how much we'd have to run the generator. We didn't run it hardly at all for the first month we were here (August/September), but after that we started getting cloudy days and we also realized that the panels, although placed high enough above our Quonset directly to the south of them, are situated just between two hills - which effectively block both the early morning light and also the afternoon/evening light. Not a big deal in summer, but definitely an issue as the days get shorter. So recently the neighbors told us that the old owners used to run their generator for SIX HOURS PER DAY in the winter!! Quite different from the "oh, we just use it for back-up on cloudy days" story that they told us. We're already looking into whether we can cost-effectively move the panels to a better location on our property...

Husband built a shed for the new (stronger, more fuel-efficient) generator we invested in. 

3. We absolutely LOVE having visitors, but it was quite a shock to see our energy consumption change each time we've had house guests. Even in just the few months that we've lived here, we've already gotten MUCH better about turning off lights when we leave a room, using task lighting instead of whole-room lighting, not keeping electronics plugged in overnight, etc.  A huge apology to my parents (and my inlaws) for every time I've left all the lights on in the house!!


Well, we wanted an adventure when we moved, and we have definitely been getting that! It's just been so challenging in completely unexpected ways. Pretty soon we'll be true pros as this off-grid living stuff, but in the mean we are definitely soaking up the knowledge as our blinders are ripped from our naive little eyes. :)

21. more snow

As you probably saw from my last post, we were relieved to get through our first snowfall of the year. We were still nervous, however, because it wasn't a huge storm and we didn't know what it would be like after the snow really started to pile up.

I'm relieved to say that we are feeling much more confident after this past week!

Last weekend we started getting dire warnings about a MAJOR snow system coming our way from Tuesday through Saturday. I took it slow driving home on Tuesday night, and also left plenty of extra time driving in on Wednesday. It wasn't too bad, as long as I wasn't tempted to go faster than I wanted when other cars came careening past me! I wanted to be safe, thank you very much. On Wednesday I got a hotel room in town, and I was glad I did because there was a multi-vehicle crash on the bridge leading out of town. On Thursday I again took it really slow, particularly as I anticipated each bridge. Terrifyingly, I saw an accident that had just happened (I didn't witness it, but the family was still in the vehicle and totally shook up when I stopped to call 911 for them), and about 3 more crashes (all on bridges through the canyon) before I got to my parking lot to switch from my Impreza to my full-size pick-up with the studded tires. But getting up the mountain was a breeze!

Thankfully no one was hurt!

Friday I again took it slow (and slower still on the bridges), but I ended up having a delightfully uneventful ride to/from work. And when I got home from Friday night, I proclaimed that we would not be leaving the mountain until work/school on Monday. It was so beautiful!

Kid and Dog spent lots of time sledding

We visited with several neighbors today, and cautiously tried to probe about how typical this amount of snow is. (We had to have gotten at least a foot.) Thankfully, we were reassured that this much snow is VERY unusual for any given storm, and that we could still expect the Chinooks to melt the snow at least a few times throughout the winter. One neighbor showed us photos of the January that he broke ground on his house and there was no snow on the ground until the February photos when they were putting the walls up!

We know that weather can be fickle, but we are definitely relieved that our trucks handled the snow just fine (although we did put the chains on today, just to make sure we knew how to do it, even though it wasn't really necessary) and that my little Impreza will be fine as long as we're cautious on the interstate. It feels like a huge hurdle crossed to realize that we don't have to worry quite so much about winter snow any more!

20. our first big test

Last week we had the first big snow fall of the season. By Sunday night, the forecast was for 12" of snow in Great Falls starting Monday afternoon and ending mid-day Tuesday!! (Apparently it was a fluke to have so much snow in early October, but also not completely unheard of.)  Husband and I brought my little Impreza down to the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain on Sunday, and he gave me a crash course in a how to drive a pick up truck.  Eekk!! (Being from Minnesota, we certainly aren't afraid of snow. But doing it at 4000 feet on a unplowed dirt road would definitely be adding an additional challenge to our winter routine!)

Monday morning I added about 15 min to my commute (one hour instead of 45 min), to leave time for driving a pick-up, making the switch at the bottom of the mountain, and taking the slightly longer way to work (by necessity, since the parking lot is one exit down from the exit I would normally take). The morning went off without a hitch, and I anxious watched the weather through the day.  Unfortunately I had a recruiting dinner I had to go to that evening, so I wasn't able to leave town until about 7:30pm. At that point it had been snowing for a couple hours, but hardly anything had stuck yet since the ground was still so warm. I called Husband to confirm, and he agreed that it wasn't too bad so it would make sense for me to come home instead of getting a hotel room for the night.

As I left town, the sun had set and it really got dark. That's when I realized that the interstate has absolutely ZERO street lights on it. And that's when the snow really started to come down.

Oy vey.

I think I hit a max of 50 mph on my drive home, a drive that I usually do at 80 mph (which is exactly the speed limit on interstates in Montana). It was SO dark and SO icy in spots that I was totally hunched over the steering wheel and white-knuckling it. I terrified that I might slide off an icy bridge and end up in the river of careening off a cliff.  I was incredibly relieved to FINALLY make it to the parking lot, just so I could stretch my shoulders a bit as I transferred to the truck.

