Pictures!

I finally bought a camera! Nothing fancy, but it'll do the job. Here are a few pictures of our new house.

This is the family room (and the kids watching Sesame Street). It steps down from the kitchen. The valance was left by the previous owner. I will probably replace it with drapes eventually.


This is one side of the master bathroom. I haven't used the tub yet. The valance and shutters were also left by the previous owners but this valance is really not my style so I will probably take it down very soon, even before I have something to replace it with.



This is our cavernous master bedroom. Our queen-sized bed looks miniscule in it. Eventually I'll figure out what to do with all that space. The baby blue walls are starting to get to me. In our old house our bedroom walls were beige and the blue on the bed was an accent color. Here, it's just too much blue. I will pick some fabric for drapes and then redecorate from there.

That's all the house pictures for now. As I get other areas tidy enough to photograph I'll post them, but here are a few extras:

Emma thought it would be more fun to eat her cookie under the kitchen table instead of sitting at it.

This is spinach that I'm growing on my deck from seeds that I got at the farm fair (Carolyn won the blue ribbon in the pie eating contest, by the way). In the spring I will have Greg build me a big square foot garden.

We're Here!

We're finally all moved in our new house and not at all settled in. It's starting to feel more like home, instead of feeling like we're hanging out at someone else's house. But it still doesn't have that "my house" smell yet. Or will the smell of this house become the new "my house" smell? Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Anyway, we LOVE it. The bus stop is right across the street. This makes me so happy. I can watch the big kids at the bus stop from my front door while staying at home with the little ones. My camera is still broken and I still haven't bought a new one. That means no pictures to post. But I will get one soon. I already missed getting pictures of the first day of school. I just haven't found a great deal on one yet.

Greg bought himself a lawn tractor and, for the first time ever, is really enjoying mowing the lawn. I don't think you'll ever see our yard with overgrown grass. I ordered a hammock to hang between our awesome trees. Hopefully it will be here soon so we can enjoy this amazing weather!

More About the House

We went into the office last night and did a few last initials on the contract. Our realtor, who has been in the business 20+ years was surprised that they took our offer and thinks we got a good deal. That made us feel great and I don't think he was saying it just to make us feel good.

So I thought I'd share a few of the things that made this house stand out from all the ones we saw:

1. The Lot. It's on a half acre (which is extremely rare around here), mostly flat (the slope is on the sides of the house), and has super tall, big trees that give it privacy and a cozy feeling.

2. The Exterior. It's just cute--not too big, not too small, and just has a quaintness about it. It reminds me of the house on the movie "Up."

3. The Mudroom. I've always wanted a mudroom--a place where all the bookbags, coats, shoes, hats, gloves, etc. can stay and not come into the house. A lot of houses had a room that they called a mudroom but it was really just a laundry room that you entered the house through and it had no room for anything but the washer and dryer.

4. Second Floor Laundry. Need I say more?

5. The Pantry. Wide. Deep. Awesome.

6. The Hall Bathroom. It has two sinks! I think that will be a very good thing when we have four teenage girls in our house.

7. Automatic Gas Generator. I didn't think anyone but Mormons had this level of emergency preparedness. Guess I was wrong.

8. Invisible Dog Fence. You know, for our invisible dog.

They Accepted!

They took our offer! I'm so glad we didn't give them more. Greg and I are both such pushovers, it felt so strange and uncharacteristic to be standing firm and final by our offer. But it all worked out. We had a feeling it would. I can't wait to move in! Now here's what I'm thinking--should I make my blog private? I would love to post a virtual tour of our new house for our far away friends and family to see but I don't think that would be wise on a public blog. Any thoughts? Oh, and my camera broke so I can't even do pictures. And guess what else broke. Our Tivo box. And it had lifetime service. Oh, and our water heater broke too. Hmmm . . .what else can we break before we move?

Standing Firm

We heard from our realtor and the sellers wanted more but we're standing by our final offer. We'll see if it pays off or if we'll have to move on to something else . . . maybe the short sale with the pool?

Waiting

After seeing over 30 houses, this is the one that we love. We gave the sellers our final offer on Friday evening and still have gotten no response. If they say no we have a couple other options but this is the one with almost everything we want.

We're closing on our house in two weeks. Look out mom and dad, we're movin' in!

Fabulous 5k

Yesterday Greg, Carolyn, and I ran a 5k and, may I say, we all did awesome! Greg decided to run it about a week and a half ago and ran on the treadmill four, maybe five times to prepare for it. His time was 24:49!! I've been running four times a week for the last several weeks and got 29:07. I know it's not that impressive but I was thrilled. It was my first time breaking 30 minutes. I only wish I had known how close I was to breaking 29, maybe I could've kicked it up a little more in the end. Then there was Carolyn, the surprise all-star for the day. We decided to let her go with us that morning, so she hadn't practiced at all. She was going to walk with some redheaded friends and I was hoping she would be able to keep up with them. Much to my surprise, not long after the turnaround, I saw a cute little red-faced girl running towards me. I couldn't believe it was Carolyn, not that far behind me! She came in at 35:59. I am so unbelievably proud of her. She definitely has her daddy's running legs. I get sad when I think of the pain and suffering that she must have gone through during that run (because that's what I feel when I run) but she acts like it wasn't hard at all! She is amazing. You can read her account on her blog.