We're homeowners!

After 2.5 years of working on credit and getting our life in order we were finally pre-approved for a mortgage as of October 2013. We had been "looking" for months because we knew it was near but when we got approved we only had two outings with our realtor before we found THE ONE! I'll be honest though. Andy fell in love with the house before I did. It was pretty much instant for him. I didn't completely fall in love until we had painted and it started feeling like ours.

The cons: I really had my heart set on a house in Robbinsdale. I also really wanted a formal dining room for extra space to entertain, a 2nd bathroom and a 2 car garage. This house doesn't have any of those things. But, we can put in a 2nd bathroom and build a bigger garage. And it's a block away from Robbinsdale. I can live with that. Especially because our house is closer to downtown Robbinsdale than the Robbinsdale house I grew up in.

The pros: It's a 1.5 story. I love the layout of these homes. There's a partially finished basement and room to add another bedroom/bathroom. The backyard is the best! It's fenced in, spacious for the area, has a beautiful deck and came with a swing set. All of the light switches except for the kitchen and the laundry room have dimmers on them. I don't know how I ever lived without this feature! It's so great and especially when you have kids. 6:30pm is now dim the lights time. It makes getting through bedtime routine so much easier! And how could I almost forget about the hardwood floors?! Love, love, love!

We closed on Friday December 20th (my grandma's birthday) and it was officially ours on Friday December 27th when the sellers had all of their things out. We went that weekend to pick out paint and all day Sunday I prepped for painting while Andy was at the Vikings game with his mom. That evening we had a painting "party" with my mom, grandma, grandpa and Andy's mom. We got quite a bit done but didn't actually finish painting until 3 days later. And even then, we still stopped with a coat to go on most of the trim and we didn't paint stripes in Rex's room like we had intended. We were so over painting and figured we could easily do that once we were moved in. So, moving day came on Saturday January 4th! We had a bunch of family and friends to help us and it took pretty much all day (and that's with us already bringing 3 van loads ourselves in the days before). I worked that afternoon so I wasn't around for the final unloading. I was bummed to miss out on things but then it was great at the same time to be able to come to the house after work and have beds put together and family hanging out.

The first few nights were not easy. Now that I think about it more like the first couple of weeks.. but I'll save that for another post!