We Bought a House!

I still can hardly believe I am even writing those words! The past few weeks have been a crazy whirlwind of phone calls and paperwork and e-mails that all led up to this! Mostly what I have to say is the Lord really provided this one. Without getting into too much detail, it was the right amount of house at the right time with the right people. We are so thankful for His provision and also for all the people who have been involved in this.

We offered late April and moved Memorial Day weekend, so we went by the house almost every weekend until move-in day. We would go in the side gate and play around in the back yard.

Aaron packed up most of our things while I was away at the beach (bless him!). We were SUPER grateful to have about 8 guys come help on move-in day, so in all it only took about 3 hours to pack up the old place and unpack into the new place. It took us a full week before we got the boys room somewhat together and we are still very slowly getting the rest of the house together. We've got 30 years, right ;)

What sold me on this house was the kitchen/first floor. The house is a duplex in a neighborhood, so they were all built with the same layout. Somewhere along the road, this particular one was renovated and the kitchen and dining room were swapped. What makes this such a big deal is that in the original layout there was a wall in between the kitchen and living room and it had both the door to the backyard and the door to the basement in it, causing little counter space and not great flow. Here is an example of one on the market now that has been updated, but with the kitchen in the original layout.

See how much room they lose with that door? And the kitchen is closed off to the dining room.

As you can see below, our kitchen now has a lot of counter space with two big windows, and the doors are now in the dining room! I think this makes a much better layout! We may have lost some cabinet space, but the open concept makes it worth it!

Basement:

Also very excited to have a basement to throw all the toys. It still looks pretty much like this!

 Kitchen/Dining/Living while we were definitely still unpacking...

 

There is a deck outside the back door and we've already been eating most of our meals outside! The boys are happy to have their water table back to play with and space to run around, scooter, play baseball, etc.

I actually really enjoy sitting out on the front and letting the boys play and neighbor watching!

We've been really enjoying the neighborhood too! There is a walking trail that leads us to 2 playgrounds and a huge park with a little pond to walk around. We can also walk to the library!

This was the view on my walk the other morning coming back from the pond!

We definitely have a long way to go in terms of unpacking and making it our style. While it may not be brand new, huge or totally updated, we really can't say enough about how much it already feels like home! We are incredibly grateful to those that helped us get here and to the Lord for weaving all the pieces together!