The drive up the mountain in the truck was even a little easier than I expected. The snow was really coming down, but there were only a couple inches on the road. In fact, it was almost harder to drive with the mud underneath than it would have been if the dirt road had been frozen in the snow! And when I rounded the corner to our house, there was Husband, standing at the foot of the driveway with the lights of his truck lighting the way for me. It was even a bit romantic to see him standing there in the blustering snow, making sure that I made it home safe and sound!

Since it took me about two hours to get home on Monday night, I left that long to get back to work on Tuesday. So that meant that I got home, went to bed, and got right back up to leave again. The drive was dark on Tuesday and still snowy in spots, for it was definitely easier since the snow had lightened up and the plows had had some time to clear the interstate. It ended up "only" taking 90 min to get to work on Tuesday, but I was still pretty exhausted that day.  By the time I got home for dinner on Tuesday, I was ready for bed!

It was certainly tiring, but it also wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. It definitely would have been easier if I hadn't had that dinner to go to, and it's nice knowing that I could do a hotel if I ever need it. But even with the extra time, I was still thankful to sleep in my own bed. And I'm proud that I made it through the first snowstorm of the year!

Here's Kid enjoying the snow on Tuesday at sunset

19. cultural differences

We expected a fair amount of culture shock with this move, and we have definitely experienced it! Some of it we foresaw, but some of it has been a surprise. Here are some of the things we've noticed so far:

"gossip"
I don't know if this is a Montana thing or just a small-town thing, but it seems like everyone knows everyone else's business. We noticed this on our house-hunting trip, when the realtor we were with was very, very open about saying exactly who he sold each house to and for exactly how much. Minnesotans (or at least Twin Citians?) don't talk about finances much, so this was a bit of a surprise for us. And it's not just finances! Montanans just generally talk more about what other people do, and comment on others' choices. (Which really makes we wonder what everyone is saying about us...) It's taking some getting used to!

DMV
I'm accustomed to going to one place to get my driver's license renewed and to get my car tabs renewed. Here, however, there are two different offices - the state-run office handles drivers licenses, and the "city-county" office handles plates and tabs. Also, since there's no sales tax (on anything!) here, the price to register a car is more expensive than what I'm used to. But some things are the same across state lines: it's still miserable to wait in line for literally hours in order to get the task done.

niceness
Everyone is so, so, so, so nice! And it seems authentic, not like the passive aggressive "Minnesota nice" that I'm used to :)  We have some great neighbors who would literally drop everything for us if we asked for it. I'm looking forward to the temperature dropping so I can start baking some thank you treats for all the wonderful neighbors we've met so far.


license plates
I literally couldn't tell what the "standard" license plate was until I went to the DMV. There are five "standard" plates and SOOO many specialty plate options. Seriously, the options are overwhelming. It makes it challenging to play the license plate game while driving because you see all these different ones, but they all turn out to be just from Montana.

beer/wine in grocery stores
It's crazy to me (coming from Minnesota), but you can buy beer and wine IN THE GROCERY STORE! Even Target has alcohol for sale, right there on the endcaps!! Hard liquor is in separate stores, but it's SO nice to pick up a bottle of wine while getting the rest of the dinner stuff in the grocery store. Now if only my local Target would start carrying my favorite wine...

casinos
They're everywhere! Seriously, you'll see about 10 casinos on every block. I don't know how they all stay in business! And it's not like they look welcoming, or seem to be known for their buffets, or anything like that. At some point we'll have to check one of them out, but for now I'm still just adjusting to seeing them all over the place.

dirt roads
There's the city roads. There's the interstate. And EVERYTHING else is dirt roads. Even in rural Minnesota or Wisconsin, my experience was that most roads are paved. Not so around here! But I guess that's what I should have expected with the incredibly low taxes in Montana.

I'm pretty sure these are just the tip of the iceberg, so it'll be interesting to see what else pops us for us as we continue to get settled. We've also been adjusting to living in the mountains (off grid) after living in a big city for so long. So in addition to the general culture shock of moving to Montana, we've also had the adjustments of living in the middle of nowhere. Things like:
-no pizza delivery
-driving >45min to get groceries/gas/etc
-needing a cell booster to get any service for our phones while at home
-getting satellite cable and internet (which means we have to closely monitor how much we stream each month!)
-no trash service at the curb
-prepping to heat our new house with wood this winter
-needing high clearance 4WD vehicles(?)
-learning to manage the solar power for electricity, and closely monitoring what we have plugged in when

But despite all these challenges, so far we have all been loving it! Kid is making friends and enjoys going to school, Husband seems happier than he has in a long time, and I'm loving the whole experience as well. So far Montana is an adjustment, but a fun one!

18. we made it!

The last month or so has been an absolute whirlwind! But we successfully purchased our house (whew!!!), moved in all our stuff, and are starting to unpack and settle in. We also started our new jobs/school, and the pets are getting comfortable. (Cat LOVES being an indoor/outdoor kitty now!) Lots more updates to come, but for now I'll just celebrate that we are officially Montanans!

17. we're on!

We are less than two weeks away from closing, and we finally (FINALLY!!!) got through the last of the big hurdles. We had a general inspection back in June, then a special solar inspection, then a special well inspection, plus a survey. The last big hurdle was getting the appraisal... and it took 17 days (not that we were anxiously awaiting the results or anything) to get the final report. When it finally (FINALLY!!!) arrived today, it was such a relief! We could start sharing our new address without worrying about "jinxing" the process!

