Tara Danette Drive

Welcome to our new blog! Clark and I decided its a little crazy to try and maintain 3 blogs (his, mine, and Booker's) so this is our newly combined effort. Booker will still have his and will likely share it with his little brother once he arrives. Four family members, two blogs. Sounds good to me.

Anyways, what better way to start a new blog than to announce that we found a house in Tucson to rent for the next year. We made a somewhat impromptu trip down to Tucson this morning and drove all over town meeting with real estate agents. We saw a total of 5 houses/town homes and still made it back to Mesa in time for Clark to attend his Bar class at six. Not bad. I'd like to remind my family members in Mesa that we're only a two hour drive (door to door!) away and its not like we're moving to Utah or somewhere crazy.

This is what I like about the house:

- Its a nine minute drive to Clark's office (we timed it). This is impressive since Clark's office is in the nicest most expensive part of Tucson, the Foothills, which is mostly home to million-ka-jillion dollar properties. We wanted to live close to his office, but not break the bank. This house is perfect for that.

- Its close to major shopping, malls, movies theaters and even the hospital I plan on delivering at. And there's a Trader Joe's just around the corner!

- It has a two car garage. A lot of houses we checked out only had a carport and we've got a lot of junk we want to store in the garage.

- There's a big back yard (well, big to us at least) with an actual LAWN! Granted, its a really small patch of lawn but finding grass in Tucson proper is quite hard. Tucsonians LOVE that Southwest feel- death and cactus. Its everywhere. So the lawn makes Clark very happy, although it does mean we'll have to purchase a lawn mower.

- There's a whole room for laundry, not just a dingy little closet. Washer & dryer are included.

- There's a whole separate area for our dining table, not just a corner of the kitchen or living room.

- The master bathroom has an extra large bathtub. I like taking baths and I'm extra large. Score.

- Best of all, its cheap.

Here's what I don't like, but will tolerate:

- Its on Tara Danette Drive. Its clearly one of those neighborhoods where the developer decided to name the streets after his children. At least we're not on Faith Dawn Court or Austin Nicolas Drive. But still, I'm not looking forward to changing our address and having to spell that one out.

- The previous renter/owner had an unusual sense of style. The paint in the main family room is pretty odd. Its blue with a bright red trim, I don't despise it but I don't love it either. I'll link the house listing below and you can check it out yourself. Be sure to scroll through the photos (its on the right and there's 8 of them). Booker's room is light purple which kinda stinks as well. We're allowed to paint though, so hopefully we can fix it up to our liking.

Otherwise, I'm quite happy with our decision to rent this particular house. There were a few other houses that were closer/nicer/bigger. But they were either a little too expensive or else a little too old/run-down feeling. I think we'll be quite happy on Tara Danette Drive.

Feel free to check out the listing at this very lengthy site:
http://tarmls.rapmls.com/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=Tucson&PRGNAME=MLSPropertyDetail&ARGUMENTS=-N898131437,-N421528,-N,-A,-N25769260