How's it going? Pretty good. Yeah. Good weather today, man. Finally, Hey everybody. It's Tristan Emond with mindful living Realty. Welcome back to my YouTube channel, where I talk everything about moving to rapid city and the wonderful things about rapid city and the black Hills. Today. We're also talk to the Jones's to talk to them about their moving to rapid city story.

For about the past four years, I knew that I wanted to move out of our home state and I had been looking and James was not really on board at the time. And so, um, I, last year I wanna say that it was about a year ago this month. Um, a friend of mine that I had been going to like a women's book club with, she had said that her grandmother had told her all these, you know, great things about South Dakota.

And I said, oh my gosh, tell me more. What is, what is up with South Dakota? And so she said that, um, This side, rapid city in particular was a lot like where we lived and James and I lived in a small mountain community and there were trees and a lot of snow and just fresh air . And, um, so I started to look into it and I thought that rapid city was just kind of more of our jam versus Sioux falls.

Um, and. so we went to go see them, right? Yeah. Do you wanna take that prior to go see 'em and they were very excited about moving and they made it sound really good. And I guess in that moment, I just kind of started thinking what's really keeping me here in California. Uh, don't have a deep family connection there other than my in-laws and my mother, but there was really nothing to rationalize.

Staying there, given everything that was going on, having lost my job twice last year, having to change professions, uh, we just weren't thriving. Years before I was the one that brought up possibly moving because of where we live. I knew it was beautiful. And I figured there's other places in this country that might be easier to get buy in that are just as beautiful if not even more.

So, so seeing her excitement about just them moving said, Hey, how can I not do this for her? Let's give it a shot. You know, I mean, as long as we're together, we're all right. Let's see what else is out there? Yeah. So after, um, James told me in our grocery store parking lot, um, that we could do this, um, obviously his pre-reqs were, I have to be able to find a job and we have to be able to sell our house.

Yes. And so, um, I need to find a house and we need to find a. And so for me, because of us purchasing a home prior that year, I kind of already knew the steps that we needed to take. And I knew that we needed to find a realtor. We needed to find a lender and really just start that process. So I got on YouTube right away and just started, you know, putting South Dakota.

Um, realtors, um, South Dakota in itself. So it was not only researching realtors, but I was researching what the state was even about because at the time we didn't have the luxury to, um, put a lot of money into traveling, especially with, um, the way that our state at the time was with their travel conditions.

It wasn't like we can just get up and go here and there and everywhere. So, um, I saw a man in a chicken suit. I believe it was and was like, what is this guy about? And lo and behold, it was you . And I started watching a lot of your videos. Um, there was a few of 'em where I think you made a makeshift chair out of snow.

I believe it was. Yes, I did that. I didn't see that one. Yeah. So I started looking into. Yours. And, and, and so what really caught my eye was you got in your car and you went to the supermarket and you started to show the prices of meat and eggs and your favorite ice cream . And, um, I just really appreciated, um, Your quirkiness can that be a compliment.

I take it as he knows. OK. He knows. Yeah. So, um, I started showing my husband, um, uh, your videos and things like that, and we just kind of knew right away. I was just like, you know, I will say, she says, I want to go with this guy. And I I've learned a long time ago. Yeah. Okay. Fine. No problem. Do it, send him an email.

Yeah. And that's how that started. Yeah. So he just kind of went along with whatever, but that's what really spoke to me was just your time and dedication to go out and, and show what it was really like. Yeah. Not the houses. Yeah. You didn't sit in your office and you didn't say, well, these are the stops.

These are the numbers. Um, give me a call. You know, it wasn't anything like that. It was like, no, let me show you what life is really like out here. And you had more videos like. But the grocery store went because we have six children that spoke volumes to me cuz that's where I spend the majority of my time.

Sure. And money. Huh? And money. Yeah. So I did that. So, uh, James started looking for jobs right away and he was able to acquire a job. Yeah. They, I applied a lot of stuff on indeed. I just applied to a few different places and I got a response back from Sams club here in town. And literally I talked to one guy, one.

um, set up a phone interview to call him the next day he wasn't there. So I spoke to this other lady and we just had a conversation. It wasn't anything. She wanted to know a little bit about me, but we just had a conversation. And the things, once I got here, I understood what the job market was like and how people need people.

So just with my experience and everything, um, she was able to offer me a position as a lead, which actually worked out better for us. Hired me offered me the job in January and held it until March when we got here. And so three days later after we got here, I started work. Yeah. Yeah. Kind worked together.

Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm yeah. Yeah.

