Home Sweet Home

Here I am. Sitting in my very own living room in my very own house. Eating my very own breakfast (a donut and about 3/4 of a bowl of peaches...one of the peaches had a weird texture and I couldn't eat those slices because they made me gag...ah, such is pregnancy).

We've been moved in for two weeks today. The walls are painted (well, almost...small hallway and baby's room to go), the dishes and clothes are put away and some curtains are up. Wait a second. Did I just make that sound like our house is in great shape and we are fully unpacked? Ha! That's a good one. Check this out:

And our computer currently sits on a folding table in the living room wedged between the TV and the fireplace.

It's a temporary set-up until that mess up there is clean and until someone (ahem...Justin) climbs up into the attic and runs cable down to that room so we can have internet in there and you know, until we get some more real furniture.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Want to see what this place looks like all clean and fresh and not full of boxes and STUFF? Here you go.

The front of our home! Precious, isn't it? And that FOR SALE sign has been removed :o)

The view from the entryway. This is the living room and if you were standing here, to the right would be a hallway that leads to two bedrooms and a bathroom.

This is the formal dining room. But we aren't that fancy. This room is right off of the living room (all opened up to it) and we will be using it as an office. I hope that someday soon this room is filled with several bookshelves (um, and books), a real computer desk, and a comfy chair.

This is the kitchen (duh). It is a very open floor plan so the kitchen, living room, and formal dining room, I mean, office, all feed right into each other. If you were standing here, the laundry room and garage would be behind you and to the left would be a small hallway that includes a HUGE pantry and that leads to our bedroom.

This is the backyard! A BACKYARD! OF OUR VERY OWN! Can you tell we are excited about this? We have woods behind us so it is very quiet and peaceful. We love it.

Now those pictures were taken the day of our inspection so there wasn't any paint on the walls or furniture in place or anything yet. It's coming along, though. It won't be decorated and all cute and how I really want it for quite some time but it will get there. It will just take some work, some decorating discussions, and a big fat $8000 check from Uncle Sam.

Good Riddance!

It may be 40 degrees outside and feel like the middle of October as I write this, but it is a beautiful day here in McCordsville because the McStompers (aka our EXTREMELY loud upstairs neighbors) are moving out right at this moment!

Hallelujah!

To the McStompers: We will not miss the running races that you hold everyone evening to see which member of your family can run the fastest and stomp the hardest. We will not miss the fights that you have that always end up with one of you stomping (again) through the house and down the stairs. We will not miss the numerous shoes and toys that land on our patio from your balcony because your children think its funny to throw all of their belongings down our way. We will not miss your weird smelling food that comes into our apartment via our bathroom. And we will especially not miss your children, whom you must make scream at the top of their lungs for about 23 of the 24 hours in a day.

See ya, McStompers!

We got it!

I'm typing this at school so I have to hurry and I feel rather rebellious!

But just wanted to tell you all that we got the house! Our real estate agent called last night and said that the seller accepted our offer so unless we find out that the house is about to cave in on itself during the inspection...we will be homeowners! It makes us feel excited, nervous, blessed, and broke all at the same time!

Second time's a charm???

Here is the update on the house hunting.

We put in an offer last week on the house that we thought would be perfect. Well, the seller didn't think our offers were too perfect after going back and forth with him a little bit. So when he wouldn't budge, we walked.

The walk was hard. I was pretty let-down and emotional about it all. For a little bit I thought we had a chance at buying Buckingham Palace and were denied. But I pulled myself together. Luckily I have an awesome husband that is very reassuring and gives incredible hugs. And I have a dad that has an overwhelming ability to always make me believe that everything happens for a reason.

And everything does.

Justin and I looked at several houses yesterday. Eight? Nine? I don't know. After awhile they all started to run together. The first two we looked at were great and no others really compared to those. We hit a little bump in the road after realizing that Justin liked house #1 better and I liked house #2 better, so we really weighed our options last night. Our real estate agent contacted the seller for house #2 (because it was priced higher) to see how willing he was to negotiate and it turns out that he was willing to accept the amount we were thinking. So we put an offer in today! Hopefully he wasn't bluffing last night and everything truly does work out because we really love this house.

And it's funny about that "everything happening for a reason" thing. The house that we are constantly crossing our fingers about now is actually better than the house we were wishing for last week. In hindsight, I'm glad that the first one didn't work out.

No one ever said that the train to Grownuphood would be a smooth ride, but we are learning that getting through the rough parts of the trip together really isn't so bad.

Grownuphood

I made up that word.

There is a difference between being an adult and being a grown-up. (And by the way, I just put the word grownup in dictionary.com to see if it is one word or has a hyphen and the dictionary people said that either one is acceptable.) You are technically an adult when you turn 18. Although, you don't have any leverage with your parents if you are still a senior in high school when you turn 18 and say something like, "I'll do whatever I want! I'm 18 now and that means I'm an adult!" However, I don't ever remember saying that. I'm sure my dad will clear things up if I did.