We actually had to start sharing the address a couple weeks ago (like to cancel our cable, switch the utility bills to the new owners, etc.), and it just killed me to tell anyone where we were planning to live, as if saying the address would make the whole deal fall apart. Every time Husband would mention our future home, I would force him to knock on some wood. I wished on lucky stars, I wished on heads up pennies I found on the ground, and I would knock on some extra wood just for good measure - anything to help the deal go through!

I know it's completely irrational, and I never would have thought of myself as a superstitious person before all this. (It's not like I haven't taken my lucky underwear off, or anything like that!) But this process has made me realize that I am a lot more superstitious that I realized. And it made me think back to my pregnancy with Kid (after two previous miscarriages) - it wasn't until I was at least 36 weeks along that I said to Husband "I think we might actually have a baby this time!" It was like I was afraid that getting my hopes up would cause the good thing not to happen, so it was safer to just to be anxious and not to say anything that might alter the outcome.

(As an aside, in mythology, there were three women ("the Fates") who determined the destiny of all mortals. The Greeks believed that if you got too cocky about good things ("tempting the Fates"), they would respond by showing you who was really in charge and bringing some bad into your life. I must have more Greek ancestry than I realized!)

I'm realizing now that it's all in good fun to be superstitious, up until the time that very superstition prevents you from enjoying the entire process. (You know, the whole "it's the journey, not the destination" yada yada.) Bad things can happen - pregnancies end, house closings fall through, terrible accidents and tragedies happen every day - but silly things like knocking on wood aren't going to actually make a difference.

So today, after finally hearing back about the appraisal (and while technically still waiting for the underwriting process to commence, which should take three more business days), I decided to prevent my superstitious nature from impeding my enjoyment as we embark on this new adventure: I shared the address with several people, told my friends that our house closing is a done deal, and I reveled in my excitement for our new house.

And to top it all off, I wrote a blog post titled "we're on!"  Take that, Fates!

16. possible set back

After our house sold, we finally signed a breath of relief. Could things finally be starting to settle down? Could we relax and enjoy our last few weeks in MN? Was it safe to let our guard down?

Sadly no, grasshopper.

Husband went out to Montana for the house inspection last month after our offer was accepted and we were under contract. He and the inspector spent about 6 hours at the property, and thoroughly investigated every nook and cranny.

The good news is that Husband had been under the impression that the sellers (who had built the place) had done everything perfectly (which was intimidating to him), but he (thankfully) discovered that they were only human after all, and all was not perfect.

The bad news is that Husband had been under the impression that the sellers/builders had done everything perfectly, but he discovered that they were only human after all, and all was not perfect.

At first I didn't really understand the magnitude of the non-perfectionism, but as time dragged on for them to respond to our request to agree to some updates/fixes to the house, I started to question why it was taking so long. That's when Husband explained to me that there was actually some pretty MAJOR things wrong with the house (like, they had used indoor-grade wiring for the outdoor solar and wind power systems), and that it might be expensive for them to get it fixed.

How could such a thing happen, I wondered. After all we had gone through with permits over the years, and the major headache of our city inspection that was required for us to even list our house on the MLS, I couldn't figure out how such a major error had been allowed to happen for a house that had been on the market (with no offers) for over a year.

And that's when I was told that the sellers had never pulled a single permit for anything. Ever. Nothing.

Now, in their defense, apparently permits are only suggested for electrical and plumbing in Montana, or so Husband tells me, and building permits aren't even required for single family homes. And since permits can be expensive, I can kind of understand cutting this expense if your money is tight and you really know what you're doing. But what I DON'T understand is cutting this corner if you aren't absolutely, 100%, totally sure of what you're doing. And apparently they weren't.

So now we wait. We are hoping they will agree to get everything up to code, and to have it certified by a state-licensed electrician.  (And a couple other things we requested, which are a little more minor but still important.) If they do, then we can move on to the next step (appraisal), which is also not guaranteed. If not, then we start looking into back-up plans, as we're about 33 days away from the big move.

At this point, our realtor puts closing at about 50% likelihood.

15. the new addition to our family

About a year ago, when moving was just a twinkle in our eyes as we looked forward to retirement, we decided it was finally time to get a dog. Husband has been wanting a dog for years, but we had a small house with two cats already, plus we are super busy, so it didn't make sense to add a dog to our crowded lives.  In the winter/spring of 2016, however, we were shocked with the sudden and unexpected deaths of both of our beloved cats within 24 hours of each other. It was devastating. We decided we would institute a year of mourning before we welcomed any new pet into our lives.

We both grieved for a few months straight. But by the end of summer, Husband was ready to at least start thinking about our next pet. Always a cat tolerator and never a cat lover, he took our cats deaths as a sign that it was time to get a dog. But I just couldn't envision a future without a cat, so we decided to "compromise" and get one cat and one dog. His and hers pets, if you will.

We did much research and debating about the order of adoption, given that Husband very much wanted a purebed puppy and I very much wanted a humane society cat that was about a year old (young but not too young). We decided to get on the waitlist for a puppy away, and Husband did a bunch of research and decided to go with Welcome Home Labs in northern MN, with the hopes of welcoming a puppy as close to the end of the school year as possible.  (We visited them later in the fall, and even I, ardent cat lover that I am, left a little bit excited about getting a new puppy in the spring. They are great, if anyone else out there is thinking of adopting!)

