Homebuying

Tommy and I were just saying last night that our lives have recently been filled with every sort of grown-up major decision that you could possibly imagine. All of those experiences that you read on "most stressful things you can go through"--we've done ALL of them in the last six months, or we're about to do them. We moved across the country, Tommy started his first out-of-school job, we're having to make grown-up decisions about health insurance and FSAs and budgeting, we're having a baby, and we're buying a house. BUYING A HOUSE! 

This is it!

This was pretty unexpected for us. We were not planning on starting to look for houses for quite some time; we figured that it'd be nice to buy before the baby comes but we'd probably not start looking until after the holidays. However, things have not been ideal in our current living situation. There is really NOTHING major to complain about, but tons of little things that drive us (mostly me) nuts and have made me long for the good old days of Century Creek/Encore at the Park apartments in Durham. We have loud neighbors above us (they are thundering around as I type this), which interferes with Dane's (and my) naps--a CARDINAL SIN in my book. We are never able to find parking near our building and I have to drag groceries in from across the parking lot with Dane in tow. Our water heater is only about 10 gallons and you can't even fill up the bathtub without running out of hot water. They've given us warnings about not allowing Dane's toys on our patio (seriously!?). See? NONE of these are that big of a deal; I know that they are total first-world problems. However, they have seriously affected my happiness level while living here the last few months. 

So one night a while ago, Dane was still awake at 9 p.m. in his crib because the crazy children upstairs were thumping directly above him for hours straight, and I looked at Tommy and said, "WE HAVE TO MOVE. I HATE THIS PLACE." So we started looking at Zillow (which we had been doing sporadically anyways), and ended up quickly finding a realtor and one thing led to another--and by the time my mom came out we had a few appointments to go look at houses. And we found a few that we liked, but then one popped up in the neighborhood down the street from our apartment complex, just down the street from the park that Dane and I already love to go to together. I immediately called our realtor and told her we wanted to see that one, and we saw it the day it came on the market. Not to go into too much detail and be even more boring than this already is, but we basically loved it and put in an offer and were fantastically lucky to get it. And now we are under contract for the house, closing in December, and are soooooo excited to move out of this apartment and into a house that we will have all to ourselves. 

This house is great for so many reasons. It's very well-taken-care-of, with hardly any work to do on it. It's got four bedrooms. It's one story, which I didn't care all that much about but the more I think about it the more excited I am to not have stairs to take care of or worry about with babies. It's much bigger than we need or deserve at this point, but we figure that if we live here for even just a few years, we'll have a few more kids and we'll need all the extra space that's a little unnecessary now. (We're hardly going to have enough furniture to fill up any of the space!) It's got a great-sized backyard (not huge, just normal) and a front driveway (which seems totally normal to everyone except for Frisco-ites, apparently). 

This whole homebuying process has been a doozy. Everything has gone MAGICALLY smoothly; there really has not been a hiccup with anything the whole time. However, we have spent so much time researching and second-guessing and debating and analyzing and worrying over this process. We feel so blessed (really, there's no other word) to be in our situation, but also guilty that we've had so much help to get us to this point and that this is a nicer house than we deserve at this point in our lives. But things are the way they are and we are grateful that we are able to even look at houses, much less buy one right now.

There are so many things that I absolutely cannot wait for with moving into a house. Having a backyard, having no neighbors touching our walls, having a real kitchen space (see below), being right down the street from the park that we love. There are also things that are still intimidating about having a house, mostly the whole financial aspect of being overly terrified about spending too much or having to pay for major things breaking down. However, I think we've really hit that space of our lives, with soon to be two kids, where the benefits outweigh the negatives and we're really ready for that stage. We are READY and we are excited and it still feels weird to say, but in a month, we will be homeowners!