We bought a house!!!

I guess it's time to blog about our latest, and certainly biggest, purchase.

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!!

YEA!!!!

Many of you know we had put an offer on a short sale home back in mid October.

"Short sale," meaning it takes the bank FOREVER to clear it.

While waiting for the home to clear Lance and I had been looking on our favorite realty site, zipreality.com, almost daily just making sure nothing better came along.

Lance also received email updates of houses put on the market with our criteria in the area we wanted to live periodically.

Last week we received an update on this brand new house down the street from the one we had the offer on already.

We went to look at it and a couple others that were $80,000 more than this one.

We initially crossed this one off because it was smaller than the short sale home.

After MUCH thought and deliberation and spending 45 minutes alone with the house, aka NO realtor or builder, and taking some measurements Lance and I both felt really good and peaceful about buying this one instead of a bigger, more expensive one at this time in our lives.

Our plan was always to stay in this first home for about 5 years, pay off our loans, get Lance settled in his career, and then assess our situation and either upgrade to a bigger house (depending on the size of our family) or move back West, closer to family.

With that said...

We love this house. It's adorable and fits our family perfectly.

Here are a few of the perks for us:

* Three 4 year old girls live on the street, one being directly across the street and another being next door.

* An LDS family lives across the street

* It's close to the elementary school, within walking distance

* It's brand new so it's clean, clean, clean!!!

* Huge laundry room, big enough for a freezer and some food storage

* 4 bedrooms

* 2 1/2 baths, the kids bath has double sinks

* granite countertops

*gas fireplace

* a nice view from the upstairs windows

* a game room (whatever will I do with a living room that doesn't double as a play room???)

* a study (what will I do with my kitchen table NOT doubling as a desk, a craft table, a coloring table, a playdough table, a dinner table, etc...)

* closets (the short sale house had no coat or linen closets)

*big walk in closets in all the bedrooms

I could go on.

After a year of looking at houses I feel like we've found a really good fit for our family right now.

(I've uploaded these backwards and it's not letting me switch them)

Backyard

(the sod is being put in this week)

Study

Living Room

(the master bedroom is down that hallway on the left)

Kitchen

(it's bigger than it looks)

Master Bath

Bedroom

(This will probably be Beth's room...

it's my favorite because of the windows and view)

Breakfast Nook

Stairs and built-in bookcase

(Hmmm... what can I put in that bookcase that the kids won't break?)

Game Room

This is my least favorite part of the house.

I don't love the outside of it.

The surrounding houses are so much prettier...

Oh well...I like the inside, where I'll be spending most my time.

As of now our closing date is the week after Presidents Day...

although our realtor and lender know that we would like to close asap.

Lance's sisters are coming to visit over Valentines and Presidents Day and I would love to be moved in before then...

Until then I'll just plan, dream, and organize.