Our House!

I decided buying a house deserved its own post, seeing as it is a very BIG deal to us. After 9 1/2 years of renting, we finally were able to buy our own home!!

My fellow student friends and I, would talk all the time about how nice it would be when we finally owned our own home...well let me tell you friends, (as some of you already know) it is!!!! No first time home buyer comes away without a story about how it came to be, so here is ours:

We were very content living at my in-laws, and had been there about two months. My kids were on cloud nine being able to live with Papa and Grandma Carole and only living about 4 minutes down the road from Grandpa Frank and Grandma Julie. Not to mention, we had cable T.V for the first time in our married life ;). HGTV, FOOD NETWORK, ESPN, DISNEY, re-runs of Full House, all of us were loving it! 

Greg and I especially loved finally being able to save some money. Our plan was to live there for about a year and then buy a house. But like most plans, they never work out the way you think they will. 

One day we were at my sister-in-laws house, and she mentioned to me that there was a house for sell in a really awesome neighborhood across the rd from them. She explained that it had just barely gone on the market that day and she was surprised because homes in that area hardly EVER go up for sell. I look at the pictures, saw the price, and thought what the heck, we might as well just take a look. I called the Realtor and he said he could fit us in at 3:30. Greg was happy because was going golfing at 4:30 so that would give us plenty of time. 

We pulled up to the house, met the Realtor, and before we even walked into the front door he said "I don't mean to be a pushy salesmen, but I just want you to know that you are the 7th person I have shown this house to today and I know for a fact we already have two offers coming in. So not pressure but if you like this house, you will need to place an offer tonight!" No pressure, my foot!! I thought, well that's NEVER going to happen, seeing as we were not prepared at ALL, or even had the slightest clue how to go about buying a house! But we decided to walk in anyway.

We walked in and my mind was going a mile a minute. I couldn't really even focus on what we were seeing because I just had this panicked, rushed feeling inside. It was a feeling of , "oh my goodness, we need to try to buy this house or you are going to regret it!" I didn't even know if I loved the house or not, I just knew we had to try to get it! I didn't say anything to Greg, thinking that there is NO way he will be on board with this but after we were done and were driving away I asked what he thought. He said he liked it but didn't know how it would work out because we didn't even have financing yet to make an offer and he had a T time to get too! 

So there you go, we almost didn't make the offer because Greg needed to get to his T time!!;) HA HA!

To make a VERY long story short, and to be honest I don't even remember all that happened during the next 3 1/2 hours, we ended up at the Realtor's office at 7:30 that night to make our offer! 

Our Realtor's were awesome! It was a party writing our offer letter and they were both so helpful to walk us through the process and help us understand what we were doing. We left their office at 10:30pm and they told us they would let us know the next afternoon if we got the house or not! 

On the drive home my head was just spinning! I still couldn't tell if I wanted them to accept the offer or not. I just kept telling myself that if they did or did not, it was meant to be! I didn't sleep well at all that night! I was so anxious! 

The next day of course seemed like forever. Finally it was 2:00 and I got a phone call. It was our Realtor and he had conferenced in Greg. He did this thing where he hyped us up and told us there ended up being 4 offers made and us and one other came within about a hundred dollars of each other, then he said " AND YOU GOT THE HOUSE!!" I think he expected us to start yelling and screaming in the phone, like we had won the lottery, but instead Greg and I were not very animated. Yes we were excited, but at the same time we were SO overwhelmed with all we had to do in the next 4 weeks! And not to mention, we were NOT prepared at all for this HUGE life change that we didn't even see coming!

Over the next week, we set up our home inspection. He told us to come at the end so we could go over everything. I was really anxious to go because I couldn't remember the house all that clear, since everything had happened so fast! 

I was just hoping to LOVE it and be so happy with our purchase. 

We walked in and immediately I felt so relieved. I LOVED it, I loved it so much more than I remembered. The walk through went so well and we got to move in 3 weeks later!!!! (After a lot of furniture shopping and having it painted!) 

Here are some pictures: 

The front living room

 The great room

 Our backyard!

 The basement family room/playroom

 Brinley's own downstairs bedroom. She loves having her own room!

 The kitchen

 Dining room

Front yard

We love our house so much and are so thankful for it! We live in the best neighborhood and are loving getting to know everyone that we go to church with. We also love that we are still so close to our family that lives in Utah.