Um, I'll say that, you know, just, we, obviously, we didn't have a luxury of coming here, so we had to look at pictures, photos, all that different houses that were listed. Um, just you being. available and willing to drive wherever we wanted you to drive, to go show us a house, you know, that helped out a lot.

And what I've really appreciated of not only your knowledge of the area and your experience, but when you would go into the home, you would take your shoes off. And you were very meticulous about feeling, um, the floors with your feet so that you could tell us. This is a little off here and you were able to be our eyes, um, because we would zoom with you.

Um, but, and just your willingness to do that, of not being like, no, you need to come and we need to do this, which was an option, but just understanding our circumstance, your willingness to say, okay, I'm gonna go a little bit above and beyond here and take you guys to different locations. Zoom it. And, um, You know, oh, here's the cabinets.

Like just things that we wouldn't have thought to make. I've never, I would've never to do over zoom. Right. Because I wouldn't even known if I was here to understand what the varying, um, angles on the floor wouldn't mean. I would've no idea. Right. I would've just thought, Hey, they just built it weird, you know?

So you telling us about foundations and how things move around here that that really helped out. Yeah. And just, um, your knowledge of. The weather change, cuz obviously it's different in our home state and what we're used to. Um, but just how that coincided with the particular area of, um, cause we have no idea.

I mean it is, things are so different in different parts of the town as far as weather goes. Yeah. It's bizarre. It's okay here and you go out here, there's some mosquitoes and then you go over there. It's crazy windy and it's just, you know, you go out the box out there and the wind is just insane. You know, and then come back.

It's just, we wouldn't known any of that. We just figured, I mean, we've only been in California our whole life, so, yeah. Right. And maybe it's colder in one area, but we don't know. You don't know how things are around here. And even though, um, you were local to the area, I found that you were very, um, you kept it light and you kept it fun, but also professional, um, and honest.

Yeah. And honest. Yeah. And, um, you were very, um, Professional in the manner of entering that person's home and just, you know, not leaving the lights on or not leaving the door unlock or telling us, or just telling us I'm not loving this house for you guys. Yeah. And just because of our basic needs, you know, what we needed, what we needed.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

How we were able to get this house is, um, what I really appreciated about your services is I told you that we needed a lender and you gave me, um, like your top five of who you would go with. And it was like, okay, this person does this, this one does this. This is who I prefer. And so we were able to go with the lender that you had, um, referred to us.

Or referred, excuse me. And, um, then we got that whole process started of seeing exactly what we were able to afford and what was in our budget. And just knowing, um, leading with that stuff first is always best because then, you know, You could've been looking at million dollar homes for us. we've found some big ones.

You would've found nice ones, nice place of time. Um, but, uh, having that step done, um, and even though you were willing to drive half an hour, 45 minutes to go look at a home, none of the houses were. Available to us because either a offer was in already or 50 offers, were you in? Yeah. And so we had to be really aggressive in that particular market at that time.

And so, um, this house had been sitting for a few months and, uh, we found out that it was a governor's home. And through our lender, we found out that we were able to qualify for it. And at the drop of the hat, she told me that I needed to get you over there immediately. Um, because houses were just slipping through our fingers at this point.

And, um, just the fact that you dropped what you were doing. hurry up and quickly get over here and again, go through the house as you typically do and checking everything out, um, in the snow. If I remember correctly in the snow, absolutely. Um, you've gone in rain and snow. You've gone through a few different conditions to get over here and, um, yeah, you walked through the house and you showed it to us and we were able to put in an offer and it was accepted.

Yeah. So, um, Yeah. That's how we got the house. I think one of the coolest things about the property that we got for you guys is fact that upstairs is new. Yes. Yeah. And basically we got kind of a newer home on the upstairs. Mm-hmm , it's all home new. Yeah. It's all, it's just crazy. Yeah. The price we got for it.

I mean, and we, yeah. And we found the bigness of it for, you know, and we found out, uh, after moving here, you know, just the neighbors and stuff, they told us that they saw. Dig this thing out, pour a whole new basement foundation, everything. So everything is new. Everything is new. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't have that big of a basement downstairs because it was a one bed, one bath house.

Okay. And so they demolished it, redid and dug everything out and put the concrete walls up and everything. So everything in this house is new. So thank you.

Been here eight months now. Uh, has it been that long? Yeah, it has. I just did the math the other day. And I'm just glad your spring. Yeah. I love that everything is close. I mean, we just have to drive down a mountain to do everything. Yeah. You know, um, some places are remote. We have friends that live. quite a bit of ways away, like going to see them, you know, they have properties and stuff with some acreage and it's nice, but I do like the convenience of everything being close.

