A Great Trip with a Few Minor Annoyances

We drove to Fort Wayne, Indiana this last weekend to find a rental house and get acquainted with the town. It was a great trip. We really feel like we know Fort Wayne a little. We drove to Ben's new work building:



I think it's awesome. When I went to pick up our rental car on Friday I got to Enterprise at 11:30am and they said: Oh, you reserved this starting at 8am and now it's almost four hours later so we gave your car away. All we have left is a VW bug or a 12 passenger van. Wait, wait, wait. I reserved it. That means it's mine. You can't just give it away. It shouldn't matter what time I pick it up. I RESERVED it for the weekend. So I obviously chose the bug:




The girls thought it was awesome. By the end of the trip I realized that we were way too close to each other. It's just such a small car. Whatever, it worked. But it was annoying. I also did not find it very comfortable.

I had seven houses for us to look at a week ago Monday. By Thursday we were down to three. When we showed up on Saturday morning the realtor said we were down to one! I cannot believe how fast rentals disappear in Fort Wayne. Luckily, the realtor found one that wasn't even listed yet. Here it is:



I found out this afternoon that it is ours! We signed a six month lease and we are excited. It's a little smaller than we wanted but it's on the newer side, has lots of storage in the garage, and has a fantastic neighborhood and school. It is 1575 sq feet and was built in 2000. I will have my own bathroom and a walk-in closet. And just to brag because I can't help it: you can buy a 2500 sq ft house with a master suite, walk-in closets, and all the bells and whistles, 5-10 years old, all for $215,ooo. Fort Wayne is so incredibly inexpensive. It's awesome.

This is the school the girls will go to. Deer Ridge Elementary. Well, it's the playground and it's awesome! Brown Deer has the worst playground I've ever seen. It has so little for the kids to play on. This one has swings, teeter totters, climbing structures, and more. We just had to stop on Saturday to let the girls play here for awhile.


Audrey just being cute.

Okay, they are both just so cute!

Our neighborhood:

Another view:

One of the things I love about this area is that there are bike paths everywhere. I was told that you could ride for 15 miles and only bike through neighborhoods. They are all connected by bike paths. I am excited to go on family bike rides!

I had a super long post about how Enterprise sucks and messed up our weekend a little bit but Blogger erased it all when I tried to publish this post earlier. So I am not retyping it all because it was really long. And it was clever, witty, and really engaging (you'll just have to trust me on this). I'll sum it up this way: Enterprise gave away our RESERVED car because we came to pick it up at 11:30am and not 8am. Silly me. I thought that by RESERVING the car it was mine to pick up whenever. They told me when we returned the car we could put the billing stuff in Ben's name. However, we returned the car on Sunday and Enterprise was closed. It's closed on Sundays. Funny how they didn't tell us that. When we called this morning they told me we couldn't put the billing in Ben's name because the account was already closed. I said no way, fix it. When Ben got to Enterprise at the scheduled time they made him wait 30 minutes before even starting to help him. Needless to say we will never, ever rent from Enterprise again. Believe it or not this is much shorter than what I had written earlier (maybe it's a good thing it got erased).

Saturday night we had dinner with two of Ben's soon to be co-workers. They are both female and are so nice and wonderful. They are both married and one of them has two girls, Abby, 8, and Ava, 6. I know! So funny! The girls hit it off beautifully and had a blast playing together. I am excited for Ben to work with these ladies. It's nice to know he has good co-workers.

So to sum up: A great trip with a few minor annoyances.