The time passed, and we crossed off all the major holidays without our beloved cats: their birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. By early January I finally felt emotionally ready for a new cat. I started visiting the humane society, and keeping my eyes peeled for anyone who was looking to re-home a cat. On Martin Luther King Day (2017), we welcomed home our Cat. He quickly became king of the household, but also clearly needed a companion to play with (other than an unwilling one like me or Kid). We counted down until Dog could join our family.

And finally he did!

8 weeks

introductions

10 weeks

play time!

13 weeks (look as the size of those paws!)

I'm not sure I would necessary recommend getting an 8-week-old puppy the week before putting one's house on the market, but in retrospect (a month or so later), it had a couple unexpected up sides. (Like the fact that most of our stuff was packed away, which gave Dog a lot fewer things to chew on or to pee on. And most of Husband's hobby equipment was packed away, which made him have to focus all his attention on Dog.) But it definitely still added stress to an already stressful situation!

Despite the stress, Cat and Dog have been a delight to have around. And we think they are both going to LOVE Montana - Cat can become an outdoor cat (in the country) and Dog will have a lot more freedom as well. Unfortunately Husband is already starting to say things like "when we get a second dog..." (WHAT?!?!) We'll see!

14. the stress of selling

I always knew that moving would be stressful, but I didn't realized how incredibly stressful it would be. Basically, we had MONTHS of hard work - as soon as I had accepted the job in Montana back in March, we started picking away at packing and repairs. We picked up the pace in early April, and by the end of April we were working from the moment we got home from work each day until the moment we went to bed (which was later and later every night). We stopped all our hobbies - I didn't read a single book, nor did I bake a single cake or batch of cookies - for literally months. Both Husband and I confessed to feeling guilty every time we sat down, even if it was something we needed to do (like paying the few bills that aren't on autopay, or reading Kid her bedtime stories each night).

It. Was. Exhausting.

But we kept the end of May in our sites as a beacon of hope. We had been assured by our friends, our family, our coworkers, and every realtor we met with that our neighborhood was "hot" and it was the strongest seller's market our area had seen in decades. We were told to expect to sell our house immediately upon listing, and possibly even with multiple offers by the end of the first weekend.

So we made plans to list on Thursday, June 1 (rather than opening on Memorial Day weekend, which we were told is historically quite slow), and then promptly got out of town on Friday morning in order to allow for unlimited showings.  In the following days, we remained cautiously optimistic and checked our phones regularly for updates on showings.

But it didn't sell! I think we were both a little flabbergasted. I know our expectations were high, but that was what we had been told to expect by EVERYONE! We tried to relax and remind ourselves that the median days on market was more like 20, but it was still hard not to worry. We were already under contract in Montana! We had a deadline for moving! We had to sell!!!

We had a few more showings the following work week, but surprisingly few the second weekend. At this point we (mostly I, but also with the support of Husband) started to freak out.  We called an emergency meeting with our realtor on the second weekend Sunday and made a plan to regroup since time was of the essence: we dropped the price significantly, added a video tour, created "welcome home" brochures for showings, and we took it off the market for 24 hours so it would come on "fresh" at the lower price point.

Lowering the price by $20K was particularly hard. First, because we were lowering it to what we had originally planned on if we were going to do a FSBO, so it felt like we were paying a realtor a huge fee for nothing. Second, because we had heard time and again that the WORST thing you can do in selling a price is to start too high, because then buyers start to think something must be wrong with it and they expect an even lower price. Third, because we really thought that it was the right price we had chosen in the first place, if only we had had more time. But we didn't have more time, so we knew we had to do it.

Our house went back on the market on Tuesday, we had four showings scheduled for Wednesday, and on Wednesday night we got an offer for $5K over our asking price. Hallelujah!!!!!!!!!

We finalized the deal on Thursday (we just countered by $2K, which they accepted, and we also changed the closing date to what work work best for us), and on Friday we finally started to allow ourselves to relax.

Now we just have the inspection, the appraisal, and the closing to get through.... :)

13. staging

I mentioned in a previous post that we did a TON of work to get our house ready for the market. Some of it was little things that we'd been meaning to do for years, a lot of it was simply decluttering, and some of it was deliberate touches to "stage" it better.

I didn't take any "before" pictures, but here is a "midway through" picture, as we had started to pack up some boxes:

And here it is after all of our hard work:

Our house looks pretty amazing now, if I do say so myself.   Of course, half our stuff is in storage (books, equipment for our hobbies, winter clothing, seasonal decorations, etc.), but we don't have to mention that to anyone!


Overall I'm really happy with how our house turned out. I'm just praying the right buyer will fall in love with it quickly!  The main barrier to our hard work, however, is that our road is currently under construction:

The timing basically couldn't get any worse!!!  I'm hoping someone will fall in love with house, can look past the mess and inconvenience, and will buy it up anyway. I'm working on visualizing our house selling quickly and for a good price...

11. realtors

At about the same time, Husband and I both came to the realization that, as much as we wanted to pursue a FSBO so we could save money on realtor's fees, we just didn't have the time or energy to do it well. If we weren't moving across the country, or if we had a more flexible timeline, or if we had started even 3 months earlier, the verdict definitely would have been different. But given our specific circumstances, we knew we had to find a good realtor to help us out.

