A summary of this insanely busy month

I should start this post by mentioning that when I initially typed out the title, I entered "summery" instead of "summary". Probably because it's been in the 60s off and on lately, so it feels a bit like summer! YES!!!!

It's been an exhausting few weeks. Mirabel was sleeping better, then she started coming down with a cold. Last night she cried for 2 hours and woke up every hour. I should be sleeping now that it's her naptime, but I feel worse after napping! Am I the only crazy one? Yesterday, after a rough night, I took a nap and felt so exhausted for the rest of the day, moreso than I do now, and I slept even less last night. Anyhow, I was losing sleep over another issue last week.

So the Austin rental market is INSANE. Literally, a house will be listed in the morning and it will be gone by that afternoon! I know because there have been a few houses that I've liked that have gone that quickly. So when I saw this really adorable bungalow listed last week, I had to act fast. It was 5 miles away from Jose's work and it was so darn cute. A blue cottage. It was kind of pricy for the size, but we liked that it was only about a year old. So we were paying for security and location. We submitted an application, and we passed our background check with flying colors. THEN THE LANDLORD decided to change his mind at the last minute and give the house over to his neighbors (who were renting) because they wanted the house for 3 years (we only want it for about 1) and their landlord was losing the house. Ugh. We were so disappointed. We were worried that we weren't going to be able to find a place before our move. Thankfully, we were wrong :)!

A few days after, Jose was browsing the web for rental homes in Austin. He came upon a house that wasn't listed on the major sites. A lot of folks will sign up for email updates with their realtors so that they can jump on a house as soon as it's listed. Well, this house wasn't being listed by a realtor; the guy who owns the house owns 15 properties in the area and he handles his own leases. So we decided to email the guy. We assumed that the house was already taken. I mean, c'mon, it's not like a 2400 square foot, 4 bedroom & 2.5 bath, cute blue cottage under 5 years old that's relatively close to Downtown is gonna stick around for long. Blue cottage? Yep, this place looked a whole lot like the house we "lost", except it's 1000 square feet more!!! AND it's $150 less per month! AND WE WERE THE FIRST ONES TO SUBMIT AN APPLICATION FOR IT. AND (get this, I'll stop yelling after this ;) 8 OTHERS asked about it only after we submitted our contract! Ok, c'mon now...

What are the odds that a really cute place will be listed online for 3 days (with the Austin rental market being the way it is), and not receive any inquiries until after ours? Isn't it a little strange that no one else asked the landlord about it until AFTER we submitted an application? Little miracles happen when we least expect them to :). So we got that house! It was a steal; very much a deal. I still can't believe we'll be paying less for a house that's 2400 square feet than we do for our current 500 square foot apartment, insane!