A House Makes A Home For The Mattingly Family

Okay, here is what happened.

Ray was given one week of house-hunting leave. He flew into Phoenix and the next day we flew together as a family into San Jose, California. Our first stop was Moffett Field, an air force base that was now run by NASA. Even though it was no longer a military base, it still had military housing that we were hoping to get.

Well, the waiting list for Moffett housing is at least a year. We were put on a list of families still waiting for housing. We were number 20. So unless 19 families dropped off the list and a family already in housing planned on moving out in the next two days, there would be no chance of us getting into military housing.

So, we regrouped and decided to take another approach. We would locate exactly where Ray would be stationed and use that as are starting point in looking for a place to live.

We were given some advice to look at areas outside of Sunnyvale, which is where Ray would be working. There was rarely anything available in the Sunnyvale area. So, we moved our search to the surrounding towns - San Jose, Santa Clara and Mountain View.

For those of you who don't know, this is Santa Clara County area, more famously known as the heart of Silicon Valley. Almost all the major computer and Internet companies are here- Yahoo!, Ebay, Norton Security, MacAfee and Google, just to name a few. And of course, where there are multi-billion dollar companies there are sure to be multi-million dollar homes. Which for us meant places that were way beyond the income level of a U.S. sailor.

The search was long and frustrating. The rent for most two-bedroom apartments were more then what the average person in Arizona pays a month for a three-bedroom house! We looked at townhouses that started at $700,000.00 and apartments so small that we knew if we moved in most of our stuff would remain in storage for the next three years.

Now, please keep in mind that we were not trying to be picky, its just that we needed to find a place we could afford that would give us enough room for our growing family, (we hope to have two more kids in the next three years).

So, we find ourselves on Wednesday, still no closer to finding a place to call home. After looking at yet another disappointing townhouse we decide to just drive around the area and think of our next plan of action. As we are wondering through the neighborhoods when into a part of town that is just beautiful. The homes are the type you see in Martha Stewart or Better Homes and Gardens magazines. Ray suddenly spots a sign about an open house. We turn the corner and see a house for rent. We figured it wouldn't hurt to have a look. At the very least we could see how the other-half lives.

The house was beautiful. About 50 years old, the house has been own by the same couple for the last 30 years. They lived in it for the first five years and have been renting it out ever since. The house had history and character, with its own little cute quirks. We took the business card of the realtor but didn't seriously think we could afford a house like this.

Yet, something happened after seeing that house. We couldn't get the house out of our minds. No matter what else we looked at we ended up comparing to the house. And , "who on earth", we thought, "would have an open house on a Wednesday?" This had to be a sign, but there was only one way to find out. We called the realtor and discussed monthly rent. We put in an application and waited.

In the meantime we stalked the house. Evey chance we got, we went back to the house. Walked around the outside peeking into the windows and taking pictures of it with our camera phones. We stalked the place so much I was afraid that the neighbors were going to call the police on us.

The realtor, which we found our would be our property manager if the application was accepted, informed us that the owners were concerned about us being a military family. The previous renters were military and when the husband was given orders to go to Iraq, they broke their lease after only three months and the wife moved back to her parent's place. The owners didn't want the same thing to happen again. We assured them that even if Ray was shipped of somewhere else that I had no intentions of moving anywhere else- at least for a year.

On our way back to Hawaii we found out that we were approved for the house. After Ray officially left his command we returned to San Jose to sign our lease and get our keys to our new home!!!!

After a couple of nights of sleeping on the floor our furniture arrived from storage. It was like Christmas, unpacking boxes of stuff neither of us had seen since February.

And now, with only a three boxes of odds and ends left, we are starting to see this house slowly transform into a place we can now call, "Home".