Around the House

We finally got around to replacing our old cars. We had two six-year-old Kias, and now have two brand new Honda Accords. Shiny.

After a week of waiting and three calls to Time Warner technical support, a miracle occurred; we have an internet connection. Thanks to Ryan, the first useful person I talked to at Time Warner, our cable modem was added to their database, and we are now hooked up.

We have officially moved into our new house. True, we don’t have any furniture, but we’ll make do until the moving van arrives. We also don’t have any cable or phone service until tomorrow afternoon, so I am currently broadcasting a pirate signal. Aarrrr.

The movers are loading up our furniture and boxes as I write this. In a few hours, we will check out of our apartment complex, and start driving to Houston, cats and all. The move, so far, has been remarkably smooth. Surprisingly, neither Amanda nor I have suffered any major injuries packing, although I did manage to get stung by a wasp. We will arrive at the new house this evening, just in time for our builder to our us a pizza. Our stuff should arrive on the moving van Wednesday morning, and by then I’m sure we will be ready to sleep in our own bed again.

Lots going on around here these days. First, and foremost, after over four years of trying, including two surgeries for me and seven IVF cycles, Amanda is actually pregnant. If you’re family, of course, you already know all about this. Needless to say, Amanda and I are ecstatic, but definitely still a little in shock. Our multiple past disappointments have made us cautious, and even after a positive pregnancy test we knew we weren’t out of the woods. As of last week, though, Amanda is officially into the second trimester, and we grow more optimistic each day. We recently received the results of Amanda’s ultrascreen, which combines a high-resolution ultrasound with several blood tests to forecast odds of various genetic disorders. Our odds for those, fortunately, are very low. And, it looks like we’re having a boy! Here is a slideshow of our ultrasounds so far:

As if preparing for a baby isn’t enough, we also closed on a new house last week. We’ve been looking, of course, for several months, and closing was the culmination of that search. Everything went smoothly, and now we just need to worry about actually moving and, eventually, furnishing the house. We’ll spend our first nights in the house this weekend, although we won’t have any furniture. Appliances and window blinds are being installed on Friday, so it should start to feel like a real house. After having lived in apartments for the last ten years or so, moving into a house of our own—especially such a big house—is almost as big a shock as finding out that we’ll be having a baby. The house is brand new, so it’s really a blank slate on which we can work. Although we put a contract on the house only a few weeks before it was completed, the builder took pictures throughout construction. Here is a slideshow of those pictures, from framing to closing:

The New York Times recently had an article on River Ranch, a development here in Lafayette about five minutes down the road from where we are living now. River Ranch is not merely inspired by New Orleans, it is an intentional effort to duplicate many of New Orleans’ desirable and distinctive features. As the Times notes, River Ranch has “Garden District-style mansions in a neighborhood named the Garden District, and blocks full of Creole cottages, lush courtyards and lacy ironwork.” The Times also quotes several residents and New Orleans evacuees, and as could probably be expected, the reaction is mixed.

River Ranch is an example of the so-called New Urbanism design school, which promotes dense residential housing mixed with green public space and walkable commercial developments. The Times article notes some criticism of New Urbanism, but I’d be happy to live in such a community. One of the big downsides to living in a city like Houston is the lack of livable mixed-use neighborhoods. I’m looking forward to living in Fall Creek, but there’s certainly no restaurants or shopping within walking distance of our new house. Houston is a lot like Los Angeles; Houstonians love their cars. I guess it’s no wonder that Houston is consistently ranked as one of the fattest cities in America.

When we moved to Lafayette, we looked at apartments in River Ranch, but weren’t particularly impressed. The focus of the development has obviously been on the single-family houses built there, and the apartments have been compressed into a couple of building surrounding a parking lot. The houses built in the community looked more desirable, but I was struck by how odd the neighborhoods felt when we drove through them. It certainly didn’t feel like New Orleans; it seemed to me something more like a Disney-fied version of New Orleans. It’s the architectural equivalent of the uncanny valley. Indeed, the restaurants that are found in River Ranch drive the point home. There aren’t any local cajun or creole restaurants; instead, River Ranch has a Carrabba’s and a Bonefish. River Ranch isn’t so much a neighborhood as it is a franchise.

In preparation for our return to Houston after my clerkship, Amanda and I have been house-hunting for about 6 weeks now. Houston, unfortunately, is unreasonably vast and the number of housing options is quite large. Our search, though, was at least limited by the fact that I will be working downtown and am unwilling to endure a commute much longer than about a half hour each direction.

We focused first on the Heights, an area within ten minutes or so of downtown. The Heights is somewhat transitional, and is a patchwork of new, renovated, and unrestored homes, as well as commercial property, including everything from small shops and restaurants to car dealerships and warehouses. We weren’t very happy with the heterogenaity of the Heights, and despite being fortunate enough to have a generous housing budget, we were confronted with pretty steep prices in order to buy a house with the size and features we were interested in.

So, we did some research, and discovered a relatively new suburban community called Fall Creek, located on the north side of Houston, approximately twenty or twenty-five minutes from downtown. Fall Creek is a pretty typical suburban neighborhood, which, frankly, is what we were looking for. The oldest houses in the neighborhood are about two years old, and Fall Creek is only about one-third completed. We looked at a mix of homes under construction, just finished, and on the resale market. Although there is a lot of availability in Fall Creek, we weren’t that happy with many of the houses we looked at. After two visits and much discussion, we settled on a beautiful home on the resale market. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be, as the sellers received an offer for more than the asking price the same day we submitted our own offer. We were highly disappointed, but this past weekend we went back with our realtor and looked at several new homes just about to be finished. Again, we found a house we liked quite a bit, and the builder quoted us a pretty reasonable price. After deliberating over night, I called the builder yesterday to write a contract on the house only to discover that another buyer had written a contract mere hours before. Foiled again!

After two near-misses, we were pretty upset at the prospect of having to go back to the drawing board. The builder, however, wasn’t ready to let us loose quite so soon. Instead, she offered us another of the houses we had looked at on Monday. This house was actually the same floorplan as the house we had been prepared to buy, but had converted the third car portion of the garage to another bedroom with a full bath. Although the house was larger than we had been planning on buying, it was very nice and had most of the features we were looking for. The builder offered a pretty competitive price, and after a bit of haggling, threw in several of the upgrades I requested. So, we have a house! A few pictures inside: Read the rest of this entry »