Over the course of three weeks, we interviewed four very different realtors!

Realtor #1
She reminded me a lot of Kristen Chenowith - just a tiny little ball of extroversion. She had so much type A energy that we were both exhausted by the time she left. She had a TON of great staging ideas, but it was hard to imagine having the time, energy or money to get it all done by our late May / early June deadline...

Realtor #2
He was super relaxed, like he hadn't a care in the world, yet was also very passionate about real estate. He was very complimentary about the assets of our house (unlike realtor #1, who saw a lot of our house's attributes as weaknesses to overcome). His low energy level actually made me MORE anxious, however, because I am feeling anything but relaxed in this process and I was resentful of his calmness!

Realtor #3
He was older and very friendly, almost like a golden retriever. He was starting to win us over, until he made a few unintentionally sexist comments - for example, right after Mike had finished telling the guy about MY new job starting in August, he turned to me and asked if I would also be working after the move. Ugh.

Realtor #4
This was actually a two-for-one team. Sarah Kate was recommended to us by HomeLight, and the head of her group (Cindy) also came to meet with us. They were very complementary of our house, and they suggested a price at the top of the range the other realtors had been suggesting. They were warm and seemed to have a good marketing plan, and I liked that the data had matched us up. So we went with them!

http://www.joeandcindy.com/


Fingers crossed that we made the right choice!!

12. house-hunting trip

In the midst of trying to stage our current home, we also recently took a trip to Montana to see if we could find a place that met all of our criteria:
-10+ acres
-open floor plan
-very energy efficient
-ideally off-grid (to minimize monthly expenses and be environmentally friendly)
-space from neighbors
-in our price range
-within 30-45 min of my future workplace
-in a good school district
-having both trees and open spaces
-southern exposure for gardens
-3 bedrooms
-storage space
-a garage (ideally with workshope space as well)

We saw one property on-line that we really liked, so had contacted that listing agent to have her set up tours of that home and some additional houses and properties. We figured there were three approaches we could take:
1. find a finished house/land that met all of our criteria
       + the easier option
       -- also the most expensive
2. find a livable place to inhabit while Husband builds us a "dream house"
      + likely the cheapest option
      -- not very relaxing for me to come home to at the end of the day
3. find property and rent a place in town while Husband builds
      + would give us lots of time to get it right
      -- not that much cheaper, once rent prices are factored in
We decided to look into all options, from the "mansions" (#1) to the "shacks" (#2) to the "raw land" (#3).

We flew out late on a Wednesday night (arriving at the hotel around 10:30pm - WAAAAY past Kid's bedtime!), then met our awesome realtor bright and early on Thursday morning. She had a whirlwind day planned for us, including 10 back-to-back showings!

It was such an eye-opening day! We quickly learned that travel time is MUCH faster than expected on highways (thanks to 75-80mph speed limits in MT), and MUUUUUUUCCCCCCCHHHH slower than expected off the highways. Every property we looked at was on a dirt road! Basically, there are interstate highways, roads in town, and everything else is dirt. What a culture shift!

By the end of the day, we had pretty much ruled out the "shack" and "raw land" options, and we had a couple "mansion" options that we really liked.  (For the record, I used the term "mansion" VERY liberally - these are all 2-3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2000 square foot max houses - still nice, but definitely only "mansions" in comparison to the "shacks" we were considering, not compared to your typical urban/suburban house!)

Our realtor met up with us again on Friday, as we saw two more "mansion" options, plus went back to our two front-runners from the day before in order to scope out the lands again.

Saturday we slept in a little bit (house hunting is exhausting work!) and then revisited another front runner, met the realtor to see three more houses, and finally revisited our definite front runner one last time.

By the end of the day, we revisited our wish list (above), and realized that only one option clearly checked all of the boxes. We were smitten! At the same time, we know that it can be dangerous to fall in love with a place before it's under contract, we we tried not to get our hopes up too high. Instead, we spent Sunday focusing on getting back home again, and doing some more manual labor to get our current house ready for the market.

On Monday we were ready to make an offer! But at the very last minute our bank pulled the financing from under our feet. Despite our excellent credit and the fact that we easily qualified for well over the asking price, they said they don't work with any off-grid houses. What?!?! Yeah, apparently having an extremely energy efficient house that is also environmentally friendly is a risk, not at asset?!?! UGH!

Our realtors gave us the numbers for a few local credit union who they said might do an "in house" real estate loan. Husband and I then proceeded to spend the day (between teaching and seeing patients, respectively) leaving messages, speaking to brokers, filling out applications, submitting documents, and basically flipping between the highest highs (of having felt ready to make an offer on the house we loved) to the lowest lows (of having felt betrayed by our bank and by the entire industry for taking such a backward approach to financial risk).

Then, at what felt like the 11th hour (but really was just about 5pm), we finally got the news that one credit union would prequalify us for a conventional loan with good terms and that a second credit union would "likely" approve us. (The other two basically said "um, hell to the no!")  But hallelujah for the relief of having at least one option -- that meant that our offer could be back on the table!!!

After a couple back-and-forths in the negotiating process, we finally are under contract!!!! We are so excited for our new house in Montana!!