Right. You know, we're able to do everything in town. We don't in California, especially where we're from. You have to drive quite a bit, you know, to most things. I mean, there are stores and stuff like that, but we would be in one town. Our church was in another town, you know, Stuff like that, or even just a commute to work.

You know, the lady that I used to work for are some of her places where I would go help out. I mean, on a good day with traffic would take maybe 45 minutes to an hour. But when you're trying to drive home, I mean, two and a half, three hours to get home, you know, so that's. That's halfway across the state for us.

Yeah. And it's 10 minutes to work for me. Yeah. You know, so I don't have enough to sit here and leave an hour early to deal with that. Add a couple hours to my Workday just because of driving, you know? And then I work late. So coming home, not a big deal. It's just, you know, a few minutes and I'm here and there's no traffic, so I'll probably get in here another 10 minutes.

But I do like that my kids can ride their bikes on the streets. They can play outside, you know, I mean, it's a relatively quiet neighborhood. I have nice neighbors, which is really cool because we've had some bad ones, you know, in the past. But, um, not because of anything we did I would think your way but yeah, I mean, I do like that we were able to, um, kind of just fit in pretty quick.

I mean, we made some friends right away with where we were staying prior to moving. Um, then once we started a community with school for our kids, you know, that's been working out, found a church finally, um, after a while, and finally starting to get roots here and we've done this before, so we know that it takes time.

Uh, when we first moved up to our last house, mean it took us a while, but you know, after about a few years, you know, I mean it was home. So, you know, we're getting used to everything, but you know, so far so good, the direction we're headed, the opportunities that we're here. I mean, you start getting here and you think, okay, this is a great home.

It's a few minutes from downtown. We got it at a decent price. Um, you know, just looking at the way that the market is going on the low end, we're still up, you know, it's still worth more than what we paid for it on the high end. Like can't believe that they're giving us that kind of an estimate, but I told her, you know, in a few years, this could pay off in a big way and we could get into that house that has a few acres, you know?

So I always look at it as a stepping stone to the next thing. So I told her about our last house. Once you get in and you own a. It changes your position and what you can do, cuz if we hadn't bought that home in 2019, we wouldn't be here today. Mm-hmm right. Yeah. So yeah, I think what I really enjoy about, um, rapid city in general, what they do say is true.

If you don't like the weather, just wait a minute. It'll change. Um, because we have seen, um, it be so windy in what we're normally used to in regards to wind being in like on top of a mountain, um, versus here it's very different vastly different, but I like the wind yeah, I like the wind. I like the cold. I like snow and things like that.

And so, um, within like a few minutes, it was gone. So, um, I'm a little disappointed in the snow though. Cause just wait, I just, wait. It's come March. We'll get to know it's snowed a few times and I went out so excited and there was nothing so, um, but I'm excited for um, the Christmas season to come up. I see that they already set up the ice skating ring.

Um, downtown there's oddly enough, there's a lot to do downtown in regards to like, especially the summer, we were able to just be walking downtown and they were holding concerts for the splash pad and they have a good, um, movie theater downtown, where they ran a summer program for the kids to go watch from pool passings that we had, they could go to the different pools and stuff.

That was nice. That was nice. Yeah, the indoor water park was nice. Um, that was fun. Um, but just the people really is probably my favorite thing. Once the weather, you know, starts to get a little bit warmer and stuff, cause I know we're heading in the winter, but once it gets warmer, then I'll start to, I wanna start to do more of the outdoorsy things that everybody talks about and you know, really start to see.

more than just Mount Rushmore, which was pretty awesome. But yeah, I haven't really had a chance to do much more, but I know there's a lot more out there cuz people do it. You know, they're always talking about it. That's our, I wanna looking forward to yeah. Cuz a lot of locals will agree that, you know, you could do fishing.

If there's lake, you can fish in it. There's hunting, there's hiking. And we buy our meat at the farmer's market now, which is very new to us. instead of. The grocery store talking about why don't you buy half a cow? Happy? Are you talking about people do that? Yeah, we are now looking into buying whole pigs cows.

Mm-hmm all of those things. Yeah. We've bought a beef from a whole beef from a rancher for the past. I don't know, eight years maybe. Yeah. Well, I definitely need that information from you. Cause that is a thing. And I, so I think that South Dakota is definitely wearing on us, you know, cuz um, in our home state it was a lot of, um, convenience, convenience, and this is like the local health food store and things like that.

