Our New House

It has been a whirlwind of two weeks.  After matching we made an appointment with a realtor and then headed out to Temple the next weekend.  We saw all the houses in two days, and then re-toured the ones we liked.  This last week we have been negotiating, inspecting the house, and negotiating some more. Buying a house is quite an involved process!

But now the contract is final! We close on April 26 and move in May 5. I know what you are thinking... when is Angela due?!? Yeah sometime between May 3 and May 8.  We figured that moving to a new city would be much more exciting if there was the added suspense of when our baby would come... I've been reading up on how to deliver a baby in a car.  Luckily we have my parents in town to lean on during that time.

Well now for the stuff you really care about.  Drum roll...

 The house is in a really nice neighborhood.  They have a neighborhood pool, and the Elementary School is just up the street.

Here's the backyard.  There are beautiful big windows that look out to the backyard from the living room and breakfast room.

 Our favorite feature of the house was the nice open kitchen.  The breakfast room, living room, and kitchen are all open to each other.

  The living room is a good size, and has a small fireplace in one corner.

The house has four bedrooms and two bathrooms.

And we have a laundry room!!! In our 5 years of being married we have never had a washer/dryer in our apartment.

We are so excited for out new house!

The "renting stage" of life

Things are looking good on the house. If all goes well we will close on April 26th. (photos will come when things are more official in a day or two).  In the meantime please enjoy our top ten worst moments of renting. (Totally stole the idea from my cousin Jamie who just bought a house and shared her top 5 worst neighbors)  When you read this you may wonder why we stayed in this place the whole time, paying 4 digit numbers in rent every month. Ummm I am asking myself that same question right now!

10. Tiniest bathroom ever. When we moved into our complex we lived in a one bedroom apartment, after deciding that we were not going to buy a condo here we decided to move to a two bedroom. When we moved across the courtyard I walked around the new unit and saw our bathroom and started to cry. It was half the size of our old bathroom and our old bathroom wasn't very big. There was no counter space, no drawers, no linen closet, just one cupboard under the sink and a narrow space in front of the tub. I somehow managed to organize the space really well to fit everything we needed  in there, but I have hated that bathroom every day of living here.

9. Loudest dishwasher ever. Seriously, the thing sounds like it is grinding all our silverware to dust. The first time my mom came to visit and turned on the dishwasher she thought something was wrong. "No that's how it always sounds"

8. Cockroaches. Every once in a while we find a gross black cockroach wandering around our apartment. Just a few weeks ago Christine came to me in the living room very distressed, "Mommy there is a bug in your room". There indeed was a cockroach in my room (dying a slow death after eating the poison in the cockroach boxes we have behind our fridge). When we first moved in, I would scream in terror and run to the other room while Jeff killed the intruder. But after years of experience I can now calmly kill the nasty thing pretty efficiently. The key is to be calm. If you move too fast the cockroach will bolt- usually under the stove or somewhere unreachable. But it you slowly back away, grab a flip flop (or some other cockroach killing tool) and then go in for the kill, you will be successful.

7. Valet Trash Service. You would think I would like for someone to come to my door every night to pick up my trash. But no, they don't have nice boxes outside our apartment to place the trash bags in, they gave us small ugly black garbage cans that we have to keep inside our apartment. When they introduced this new "service" a few months ago we complained about having to keep the garbage can inside and they told us that they didn't want the eyesores to be outside uglying up the place "and you think we don't mind the ugly thing inside?" The next issue is the matter of what to do with the garbage can we already own- the nice white garbage can with a step lever. Garbage cans are surprisingly expensive and we knew we were going to be moving in a few months so we weren't exactly going to be getting rid of our nice $50 garbage can that we will need after we move, so we have two garbage cans in our small dinky kitchen (we rebelled for a little while and kept it outside anyways until we got a few notices that we would be fined if we didn't keep it indoors). Then there is the matter of the service actually picking up the garbage. We are only allowed to place the garbage cans out after 6 pm (since they are so ugly) and then the service men come at unpredictable times and somedays (okay most days) not at all. We joke that they only come on full moons. It is very common to put our trash out at night and find it still there in the morning and have to bring the trash out to the dumpster anyways. We told the management that we would like to opt-out of the service, return the stupid trash can to them and just keep bringing the trash out ourselves. Nope, not an option because they supposedly have nowhere to store the trash cans.  sheesh. The worst part? they added this trash service because people wanted to have recycling bins but recycling bins had too many restrictions so they felt valet trash service was a good alternative. What?! where is the logic behind that?

6. Parking lot theft. After having two bikes stolen (with big metal u locks on them) we decided it would be cheaper for Jeff to ride the bus than to keep buying new bikes every few weeks. (these were not expensive bikes, they were cheaper than our insurance deducible so we couldn't even submit a claim on them)

5. Neighbors who don't know how to do laundry.  Let me start by explaining that in our apartment complex we don't have washer and dryers in our apartment units, we have several laundry room around the complex. These laundry rooms are free so there is nothing to discourage people from running small loads of laundry. I have gone into the laundry room to do some laundry only to find all the washers filled up and when I open the washing machine to see if there are clothes in there what do I find? TWO WASHCLOTHS and nothing else. really? you did an entire load of laundry to wash two washcloths? another time the washing machine was filled with one pair of socks and three baby outfits. The worst part about it was that the mom came in while I was loading my clothes into another washer and I watched her pour her laundry softener into the washer and run it through a second round.

