Milestones: Moving Day

Shortly after Tom got his residency (read like a week), we met up with a realtor to look for our own house. It has been something that we have consciously put money aside for since we got married. We were thinking we would get a townhouse. Tom and I are not big into yard work and liked the idea of just a small patio. We also thought we couldn't afford a house, or at least a big enough one. We had a very small list of "needs":

1. three bedrooms
2. 1 and 1/2 bathrooms
3. open-ish concept
4. a garage (Calgary gets massive hail storms)

From everyone that we talked to, it didn't seem like a lot to ask for. We also had areas of the city picked out e.g. a map with highlighted areas (yes i'm a dork). So we met with Stewart Chyz. He's an awesome realtor and I couldn't recommend him more. He talked to us frankly and said "yes you can afford a house". So we trusted him. He sent us a TON of listings that night and agreed to meet up with us the next day to look at our top 5 picks. Well we went out and the third house we saw, we just knew it was the one. It had everything on our list. In fact it was bigger than we thought we could afford! Oh, and the backyard is all patio so really you are only cutting the teeny tiny front lawn! We can handle that.

With the help of some awesome friends and a trusty U-Haul, we moved in the 30th of July. Here are some pictures of the move:

And finally, the reason we bought a house with a garage (and literally what came down our first night we moved in):

Definitely more updates as we figure out this whole "Home Owner" thing!