Life Lately – Moving, Traveling and Renovations

Hola amigos! Here we are, a few days into June, the kids are out of school, and summer is in full swing. If I had one word to sum up the start of summer for me it would be BUSY. Actually, that’s an understatement. Busier than I’ve ever been in my entire life is more like it.

Before I begin to ramble on about my utter craziness, I’m going to share my outfit details first. If you are only here for the fashion, here are the links you need. Pom pom tee, gingham shorts, the best everyday cross body Marc Jacobs bag, Tory Burch sandals, monogram necklace, sunglasses. I won’t be offended if you choose to read no further, just don’t judge my bad Ohio humidity hair.

Let me rewind a few weeks. As you guys know, we moved into a new house two weeks ago. I mentioned briefly that the move itself didn’t go so well. We were scheduled to close on the house we were selling on the same day, which just happened to be a Friday. Our sale went smoothly, but our purchase, not so much. Our mortgage company messed up a date on a flood insurance document, which took them a few hours to fix. However, by the time they fixed it, the Federal Reserve wire cutoff had closed for the day (the Federal Reserve doesn’t exactly make exceptions). Since the title company didn’t receive the funds from our bank at no fault of ours, they couldn’t release the keys to us until the money could be sent on Monday. <Insert multiple cuss words here> The bank did reimburse us some money, but they’ll never be able to refund me the unnecessary stress they caused.

We BEGGED the sellers of our new house to let us in early, offered to sign a lease with an insane amount of cash in a desperate attempt to fix the issue and they flat out denied us (jerks). I’m not a very emotional person, but the whole situation brought me to tears. I’m not joking, I just could not stop crying. It was such a crushing disappointment to not to enjoy our first night at the new house. But not only that, we were left scrambling to figure out where to go. We didn’t own our old house anymore and the new owners were in the process of moving in. Half our belongings (including 98% of our clothes) were already jam packed inside a moving truck. We were left literally homeless for the weekend.

After a bunch of ugly tears, we ended up leaving half our stuff packed in the moving truck and packed up the rest two days later. We crashed with some friends for a night, borrowing clothes and buying other essentials to get us through the weekend. We then checked into a local resort and did our best to enjoy an accidental staycation. There were moments of fun, but the stress sort of put a damper on everything.

Closing went as planned first thing Monday morning once the market opened again and we spent the rest of the day moving stuff into our house. Only to not really move in at all because we had a trip to the Midwest planned a mere two days later. We knew it would be a short turnaround, but we thought we’d have five days before the trip, not two. We planned this Midwest trip months and months ago so my husband could go on a little golf trip with his dad, brother and extended family. It wasn’t exactly something that would happen again soon and was planned well before we ever knew we were moving. So whatever, we threw some stuff in a bag and boarded the airplane.

While my husband was golfing, I spent time with my parents and kids in Ohio. I even snuck in a couple days in Columbus, Ohio to visit a few of my best friends in the world. By this point, I had then slept in 7 different beds in the last week and a half. I think it might take months for my back to recover. #oldladyalert

We got back to Arizona a few days ago and have finally been able to enjoy some time in our new home. We’ve mainly been focusing on fixing up the landscaping and finding essentials buried in boxes in our garage. You guys might also remember me saying the house we purchased is a fixer upper. We are starting the whole house renovation later on this month and are finalizing design selections as we speak. Basically we are going to be living out of suitcases and boxes for a while until we can truly unpack for good.

Since we are replacing almost every single floor, tile, door, baseboard and fixture in the house, we know this is a huge project. I think most people avoid doing renovations because they don’t want to live through them. Well, we decided to spend 6 weeks in Los Angeles this summer to try and get as much of the work done as possible while we are gone. The whole remodel won’t be done in 6 weeks, but we hope they can at least get the demo completed and start to put some of the pieces back together.

I know what you guys are asking – why LA? Well, my husband’s company is based there so he already travels to LA frequently. His boss won’t be upset to have him closer for a few months and I won’t be upset to spend 6 weeks away from 115 degree July AZ weather. As luck would have it, a friend from college who lives in Venice Beach planned a summer trip and was looking to sublease her place. Our dates aligned perfectly so we are staying at her house, which just so happens to be a block and a half from the beach. Major score.

I’ve always loved LA and the beach, so this is such a fun perk to add to our crazy, crazy summer. Even though things are nuts, my husband and I both oddly don’t mind it. We love challenges and knowing we are making progress on the home front for our family. I could have done without the moving hassles, but one day we will look back and laugh about it (still too soon at the moment).

So yeah, that’s been life lately. My blog posts haven’t been as frequent and my wardrobe is limited to what I can find in boxes. This will definitely be a summer we will never forget.

Who has LA travel tips? Send them over!!