4. Leaking AC. (I already shared this story on the blog, but it deserves to make the list) Immediately after moving in the air conditioner started leaking all over Jeff's clothes. We called the service man he came over and supposedly fixed it. We washed all of Jeff's clothes that got wet, hung them back up, and turned on the supposedly fixed AC and it started dripping again. We called maintenance back only to learn that the guy came over saw that it wasn't leaking any more (because we had turned the AC off)  and thought the problem was fixed. Luckily after the second time, with us standing over his shoulders this time to make sure he actually fixed it, we had no more problems with it.

3. Neighbors who do not know how to use a garbage disposal. We had these neighbors who used to live next door to us who would chop up an entire cabbage in their garbage disposal. How did we know this? because our pipes are connected and they would clog the pipes and water would start rising up into our kitchen sink. dirty water filled with chopped up cabbage. And every time this happened (yes, it happened on several occasions) we would call maintenance only to learn that they were already over at our neighbors unclogging their sink.

2. Bad Pipes. One morning I woke up hearing a weird glug glug glug noise coming from our bathroom I chose to ignore the weird sound and went back to sleep. A little while later Jeff went into the bathroom to shower, except he couldn't because the tub was filling up with a black sludge, and it was coming up the floor boards too, and the carpet in front of the bathroom was wet. A call was made to the management but Jeff was only able to leave a message, so he headed outside to find one of the maintenance workers. By that time the sludge drained from the tub. The worker came over only to spray everything down with a nose and eye-burning chemical spray and pull up the carpet and bring in a big fan to dry it all out. Jeff asked him what he was going to do about actually fixing the problem (instead of only cleaning up the mess it made) and he said there must have been a clog in the pipes further down and it must have worked itself out.

1. Flooding: During a tropical storm it was raining really hard for several hours. Jeff was at school studying for his Step One test. During big rainstorms it is very common for the courtyard of our complex to flood about 6 inches because the drainage here is really good. But this day the water kept rising and I kept nervously looking out the window watching the rising water get closer and closer to our front door. As it continued to rain, it finally  reached the doors and  kept rising higher. As I was watching the rising water levels out the french doors in our bedroom (in the back of our apartment) I noticed the carpet was wet. Oh great! I called Jeff and he was very casual about it, telling me I was overreacting. I called the apartment management and they said lots of people were having flooding and they would come over after the rain had stopped. sheesh, what do I do in the meantime? I raced around the bedroom pushing towels in front of the doors and sticking garbage bags underneath all our furniture and moving everything that could be moved off the floor. About 30 minutes later the water had made it's way across the whole bedroom. I called Jeff again in a panic. I told him the water had reached the closet, and that is when he finally believed me that there was a real problem going on at home. He wanted to come home but I told him if he came home I wouldn't open the door for him because there was a foot of water in front of our door and there was already enough water in the house. The rain finally stopped, and the apartment management sent a team over to move all our furniture from our bedroom and Christine's bedroom into our living room and dining room (the front of the apartment had managed to stay dry fortunately). They ripped up all of our carpet and brought in a billion fans and we were left to pack up and stay with Jeff's parents for several days while everything dried up. You would think after that the complex would do something  to improve the seal on the doors, replace something, caulk something, Nope. After that incident last summer I would get really nervous every time we had a heavy rain. Luckily we are moving before hurricane season comes back.

Housing Hunting

We went to Temple this weekend to go house hunting!  It was hard work.  There are a lot of new houses in Temple, and they are all very similar.  So keeping them straight was quite the challenge.  We made a checklist for each house we saw and took pictures of our favorite and worst features.  Even with all of these helps it was a challenge!

... but in the end we found a house we love and made an offer.  Now we are waiting expectantly to hear back whether the offer was accepted.  If we get it, we'll post some pictures of the house!

Match Day: We're going to Temple

Well the results are in... and we matched to Scott and White General Surgery Program in Temple, Texas.  We are really excited!

Despite how this cool "red carpet" photo looks, Match day is a rather informal event at Baylor.  It was perfect for bring Christine to.  She could run around in the courtyard with all of the other kids.  Christine was really excited as we were waiting, not because of the envelope that held our future in it, but because of all the pretty balloons everywhere.

We all waited out in the big courtyard, took some group photos and listened to some speeches.  Then they brought out a chalk board with all of our envelopes stapled on it.  We counted down to ten and then made a mad rush to pull off each of our envelopes... of course it was crazy all around the chalk board, so we felt that it might not be the ideal place for Angela, in her third trimester, and little Christine to be standing while everyone else went berserk.  So after I grabbed my envelope, we went to an open area and got our friends to record us opening our envelope.

