Wow, was my last entry just about our get together up in the Bay Area??? There’s been so much that has happened and seems a little overwhelming to write it all down 🙁 I guess I’ll try my best…

Our pod from 1-800-PACK-RAT was dropped off on Wed, 6/26, and it would be picked up on Tuesday, 7/2…this was NOT enough time to pack everything as we still had to work, do different last get togethers, bidding on a house, and mistakenly thought we could do all the packing ourselves. And to top it off, we had a heat wave come through and were packing in 100 degree heat. I sort of had a breakdown as things were just pretty hard trying to pack everything on Tuesday before the truck came to pick up all our stuff…yet, it wasn’t actually all our stuff as we had to bring a car full to Uncle Kenway’s place for them to store for the next few months. The plan is to pick it up (maybe) when we visit when Anson says farewell to coworkers in October.

Even though we brought stuff to Uncle Kenway’s, we still had two car loads full and had to push our date to move down by one day since there was still so much to pack and Anson wanted to leave the buyers a clean the house. On that day, July 4th, I looked over our house, swept one last time, pulled some weeds from the garden…and cried the whole time. This has been our house for 10 years and had many memories in it. We’d been in the Bay Area for our whole married lives, and leaving this place and all our friends was definitely sinking in 🙁

During this time, we were also looking over houses in Camarillo on redfin. We had met a real estate agent, Regena Ryan, at an open house when we came down in April, and she had been helping us look for places while we were selling our Foley house. She was the one who noticed this house even before it came on market listing at $1.295m. It was single story, 2700sq ft, slab foundation for one room to be Anson’s gym, big kitchen with smart fridge, a beautiful backyard that I’d actually want to spend time in (gotta learn how to use a hot tub!), in a good neighborhood, 1 mile from Ralphs and .5 miles from the park. The only bad thing is the location since Foley was close to many stores and the library, which was a reason why we bid $1.25m…site unseen. Sellers had bad experience with selling this way, so they wanted us to see the place and wanted their original price.

We drove down to SoCal and stayed over at the Wongs’ house for one night, then went over to the house on Friday to see it with our own eyes (Regena had given us a virtual tour which didn’t count to the seller), and put in our same bid but with a fast closing. We thought we were in a pretty good position since we could offer all cash. Anyways, we drove to my parents’ condo and stayed for 2 nights, where we found out that our offer was accepted! Hooray! We went to New Life on Sunday 7/7, had economical lunch there for $3/pp, hung out with Aaron’s family, then went to Wongs’ place for dinner. While packing up, found out that the inn we were going to stay in had their front office close at 10pm, so we wouldn’t be able to make it to check in. We ended up staying for the night (which Anson’s mom was happy about).

I had booked us a month’s worth of hotel/Airbnbs for the month of July…didn’t know we would get an offer accepted so quickly. Our first week, 7/7-7/13, was at Bella Capri Inn in Old Town Camarillo. The 2nd week, 7/13-7/21, was in a Santa Rosa Airbnb, and the 3rd week, 7/21-8/1, was in an avocado orchard in Camarillo 1.5 miles from the house we were buying.

At Bella Capri, the room was pretty small and only had one desk with both Anson and I having to still work remotely. It was nice to walk around Old Town Camarillo at night. This was during their heritage week and they had carnival rides, food trucks, and various musical/dance performances. We also had to go to the house to be there for the various inspections (home, sewer lateral, and termite). I also had to create accounts for SoCalGas (gas), Southern CA Edison (electric), and City of Camarillo (water, sewer, garbage). We also got not great news that a forklift damaged our container pod, so they had to transfer all the contents into another pod. Joys of moving…

At our Santa Rosa Airbnb, it was owned by a retired couple (Gary and Mary) who forgot that we were going to stay this week haha, but everything was set up already. It was a spacious place with a dining room, kitchen (though the stove was outside), and bedroom. We had much more space to work and lounge. The only knocks on this place were probably the sink that would randomly make noises on some days and ants as the property was in nature. On Sunday, 7/14, we visited CCCTO for the first time, where we met Wayne, an elder at the church, Steven (a deacon), and Gary (SG leader) along with many other people. People were very welcoming and it was nice that there was lunch after service.

Throughout our Airbnb stay, Mary gave us those various fruits and even included a bottle of wine to celebrate us buying our house. We closed escrow on Tuesday, 7/16! We met with Regena in the morning on Wednesday where she gave us the keys to the house. We took a picture with Regena and our new house before the tent went up and the fumigation process started. I met up with Gina at Panera on Thursday since we both had the free drinks promotion and had brunch. The tenting was removed on Friday, 7/19, and our container pod was dropped off same day.

We packed up and left our Santa Rosa Airbnb on Sunday 7/21. We visited Christ Our Redeemer PCA church in Camarillo. The way they conducted worship was something that we weren’t use to (communion, reading of passages, etc). It’s not to say it was bad, but just different. We met Cal and Bora there and talked a while with them. They’re very into pickleball and their daughter goes to CCAC. Not sure if we’ll be going to this church, but hopefully, we can hang out with Cal and Bora again and get to know them better. After church, we checked into our next Airbnb hotel in Camarillo Heights that was situated in a working avocado orchard! We were able to self check in and Sterling, our host, answered questions via chat. The place had a full kitchen, two tables, Netflix access, and a separate bedroom. The only knock was that it did not have air conditioning.

On Monday 7/22, Aaron, Anson’s parents, and Lauren’s parents all came to help us move our items from the pod to the house. Auntie Esther mom made a bunch of food for lunch. It was very nice of them to help us unpack since we were first thinking of hiring movers cuz of our bad experience packing, but it wasn’t necessary since we are just taking our time unpacking (now still :). During that week and the next, we traveled between the Avacodo Acres Airbnb and our house since it was nice to enjoy some comforts in a fully furnished place especially when we were still working remotely, so we took our time to enjoy the Airbnb (it was also fully paid for…oops, at least the interest on selling our Foley house paid for part of our stays…yay for high interest rates!). I had made Anson get another credit card and it was pretty easy to hit our minimum spend with all the moving costs. I’ll write another blog on all the costs cuz…accountant 🙂

During this time, we signed up for a local gym (Fitness 19….we were previously at this gym in the Bay Area), and got lifetime memberships costing $400 after a month of being a member…guess we’re committed to this place! So far, I’m liking the Friday Zumba class! On Friday 7/26, we met Aaron and Lauren for a dinner of Costco sushi we brought and Aaron making spaghetti, pizza, and chicken wings at their campsite in Point Mugu (south of Camarillo). Aaron makes a pretty good fire, and it was nice to catch up and try to be closer to family (Aaron mounted our tv as a surprise for us!). Eventually, we figured that it was getting a little unnecessary to travel from one place to the other. We had to be there to meet the termite repair guys and for the delivery of our dining table set, so we cut short our Airbnb stay by one night so that we could focus more on unpacking and making this house our home.