10. prepping for the market

No one says selling a home is cheap or easy, and now we can definitely vouch for that. Having just dropped another $300 at Menards, I thought it might be interesting to start a list of all the things we're buying/fixing/doing in order to sell our house:

-packing tape
-new hinges and knobs for the kitchen cabinet doors that we removed years ago
-patching all the lumps and holes in our 65+year old plaster walls
-new kitchen flooring
-paint for every room (touchups on the main floor, and painting everything white in the basement)
-smoke detectors
-carbon monoxide detectors
-Mr Clean Magic Erasers (for all the walls, window sills, door frames, switchplate covers, etc.)
-more packing tape
-new oven mitts
-sink backflow regulators
-painting every room (I know I already listed that, but it's a HUGE amount of work!)
-lightbulb covers
-window well covers
-Murphy's oil on the kitchen cabinets
-scouring the grout in our bathroom
-a nice kitchen soap dispenser
-new dishwasher that actually works
-cleaning all the windows
-new LED lightbulbs in every fixture
-fixing the ugly fluorescent light fixture in our basement
-painting the closets
-painting the garage door
-painting all the outside trim
-repairing the caulk on all the windows
-painting the basement floor
-round up on all the weeds
-annuals for the flower pots
-veggies for the gardens
-cleaning the windows and screens in the gazebo
-CLR on the faucets (we have very hard water!)
-flowers for the kitchen and dining room
-signs for the gardens
-a new back screendoor
-drain cover for the basement
-new hand towels for the bathrooms


Will keep updating this as we undoubtedly discover additional things we need to do, replace, or repair...

9. dream house

While we're working through the steps of selling our current house, we are also working on figuring out where we are going to live next. This is actually a lot more complicated than one might expect. But first let me back up a bit and tell you about where I grew up...

When I was in elementary school, I was raised in a small town of about 65,000 people (interestingly, almost the exact same size as Great Falls today!). My parents lived in one house, a classic bungalow fixer-upper until I was in second grade, then in a new-construction house on the other side of town until I was in 5th grade. I loved the town I grew up in - the cute downtown area, the local liberal arts college, and the vibrant sense of belonging (exhibit A: the annual Flag Day parade that basically the whole town attends).

When I was in 5th grade, however, my parents relocated to the "big city" of the neighboring state.  I remember not wanting to move, but then absolutely loving it once we settled in - there was so much to see and do, and we were busy all the time with exploring the greater metro area. As a teenager, it was awesome to be in the heart of the metropolis.

Except that I wasn't really. Because when I was in junior high, my parents decided to stop renting (which had been their plan for the first couple years, as they got their bearings on the new area) and to start building their dream house out in the exurbs. They settled for 2.5 acres on a pond, and the small development was surrounded by acres of grass and fields and, well, nothingness. Kind of the exact opposite of what my teenager self wanted. I loved the city! I wanted to be close to my friends! My anxiety made me want nothing more than to fit in, and living in the boondocks just made me weird and different, which is simply the kiss of death for a teenager.

But mostly what I remember about that house was how the financial strain of building had negatively affected my parents (and thus me) and how the f***ing birds would wake me up at the crack of noon on the weekends. (I still hate those birds!)

Now fast forward to me being about the same age now as my parents were back when they built their dream house, and what do you think Husband and I are looking for? Uhh...acreage, wilderness, water, wildlife, and plenty nearby to explore...

In other words:

But although Husband and I have similar visions for our eventual dream house (at least passive solar, preferably fully solar powered, potentially off-grid, 10+ acres, in a good school district, close to the mountains, room for livestock, space for large gardens), we are definitely not on the same page with other things....

Husband wants to build us a house. By hand. With his own hands. From scratch.

Now, I do a lot from scratch (baking, quilting), and I can definitely see the appeal of the pride of construction.  But building a house is at the very top of my list of "things I will never plan to do because I would be completely and utterly incompetent at it." Ikea tests the limits of my construction abilities, which should really tell you something about how I should not be trusted to do anything more complex than, say, changing a light bulb.

This is not to say that I don't think Husband can do it. In fact, I have every confidence that he could do a great job building us a house...if we had unlimited time and money. But my previous experiences with my parents building their home was that, even when working with a great contractor, everything takes at least twice as long and costs twice as much as you might expect. And that adage has come true with everything minor home repair or remodeling project that Husband and I have tackled to date.  So, while the idea of Husband building us a house is certainly appealing, the reality of coming home to a construction zone for a couple years (while adjusting to a new job and to being the sole breadwinner in the family) is definitely not as appealing.

Thus we're at a bit of an impasse. I'm advocating for a finished house that still has plenty for Husband to do outside (e.g., adding a small cabin for guests, building a chicken coop, setting up a homestead garden). Husband is hoping to buy raw land (and rent a small house/apartment while he builds) or to buy a livable "shack" on lots of acres so we can live there while he builds us our dream house.

Slightly different visions.

For now, we're simply hoping that our respective visions will converge when we go house-hunting at the end of the month...

8. selling our house

Now that I had officially accepted the new job, it was time to start thinking about how we would actually make the move. Given my baseline high anxiety, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I have many worries about this process. Here are the pieces we're currently working though:

1. Packing. We know we need to "stage" our house, so we've been busy packing up boxes of stuff and storing them in our garage. We already have the garage mostly full, and our house still looks packed to the brim! Who knew that we (with our multitude of hobbies) are such pack rats?! Apparently we can make 833 square feet (on the main level, plus the basement) hold a LOT of stuff for three people.