And I think just because of how the community is, you want to support your local. Farmers. There's a lot of farm tables here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think it's neat too, because you learn that people out here do a lot more. I mean, I knew some people who would do stuff, you know, for themselves back home, but not a whole lot.

It was just so easy, but just learning like, okay, there are skill sets that people have out here that might be valuable to learn. And then also, you know, you meet people and you start talking to, 'em like, Hey, I'm sure you how to do this. Oh, okay, great. So now we're talking to people about. Canning and different things like that, that you can, it's crazy.

Right. But they're like, they're willing, they're willing. They, they just like to show people how to do it. And then I've in turn learned a few things, just working around the house and making improvements and stuff. Hey, now I can show somebody else how to do that. So it's kind of. A lot of people have a lot of information and a lot of skills and stuff around here that I think are valuable to know in, in our home state, it was very much to yourself.

It was very much like you do for yourself. And we didn't really know what to do for ourselves in case of an emergency. And while you're out here, I love that you touched on that of the skillset. Yeah. It's just, people are like, oh, I don't know how to do this. Then I'm gonna learn how to do this. And I'm gonna share the information.

Um, I recently went to, so the city of rapid city itself holds free. Outdoor. Um, I guess it's called adventure. Outdoor adventure. Yep. That what said? Yep. Yeah. So it's just this building that every month they have certain skill sets from, um, shooting gun safety, Dutch oven cooking. Um, right now they have ice fishing on how to ch so or archery and it's free.

It's free. You can just sign up and you can go and they have an instructor to teach you, um, basic skills that I feel that we should have known our whole life. But unless you really like the outdoor kind of life, then this is definitely the place to be. Oh. And the simplicity of everything, you know, we wanted only did get your driver's license.

I mean, we made an appointment, but I was in and out in 15 minutes. That's unheard of in California. Yeah. Or even going to the doctor's office. It's so fast and you know, not so rushed. And I was like, well, you don't have hundreds of thousands of people in this county. You know, everybody trying to go to the doctor, you make an appointment, you gotta schedule it like a month and a half hour or something like that.

Um, I like that. And. Again, just everything being so simple, registering my cars. I mean a nightmare. You wouldn't do it. You wouldn't wait until the very last minute to do it back in California, which by the way, I like that we don't have to smog our vehicles. what you're talking. I was just thinking that, cause we got an oil change and I saw a smog sticker in the windshield.

I was like this car smog. We haven't even talked about that every year, every year, every year, the price is going. Um, even though it's in an old car, we got both our cars. Well, we didn't pay a whole lot to register to cars. No, but for doing both of 'em that would've been maybe one, you know, in back in California and we had to do that twice.

So yeah, I, I like that part of it, just the, um, You know, just being able to live your life and mm-hmm, , you know, pay for the things there are services and stuff to offer, but it's reasonable. Um, not paying as much for, you know, utilities and stuff like that. You save some money there, insurance wise and compared to what we were paying for, for sure what we were paying, it's definitely a slash and what we were paying, um, just to run this house, I'd say, um, probably a.

Yeah. Like our bills average, like about $400, which is way less than what we were paying in California. Like our gas bills, only $10 and running. I mean, everything here pretty much is electric. Right? So, um, running the electricity, running the air conditioner during the summertime would never do it in California.

You're gonna have an $800 light bill. Oh yeah. You know, so I think the most I got up to here was 260, but that was running it almost every. You know, and all day, so, okay. I can do that. Yeah. Would never consider doing that in California. It's since insane how much it cost. Yeah. So lastly, I mean, you know, we just wanna thank you for your time and your energy that you, you know, Helped us get our home.

I have always wanted a brand new home. So you were able to make that dream come true in that. And we just appreciate you, your company, your family. Um, it really feels like, um, even over zoom while we were still in California, it still felt like a friendship, you know? And you just didn't leave us here and really quickly, I love this story.

You just happened to stop by and you brought a map and you listed out hand hand wrote all of the places that we needed to go see and, and everything that we needed to visit. And to me, that just meant so much of like, You know, they're new. I want to do this for them. So that has always been one of my favorite stories about you besides the chicken suit.

So on your videos yeah. We're, we're totally grateful and yeah, you'll forever be our friend. We are just so thankful yeah. That you did what you did. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks guys. For ready for watching. Be sure to watch this video on the reasons why people are still moving to rapid city in 2022, and then check out this Playlist.

Thanks. Again, everybody have a wonderful day and remember, love were you live.