Rental Hunting

I recently completed the most stressful 4 days in recent memory. Rental hunting in Reno.

We left Tuesday night @ 7:30pm. We wanted to drive as far as we could while the kids slept, so we drove until about 11:30, pulled off the side of the road near Ely and slept in the van. Isaac and I slept great, Joe's hammock apparently ripped in the middle of the night. Joe woke to Ari saying "Why are you sitting on me". Maybe it was an omen? (photos of our campsite)



We made it to Reno Wednesday afternoon. Just imagine if you will house hunting in a city you have never been in, where you know noting about the neighborhoods, Isaac is doing some serious teething and can't handle his car seat for very long even on a good day. He had a few meltdowns, and when he has a meltdown Ari starts singing REALLY loud to drown him out. I'm trying to give Joe directions, hand Lou distractions, help Ari build trains, feed people lunch, keep track of our housing prospects AND keep my cool. We took the occasional playground break so that I could get a few things done for work and map out our next round of rentals. More breaks would have been ideal, but when you have such a big task and such a short time...

At first I tried to make house hunting a game for Ari, I told him we were looking for houses with "for rent signs" (we drove NW Reno hoping to find something in that area) and that I needed his help to find them. He did great at finding signs, and at every sign would yell something like "There's one!" "Stop stop stop, I see a sign!" "Lets go in that one, STOP, your passing it!" "Daaaaddd a sign, stop!!" I know he was just trying to be helpful, but in an election year there was A LOT of houses with signs. Trust me. I ended up taking him to K-Mart to buy a toy while Joe was on campus one morning; best $9.99 I ever spent right here. Unfortunately there was not much we could do for Lou, it was a good thing he ended up taking lots of naps.

We had hoped to leave town Friday, so by Thursday evening we had almost resigned ourselves to the fact that we may just have to get something over the web sight unseen. Then we found it. We almost didn't even go look at it because it was in a gated community with what we thought was no yard, but we were nearby so we stopped in. We snooped around the back, noticed a cute little yard with an amazing view and thought well, maybe we could do this? We went and got a key. It was by far the best thing we had found in our price range. We took it. What I learned from driving all over Reno is that what we NEEDED (not wanted) most was something affordable and clean in a place where we could feel safe. This fit all the most important criteria, here are the specks strait from the ad. Can you believe it, 1,435 square feet! It's like a mansion!



And two photos I took of my favorite features. I've always been a sucker for while kitchens and look how big it is! This is only 1/2 of it! We can have people over for dinner now that we can fit more than 3 people in the kitchen!

The yard is much better than expected. Look at that view. Nothing but wetland, cows and mountains. On the other side of that fence is a drop off, at the bottom of the drop off is a jogging path. I've already mapped out a 5-7 mile jog or bike ride in which 4-6 of those miles are on a dirt road/trail OR I hike up that hill. We live on the SE edge of town so we have some close options for mountain access.

We will miss our big yard with lots of trees, I'm not a big fan of 2 story houses and it will be interesting abiding by HOA rules, but I feel really safe here surround by old people and cows.

We move November 12ish if anyone wants to take a road trip. You'll get to take a pit stop in Ely and guess what they have there. A dead animals museum to creep out your kids AND a merry-go-round!