No, I didn't fall off of the planet...

Hello, blogland (if anyone's still reading this, given how long I've been absent...). I know I've been away for a L-O-N-G time, but with good reason. UB & I closed on our house on January 2nd and moved in on February 14th. Between those two dates, we did A LOT of work on the house to get it ready. It was mostly cosmetic in nature--nothing structural or involving drywall or 2x4's. But we had a window of opportunity to get as much done as possible before we moved in, so we took it. I mean, REALLY took it. And I would post pictures of the results, but I can't. UB doesn't feel comfortable with putting pictures on the blog, where technically anyone in the world could see them. And then use Google Earth and a psychic and somehow find us to cause us harm. Or something like that...I think I've mentioned before that he's VERY VERY VERY cautious. So anyway, I won't put up any pics here. BUT, if you head on over to Facebook and "friend" me, you can see the pictures in a photo album I created. UB is fine with that, since only people I've allowed to see my profile can see them, hence it is more secure. Wait--in order to "friend" me on Facebook, you have to know my real name. OK, so if you've "friended" Brenda or Julie, I'm on their friend list. Just scroll through 'til you see my picture. And if you're not on Facebook, you can click on this link to send me an e-mail and I can let you access the pictures. I think...I seem to recall that I can do that; anyway, I'll find a way to show you what we've been up to lately. And there will be new pics to add--I started on the bathroom this past week & am still in the Wallpaper Removal phase.

So anyway, the last few months have been a whirlwind with SO much to tell! Every time I've tried to blog about it, there was so much to say that I couldn't figure out where to start and I ended up logging off and saying I'd try again later. So, to get the ball rolling, I'll start with a post I started way back in August but never quite finished. It describes Phase 1: finding the house.

"It is finished, the searching is over,"
It is finished, we'll wonder no more
It is finished, the end of the house hunt
It is finished, and there's so much in store!"

OK, my apologies if you REALLY love the original song (I do, too) and are offended that I used it to celebrate FINALLY finding our house. But really--I am so grateful and thankful and relieved and blessed to look back & see how God has directed our path.

You see, we have been casually house-hunting for TWO YEARS. We didn't have enough money saved until recently, so we knew we couldn't make any offers--but we still looked online and in the paper so we could learn about our local market and begin sorting out our preferences. I had been exposed to this process years ago when my parents bought their current house. So I had been through some of the ropes, but it was all new to UB. And when something is all new to him, he needs to study it at length and in great detail so he can fully understand all of the information, how it connects, how it applies to us, and what it all means for our finances and the future of our family. And when it comes to finances, UB is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, conservative. As in, Spartan. Really--when he had his own apartment, he wasn't going to buy any living room furniture. He figured if he wanted to sit in a chair in his living room, he would bring one of his kitchen chairs into the living room. (His aunt came to the rescue & gave him a couch & love seat.) So the idea of borrowing thousands & thousands of dollars to purchase a house was a BIG deal to him. We would pray daily for God's wisdom and for Him to direct our path. We started looking in a pretty low price range, since that was what UB thought was doable. And everything we could find placed us within the city limits, as opposed to the suburbs/surrounding rural areas. And EVERY time we checked on a house using the online map feature, UB would say, "Oh, that's not a very nice neighborhood. We don't want to live there." And UB grew up in the city, so it's not like he's some suburban snob--he really did have knowledge of these areas and he wasn't going near them.

So after months of searching in this price range with the same results, he upped our price range a bit. That brought us into older sections of the suburbs, bordering the city. We were enthusiastic about this new range, until we began to go to open houses in these neighborhoods and were less than impressed. Finally, one Sunday we realized that we couldn't picture ourselves there--we could see it becoming more and more like the city neighborhoods UB wasn't fond of. But more than that, it didn't feel like home; that still, small voice was saying, "No. You don't belong here--this isn't where I want you."

Soooo, we upped our price range yet again (incidentally, we ended up where our Realtor told us we would--he told us we wouldn't find anything we liked under a certain $$ amount and he was right). This brought us into the suburbs. We went to open houses and searched online and found some possibilities. But still, it was hard to find something decent in our price range--it was definitely on the low end of suburbia around here. One Saturday we were looking through the real estate section of the newspaper (as we did every Saturday) and made note of the open houses for that weekend. One was a 3 bedroom ranch, near church & school, but the price was a little high and the taxes were WAY too high for that area & acreage. But, we decided to look anyway since it would give us an idea of floor plans & such; we really hadn't found a house who's floor plan we liked. There were no pictures online, so we were expecting it to be pretty dumpy inside. But again, no harm in looking. So we went, and we were pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn't a dump. It had a HUGE, open kitchen with lots of counter space & cupboards. It opened to the living room, which was a nice, open space as well. The three bedrooms were a good size, there were 1 & 1/2 baths (two toilets was a must), it had a breezeway, a 2-car garage, a small deck in the back, a shed, it sat on .65 acres, and was literally seconds from the highway (easy access to work for UB). And it was walking distance from the lake--I love, love, love to be by the water. We left there thinking that it was the closest thing we'd seen to what we had in mind; the floor plan was exactly what we wanted and the location was perfect, but of course it was out of reach since the taxes were just outrageous. From then on, every house we looked at was compared to this one: "That's kind of nice, but it doesn't have the kitchen like the other house did." Or "That's a little too far out--it's not like the other house that's right by the highway, making it an easy commute to work."

Then a few weeks later, UB was searching the local real estate websites (again) and ran across this house. Except the taxes were lower than what we had seen before AND the price had been reduced. UB made a phone call and learned that the taxes were indeed correct at the lower amount; they had been listed incorrectly before.

(Hmm...no pictures online so people assume it's a dump and the taxes were listed incorrectly...looks like God was keeping others away from our house!)

Anyway, we arranged to look at it with our Realtor (actually, it was his assistant) who would be able to point out potential problems and make sure we didn't have our rose-colored glasses on. We spent a good amount of time at the house during that visit, and our Realtor was very positive (as opposed to how she was at another house we looked at, which was a fixer-upper-special). The more we looked, the more we felt that this was our house--yes, it needed work, but it was mostly cosmetic work. We truly could've moved in and started living there without doing anything. So we met the next day to make an offer; we deliberated for a L-O-N-G time (UB's MO) and came up with an offer that we thought was fair, yet reflected the fact that the house needed updating. The buyer accepted without countering and we began the process of securing a mortgage & all the fun, detail-intensive things that go into buying a house. That's another post entirely, but let me just say that UB was TERRIFIC. He handled all of the paperwork associated with the purchase of our home; he shopped around for the best interest rate, made phone calls, met with mortgage brokers, called our realtor; he kept on top of every detail and left nothing to chance. Not to mention the budget number-crunching that allowed us to save enough money to close on the house (again, another post entirely). This was the first time that UB had the opportunity to make big decisions and really step up to lead his family (at this point just me & the cats, but still). And he did wonderfully. And he's all mine! :-)

OK, that's all for now. Hopefully soon I can continue with the Story of Our House, and throw in posts about the Skinny Fairy getting back to work now that we're settled in. (The Home Improvement Learn-How Fairy took her place for a while there.) It has been a blessed, busy winter, full of transition and change.

But boy, is it good to be home!