2. Realtors. It's a HOT market right now. So does it make sense to have a realtor (and pay the realtor's fees), or should we consider a FSBO? What can a realtor offer that we can't figure out ourselves, particularly in this market? We want to maximize the money we can put toward our next house, but also don't want to screw ourselves over if we are completely unqualified to do it ourselves.

3. Listing. We have been hard at work packing, but we also have a lot of things left to do. We want to list it as soon as possible, but we also want Husband to be done with teaching so he can easily clear out of the house for showings once it's listed. (Like getting Cat and his litterbox out, which would be impossible if we are both at work.) But at the same time our street is scheduled to be torn up this summer (around the same time Husband's school year is over) in order for the sewer lines to be replaced. Will potential buyers be able to look past the construction mess once it starts??

And this doesn't even touch on the mess of buying a new house...

7. so much to worry about

Now, lest you forget, I am still an incredibly anxious person. So although my last couple posts might have implied a relatively easy job search process (and in many respects it really was), I have nevertheless been plagued by my constant companions,  anxiety and self-doubt.

On a whim I decided to jot down a few of the anxious thoughts that I have perseverated on in the last couple weeks:

what if it's the wrong city
what if I get laid off again
what if I hate the job
what if I hate the commute
what if we don't make friends
what if all our old friends forget about us
what if the ACA is revoked
what if the country goes to war
what if something happens to my parents
what if the schools stink
what if we hate everything about it
what if I'm not outdoorsy enough
what if we can't get any internet access
what if Husband and I end up hating each other
what if it's colder and cloudier than they tell us
what if we can't have chickens
what if Cat hates it
what if our dog isn't born in time to make the move
what if we never get back to MN/WI for Christmas
what if we never get to stay in MT for Christmas
what if Husband can't find a truck in our price range
what if he doesn't actually know how to build a house
what if we kill each other from living in a small rental
what if I can never get licensed
what if they revoke the job offer
what if I miss the VA too much
what if we're meant to be closer to family
what if my parents decide to stay in Wisconsin
what if I miss the lakes
what if Husband doesn't want to be a homesteader after all
what if all of our things get broken during the move
what if I regret selling the piano
what if I regret bringing the piano across country
what if we get rid of too much stuff
what if we move a bunch of crap for no reason
etc. etc. etc.

I decided to stop this exercise after only about 7 minutes. Seriously! All those thoughts in only seven minutes. (Yes, it can be exhausting to be in my own mind!) Let's just say that mindfulness, staying present, and letting go of future worries is still a work in progress for me. Clearly, even psychologists need to practice what they preach.

6. multiple job offers

Now that we had a 3-5 year plan, and a visualization of the general area we wanted to live in, it was time to get serious.

Right about that exact time (November/December 2016), there was a job opening for a governement job in my field in rural Wyoming. The work sounded pretty good, so I got my CV up to snuff and threw my hat in the ring! I was a little concerned about possible culture shock (town of 18,000?), particularly given the first thing that pops into my mind when I hear the word "Wyoming" is the horrific killing of Matthew Shephard and the ongoing issue of hate crimes and LGBTQ discrimination in rural America. (Not to mention anti-Muslim discrimination!) But then I would remind myself  that Yellowstone and Grand Teton are in Wyoming, and that we had enjoyed our drive through the state last summer. Besides, maybe bringing our "blue" votes to a rural state would be helpful, and perhaps the exposure to new ideas would broaden our own horizons as well! (see: urban/rural political divide) If I got an interview, we'd have a chance to test out whether the city would be a good fit for us, right?

The gederal fovernment moves agonizingly slowly, so as I waited to hear back about that position I continued to look for other opportunities. (I'm the breadwinner in the family, so it was up to me to find a good job in a good city.)  Within a few weeks I had ruled out a large number of possibilities, but also applied to two really promising places: a job in Spokane, WA, and a job in Great Falls, MT.

Then in February (2017) the pace suddenly picked up for all three of the positions I had applied to. In a relatively short time frame I found out I did not get the job in WY, I was offered the position in Spokane, and I was offered an in-person interview in Great Falls. It took some finagling, but I was able to negotiate enough time to make a decision about Spokane in order to interview in Great Falls. (Spokane wanted an answer almost immediately, and did not even want the delay of me scheduling an in-person visit, with all costs paid by yours truly. It would have been a leap of faith!)  In some ways, I was only planning on the Great Falls interview as a formality and out of respect/politeness (because I was pretty set on the Spokane job, based on both my phone interviews), but I was really trying to keep an open mind.

And it's a good thing I did, because both Mike and I were blown away by Great Falls!

The people were amazing, the scenery was breathtaking, the town was just the right size, and the job description turned out to be even better than expected! Not only that, but the salary offer was great, the benefits were wonderful, and they offered to pay all our relocation expenses. When we sat down to do a side-by-side comparison of Greats Falls vs. Spokane on all the variables we cared about, it was a complete 180 from what we had expected going into the interview weekend, and Great Falls won by a landslide.

All of the sudden, in March of 2017, the 3-5 year plan had apparently morphed into the 3-5 month plan! We were going to be moving to Great Falls!!

5. awaiting retirement

Clearly we couldn't move anywhere until retirement, because we were settled! We have lived in our home since we got married 14 years ago, we both have good jobs, and we have "roots" in the midwest (MN/WI). It would be crazy to pick up everything and leave!

