We finally made it to Napa.. saw 6 wineries, had lots of samples (we had a driver, not to worry) and it was great. We hit Opus One, Silver Oak (our sentimental favorite), and a few others. The wine was great, we had awesome company, and lots of fun. Ask Aviva for her version 
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| 2009-09-27 Napa |
We’ve been in lots of hotels, for weeks and weeks now.. here’s how I think the finally tally will come out.
We made it! But getting there is half the fun, or so they say. We took a bunch of pics along the way, which are enhanced by Picasa and Google Maps letting me plot them along the highways we drove (mostly I-80). Enjoy!
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| The Drive from CO to CA |
The Saitz family are now residents of Northern California. With a final stop for some In-and-Out burger, we checked-in to our hotel, where we’ll live for 6 weeks, when we’ll move into our house – assuming all goes well 
The hard thing is our address, we don’t really have one. Our mail continues to go to CO, and will be forwarded here.
As for the ride, 1,300 miles in 2.5 days, my nerves are a little frayed, but nobody is worse for the wear.. and the behavior of the entire car was really quite good!
The first day here was nice, the kids swam, Aviva did laundry, I went for my first California-resident run, and we grabbed some dinner.
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We moved out, sold the house (actually closed the sale) – and are now in a hotel, where we’ll be for the next 7.5+ weeks. It’s been good so far, 24 hours in and all, we all hope the rest goes as smoothly. We have a nice 2 bedroom suite, that allows the dogs, and has a nice kitchen, so all things considered, we’re doing ok.
Stay tuned for more mundane updates.
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Starting this week, we’ll be living in hotels.. I made a simple map to keep track of our whereabouts..
We left Cali liking a few houses, but unsure if we’d be able to get any, or even if we wanted any. We weren’t even 100% sure where we wanted to live. Well, that’s all been sorted out. We loved Los Altos and Palo Alto, and had seen houses in both. But one of the houses we really liked was in Palo Alto, but we weren’t sure if we wanted to pull the trigger. But after we learned that the house was getting a bid and having seen other houses start to get plucked off the market, we knew the market there was heating up and we’d be better to act sooner, rather than later. So we put in a bid. After some back and forth with the sellers and their agent – and competing with another set of buyers, last night we got the call from Judy Decker, our agent, that we had gotten the house! We now are in contract to buy 863 Warren Way, Palo Alto, CA.
And here’s the map:
View where we might live in a larger map
I’ll be posting some more pictures soon..
the pics:
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| Warren |
This past weekend, all 4 of us, headed out to California to look for a house. Progress, yes. Bought a house, not quite. We looked at a bunch of houses in Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Los Altos. The goals are:
We have a great agent working with us, Judy Decker, who took us around and gave us a sense of the areas and helped us evaluate the different houses we saw. Stay tuned!
Map of area:
View where we might live in a larger map
I just plotted out the road trip to Cali, 1,315 miles! 1,316 is you include Miles Saitz. We’ll get a Residence Inn room in Salt Lake City and then Reno.. but here’s the trip:
View Larger Map
Aviva and I flew out last weekend to look at some houses and neighborhoods.. In general, there’s hope. Some of the houses were real lame, like the one that had fresh baked cookies to distract you from the hunk of crap that was the house.. we weren’t fooled. We saw a bunch of areas and it just helped give us a sense for what’s out there..
