We drove through quite a few places, not finding anything we really liked, and then happened upon a really nice looking place and decided to check it out. Nice grounds, nice pool, nice rec. area and stuff, and they offered a 1400 sf 3-bedroom condo, with garage, for about $450/month more than what we currently pay. That's a lot more than we're paying now, but we decided to check it out. Beautiful! Everything new, nice, wonderful looking, lots of space, 3rd floor nice nice nice. The only thing was that the living/kitchen didn't really get much light from the outside. We thought "well, we'll just move in and then pay the $300 to switch condos when another place with better natural light opened up.
So, excited about moving into Whisper Sky Condos, we went home and I got to work on the online application. I don't know how it started, but the natural light issue came up and we began reconsidering the big move we were about to make. Instead of guessing if this condo was the right choice or not after we had signed a lease, we went back and asked to see it again. This time, we went up by ourselves, and the first thing we did was go into the condo and make sure all the lights were off. At 2:30 in the afternoon, the living room was dim and the kitchen so dark it was unusable.
While many people like a dim, cozy cave-like atmosphere for their home, we have always enjoyed letting as much natural sun and air in as possible. There was no way this apartment was going to work, so we decided just to stay at Huntington Ridge (our current place) until something better opened up at Whisper Sky. Then, a few hours later, we got a return phone call about another townhouse I had asked about in a different complex. A 1250 sf, 2-story, 2-bed, 2.5-bath in a nice place just down the street. I said we'd come look at it even though I was thinking we'd just stay at our current location until something at Whisper Sky opened up.
Well, checking out that townhouse was the best move we could have made. While not quite as flashy and with less community perks than Whisper Sky, this townhouse is spacious, bright, open to greenspace, away from busy roads, across the street from a park, AND only about $100 more than what we currently pay in a place that gives us 3/4 less space 
(and a patio so small it's useless)! We got home, talked about it, and decided it's a GO: we'll be moving April 1st (granted our application and everything goes fine, which it should).We'll miss the year-round hottub (which has been closed for a month now) and won't really enjoy paying the one-month penalty
fee
for breaking our lease, but we'll welcome having a bigger place, nice balcony, two stories, nice big oval bathtub, green lawn right out in front of our place, and nobody walking by looking into our home. The new location might add an extra 7 minutes onto my daily bike ride, but we'll remain just as close (or far) from all of our favorite shopping, parks, and friends. The pictures on this post are of our new-home-to-be.
Oh, another thing: if you're looking for a great program to shrink your pictures for the web, thumbnails, or to just take up less space on your Mac hard drive, go download iResizer. Keeps the sweet Mac look and is super-easy to use.