It was a perfect Match Day.  We went home.  I called the Realtor that we had found in Temple, and we are heading out next week to find a house.

 So the big question is why in the world did the Hamakers choose to go to Scott and White?  There were certainly many disappointed people on both sides of our family who were all voting for different cities that I had interviewed in.
Maybe I should start by saying that Temple has a railroad museum! (I think that alone will convince Angela's dad).  No, but in all seriousness it was a very difficult decision for us. I think I knew we would rank Temple highly when I saw how comfortable Angela felt driving around there.  Neither one of us love big cities or traffic.  Living 4 years in downtown Houston has only increased this dislike.  From the beginning we knew if we were going to stay in Houston we would be moving to the suburbs.  We liked Temple because we could live right by the hospital and my commute would be very short.  I loved the program.  Even though Temple only has 60,000 people, the hospital is the main hub for all of the central Texas region between Dallas and Austin.    The facilities are very impressive, and the town is really just the hospital.  We loved the residents.  Most of the residents had families and we seemed to really fit in.  We loved the hospital leadership who I could tell were the kind of mentors I will thrive under.  Other perks... free parking.  Seriously, do you know how much parking costs in the Texas Medical Center?!  But in the end the decision came down to where did the Lord want us to go.  So I'm sure all of our families will understand that we have no idea what trials we have coming in the next five years.  I've heard some pretty horrible stories about General Surgery Residency programs.  I don't know what our little family is up against, but I know who does know.  As the Proverb directs, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding."  

Fourth Year

Oh what do you during your fourth year of Medical School?

Well, it is not totally responsibility free, but we do have substantially more free time, which I have been really enjoying.

Angela is well on her way to bringing a new son into the family, which we are getting more and more excited about.

Angela has very hard pregnancies with bad nausea followed by early labor.  So it has been a wonderful blessing to have so much time at home to help out.  It has also given me a new appreciation of how hard it is to take care of a 2 year-old full time.  I thought I understood how hard it was, but until you are doing it day in and day out, I don't think you can really understand how taxing it can be.  I have also realized just how wonderful it is as well.  When my patience has been at the breaking point, my little Christine will do something that just melts my heart.  One of those moments came on Valentine's Day.

On Valentine's Day Angela asked her why she loves her Daddy and this is what she said:

I love you Daddy because you pray with me, because you watch Mickey Mouse with me, plays go to Costco with me, when you lay on my Minnie Mouse couch with me, because you sing the rubber ducky song, because you play in the bath tub with me, because you play go-getters with me, because you go to the park with me, because you sing "go walking" to me, because you make waffles for me.  I love you sooo much.

Angela wrote all of these on heart post-it notes for Valentine's day.  I wanted to write them down so I would never forget them.

Other things we have been up to:
We have done some cooking together.  We made Pioneer Women's Blackberry Cobbler for the annual Ward Chili Cook-off, and we won 3rd place! (I can't believe it didn't win first place, but there is no accounting for taste :) ).  We got a whole half-gallon of Cookies and Cream Blue Bell Ice Cream.

Our big project for January was to de-clutter the house.  It appears over the last 4 years we have accumulated quite a bit of junk.  I finally broke down and threw out most of my old BYU notes.  It was hard to part with them.

During February, I had to go to school more often, so Angela was left to do some projects on her own.  She  is having typical nesting urges, but since we are hopefully moving before the baby arrives she's been channeling that energy into boy sewing projects.  I have been amazed by all she has done.  You can check out a few of the items on her blog. We are going to be as ready as we can be when that boy arrives.

We have also been looking through houses online, reading books about buying houses, and doing research on everything from taxes to realtors.  All in all we have been very busy, but with things that are not that interesting to post about.

Friday is the big day when we find out where I have matched to.  So we'll keep everyone posted.

Lastly, during your fourth year of medical school you take a lot of classes in the "soft sciences"- like poetry in medicine.  Now I admit, I was prepared for a nice hour and half snooze when I found out we were having a lecture on the poetry of medicine, but the class actually was quite enjoyable.  Our professor, an old retired doctor, shared with us some of his favorite poems.  He said that Dr. DeBakey (the most famous Baylor Surgeon) one night was having trouble sleeping after losing a patient.  He said he turned to an anthology of poetry book and found solace in its writing.  To really understand why this is such a remarkable story you have to know some of the other awful stories told about Dr. DeBakey.  It seems that even the hardest of surgeons must turn somewhere for peace.  If only he had opened a Book of Mormon, he might have found peace forever.

Poetry, though not as good as scripture, can still be very powerful and make one reflect.  This poem was one they shared in the class that I enjoyed.


She never puts her toys away;
Just leaves them scattered where they lay -
I try to scold her, and I say
"You make me mad!"

But when to bed she has to chase,
The toys she left about the place
Remind me of her shining face,
And make me glad.

When she grows up and gathers poise
I'll miss her harum-scarum noise,
And look in vain for scattered toys -
And I'll be sad.
- Nick Kenny