And yet we still shared this vision for our future. We would idly chat about when and how we could afford to take a trip out west again.  We wistfully thought about how amazing it would be to live within driving distance of "our" beloved Glacier NP. We daydreamed about leaving the hub-bub of a major metropolitan area. We both fondly recalled our upbringings in smaller towns. We wondered what it would be like to have a slower pace of life, with much easier access to the outdoors, maybe even with some chickens in our backyard.

We even sat down one day and compared  our visions of where it would be "ideal" to live. Amazingly, we had each come up with almost the same mental maps:

centered on the Northern Rockies (of the US), taking out SLC and Denver

I decided to sign up for updates on government jobs that could open in that area (i.e., WA, ID, MT, WY, OR, or CO). Sometimes when I was bored I would search for jobs in my field on websites like indeed.com. But mostly Husband and I just kept up with our usual routines, continuing to live our regular lives every day.

Looking back, we both identify the 2016 election as the thing that pushed us over the edge:  If the world was going to go to hell in a hand basket, we figured, we might as well be living our lives to the fullest in the meantime.

So we had some heart to hearts. Did we really want to do this? If we shared this dream, why were we going to wait 30 years or so until retirement? Did we want to model living boldly to Kid or not?!

That's when the search started in earnest. Given the type of work that I do, we figured it would take a good 3-5 years for our  "go West" plans to come to fruition. But 3-5 years was definitely better than 30 years, particularly if we were actively working towad our dream. By the end of November/beginning of December (2016), we were actively embracing a new vision for our future!

4. road trip

I haven't had the most positive work experiences over all. After getting my PhD, I was laid off from my first job (after less than a year!) during the height of the 2008/2009 recession. Thankfully I got a new job really quickly and really enjoyed it for a few years, particularly with the flexibility it afforded me as I pursued fertility treatments. But then I took on a leadership role without realizing that the company would basically be willing to pay me to work myself to death; it was only after getting totally burnt out (and clinically depressed) that I was able (through the help of my amazing therapist) to see how the work environment was not a good match with my personality, particularly given my spectacularly impossible job description. So I regrouped and took on a new job back at the place where I had done my postdoc many years prior. It started off great, but I quickly discovered some interpersonal dynamics on my primary team that ultimately interfered with my ability to do my job and, quite frankly, started to negatively impact patient care.

Seriously! Enough already!

So, to cope, Husband and I decided to plan a massive road trip vacation. Or, rather, we decided to take a massive road trip vacation, with me doing the bulk of the planning - because that's what I like to do, and because planning would help distract me while I figured out what to do next about my latest terrible work situation.

It was around late winter/early spring of 2015 that we (I) started to plan, and we (I) pretty quickly settled on a two-week trip highlighting the national parks of the north. I had had such a great experience at Yellowstone, and I wanted to both share the awesomeness and also test out whether other national parks would be similarly awesome.

After reading MANY guidebooks and even more websites, we ultimately landed on the following itinerary:

Day #	Day	Date	Event	Sleeping	Cost
1	Sat	6/18/2016	drive to Badlands	Cedar Pass Campground	$20/night
2	Sun	6/19/2016	hike in Badlands	Cedar Pass Campground	"
3	Mon	6/20/2016	explore Black Hills	Horsethief Lake	$26/night+$9 fee
4	Tue	6/21/2016	explore Black Hills	Horsethief Lake	"
5	Wed	6/22/2016	drive to Grand Tetons	Colter Bay tent cabin	$65/night
6	Thu	6/23/2016	explore Grand Tetons	?	$25/night
7	Fri	6/24/2016	explore Grand Tetons	?	"
8	Sat	6/25/2016	explore Yellowstone	Old Faithful Inn	$115/night+tax
9	Sun	6/26/2016	explore Yellowstone	Old Faithful Inn	"
10	Mon	6/27/2016	drive to Glacier	fish creek	$23/night
11	Tue	6/28/2016	explore Glacier	fish creek	"
12	Wed	6/29/2016	explore Glacier	rising sun motor inn	$165/night+tax
13	Thu	6/30/2016	explore Glacier	rising sun motor inn	"
14	Fri	7/1/2016	drive to ND	Cottonwood Campground (South Unit)	$14/night
15	Sat	7/2/2016	explore TR NP	Cottonwood Campground (South Unit)	"
16	Sun	7/3/2016	drive home	home!	FREE
17	Mon	7/4/2016	buffer day at home

Packing my tiny car with all the food and gear we needed was no small feat, but we did it. And the whole trip was amazing!!!! It turns out that national parks are really, really cool. Who knew?!?!  :)

We also learned so much about ourselves. The three of us travel well together, and we're entertained by similar things. (Okay, so Kid wasn't quite as stoked about long hikes and Husband and I were, but she was a trooper! And someday she'll enjoy hiking, darn it!) We also all enjoy similar scenery: the combo of mountains and water was a grand slam for all of us. While we enjoyed the Badlands, Black Hills and Yellowstone, we really fell for Grand Teton, and were absolutely, 100% in love with Glacier.

crappy cell phone photo from the parking lot at our glacier hotel

As we started our drive home, Husband and I both agreed that if there was ever an opportunity to live in Montana, particularly near Glacier, we would jump on it. Too bad we wouldn't be able to seriously consider such a thing until retirement.

Or could we?