Finding an apartment in Juneau has been anything but easy. We looked into housing before we even started the moving process just to see our options. There were maybe 5 or 6 postings a day, if that. That sounds reasonable, except we have a dog and most places in Juneau didn’t accept dogs. We were lucky if we had the option of about 3 to 5 a week. The other problem we had, was we were still in Flagstaff. We tried for a few places, however, without being there nothing came through.

Before we left for Juneau we still had no idea where we were going to be living. We had plans to look for apartments before D went to work, but were relying on there being apartments for rent in those few short days. We continuously joked to our families that we were going to be the homeless ones. While we would joke about the Hobo cruise it was often thrown in that we were actually homeless and did kind of fit in. (I don’t mean to make light of a very serious situation in society, especially growing up where we did where many of them were left out in the cold, also I realize that we were not actually homeless we had the means to provide shelter for our family we just literally were without a home.)

Once we arrived in Juneau we were able to take a look at a place the second day. We headed over with open minds and were really not sure what to expect. We arrived early and waited for the landlord to show up. It was a 4-plex and we were looking that the entire 3rd story to ourselves. We were led up a flight of stairs into a quirky little apartment. I was surprised how big it was and liked the charm all the odd little spaces and angles added. I wasn’t however sold right away. I pulled D aside and we talked about it, we decided that a place to call our own was all we really wanted and that this place had been well taken care of and would provide us a good place to start here. We unfortunately were not the only ones at this time looking at it. So we frantically filled out our application and turned it in to him, at the time the guy seemed very excited about us and we were pretty confident in our chances.

We waited about 3 days with no response and decided to call him back. I called and the phone conversation was very odd. He seemed to sort of avoid the topic of making a decision even though he wanted renters right away. When I asked him if he had a timeframe he thought he would be able to make the decision within he told me “I am just worried about the baby and the dog with the stairs”. I reassured him that we were not worried at all and that he should not worry, however, he swiftly ended the conversation with “okay, well bye”. At this point I was a bit confused and convinced that we didn’t get the place. I let D know and we continued looking.

That Friday we saw and ad on Craigslist for a deal that almost seemed to sweet to be true. They stated that they would be showing it Saturday evening and so we made plans to see the apartment. That Saturday we went and viewed the apartment and we were sold. It wasn’t our dream home or apartment by any means but it was a spacious (which we were warned earlier to always double-check the square footage), clean, and in a good neighborhood. The landlord just asked us to provide our previous landlords number, and some information about us and she said she would let us know by the end of the weekend. We were excited, we couldn’t stop talking about how much we hoped for this place the price was great and they accepted dogs with no pet fee or additional deposit. We kept our phones on ring the whole rest of the weekend anxiously awaiting a call.

Sunday rolled around and it was a beautiful day. We got ready and made plans to go visit the beach. On our way there D’s phone rang and we frantically tried to grab it to answer. Unfortunately we were too late, but saw that the number was the landlord. We gave her a chance to leave a message. In the message she let us know that if we were still interested she would like to offer us the place. We were so excited!!

We called her back and let her know we were in fact interested. We arranged to meet that evening to get the keys. That sort of put us into overdrive. We had the dog and baby packed up to go to the beach and it was a beautiful day, a day weren’t going to pass up the opportunity to be outside. We went to the beach and made plans afterward to go and check out one of the furniture stores and look for a bed. We found nothing at the furniture store and decided to return to the furniture store we went and checked out earlier that morning. We got a bed ordered and planed to have it delivered the next day. This was really happening, we had a place to call our own!

I have to admit I was sort of hoping to finally have a house to call our own, even if we were just renting, but now being moved in I realize we just needed a place to call our own and a place to start our journey.