But I have felt rather adult-ish since I graduated high school. I think that going to and graduating from college is a very adult thing to do. Getting married seemed like something an adult would do. Living on my own (duh, and with Justin) seemed like an adult thing to do. But have I felt all that grown-up? Meh. Not all of the time.

Until this past week. Last Tuesday, Justin and I put on our big-kid-pants, grabbed our one-way tickets to Grownuphood and have not looked back. We are currently involved in a very grown-up process: buying a house.

Now I hope my closest friends and family members aren't reading this and feel very betrayed for me not sharing the news. But it has all happened so fast that sometimes I really have to concentrate to believe that it's really happening. We went to meet with a mortgage guy (for lack of his real, official title) last Tuesday to see if we would even be able to get a loan and for how much. After signing our names four bajillion times, we found out we did qualify and mortgage guy gave us the name of a real estate agent that he really trusts. Justin and the real estate agent were best friends by the time we left the bank after he called her and the whirlwind began.

The real estate agent said that if we got the ball rolling and were in contract to buy a house by the end of April that we would still qualify for the $8000 tax credit. (Thanks, Obama.) While $8000 sounded very appealing (sometimes, somedays, $8 sounds rather appealing) we didn't want to rush into anything unless we really loved a house and everything seemed to be falling into place.

So said real estate agent found us some houses in our area to look at. There weren't many since we really wanted to stay in McCordsville, and well, it's not that big. But I love, love, love this location. It's very close to school for me, a close drive to my sister's, my friend Ashley's, Target, the Hamilton Town Center, and other important places where we like to go. By Friday of last week I was off to look at four houses with Jess since Justin had to work.

The first two were not good. Not good at all. The first one's master bedroom was about the size of our closet and the carpet was stained beyond repair. The second one smelled like my Aunt Hazel's house used to...moth balls...times ten. Plus the layout didn't wow me. The third one had pretty much the same layout as the second one but these people had not only painted their walls bright yellow, black, and red, but had also painted all of the trim in almost every room and they had some lovely indoor/outdoor carpet going on throughout the whole place that would have to be replaced because I like a little plushness underneath my Flinstone feet when I walk around the house.

So on to house #4. I was discouraged. I hadn't fallen in love with any of the houses so far and I didn't think I would love the fourth one based on the pictures I'd seen. I figured we would be in the apartment forever, just throwing rent money down the drain.

But, by some miracle, house #4 was a million times better in person than it was in pictures. I immediately stepped into it and knew that Justin would love it, and I loved it too. The layout is awesome, it is in great condition, and it kind of just screamed at me that this was definitely the house that we are supposed to live in.

I gushed about the house to Justin and he was able to see it on Saturday. He liked it as well. It was harder for him to love it as much as me since he didn't have anything to compare it to (we couldn't get into the other houses that day) but I told him to trust me. And he did.

So while we were still riding the incredibly fast house-hunting roller coaster, my dad and Lea came to look at the house on Monday afternoon and liked it as well. And yesterday, our train officially arrived in Grownuphood and we made an offer on the house. Holy adult decision!

Now, don't worry. We didn't settle on this house just because we wanted the $8000 tax credit. I really do love this house and think it will be a great starter home for us. We heard back from the seller today and while he didn't accept our first offer (we knew he wouldn't), he did counter offer and we will be responding to that tomorrow. If your fingers weren't already crossed for us, do that now.

The whole process has been very overwhelming and very confusing. Me? Know something about buying a house? That's funny! But my dad has been very helpful, the real estate agent has been very helpful, and Justin has really self-educated himself with this whole process via Google, so he has been very helpful as well.

We are excited about this new chapter in our lives. I will be sad to leave our apartment. I tend to get attached to material objects/structures/houses. Let's face it, I surprise myself sometimes that I don't take off to Muncie and throw myself on the front yard of my parents' old house and cry my eyes out because we don't own that house anymore. But we need more space and need to start putting our money into something other than rent. Besides, if we have to live underneath the McStompers for much longer, we will both go crazy.

Wish us luck!

Mission Organization

With a new year usually comes a time when I freak out and realize that I'm not exactly as organized as I'd like to be. I know, you are shocked. I think I seem put together on the outside but there are some aspects of my life that could use a lot more organization. I was reminded of that this evening when I had a small panic attack when I couldn't find our marriage license. Did I need our marriage license for any specific purpose? No. For some reason it just came to mind that if someone came up to me right now and asked me to present our official marriage license that I would have no idea where to look. Well, I wouldn't have known about 20 minutes ago. But I know now.

So I decided to tackle some piles of stuff in our guest room that have been growing lately. I started sorting through a lot of it and not only found papers (like the marriage license) that need a proper home in a file folder but found several office supplies that we aren't using. Me not use the wonderful, shiny, new office supplies? Crazy. I have a small obsession with all things that live in Staples, and I've been known to go in there for a mechanical pencil and come out with $50 worth of items.

Tomorrow marks my last day of winter break freedom and the first day that I start getting more organized around the house. Tomorrow you can find me curled up with a big stack of unorganized papers, new file folders, and the label maker!