Home Sweet Home!

So big news...we bought a house!  Finally!  When Phil and I were engaged he mentioned that he wanted to rent for at least 10 years before buying a house.  I was absolutely opposed.  As far as I was concerned, you got married and bought a house.  Fortunately for me, I married a very wise man, and we didn't buy a house right off the bat.  When we first moved to Houston we were amazed at how affordable homes were, and sometimes it was tempting (for me) to buy.  Instead we have spent the last 6 years living in apartments all over Houston. We have lived in so many different places, moving somewhere new every time our lease was up, that we knew exactly where we wanted to buy.  We fell in love with The Woodlands the first time we saw it.  I remember driving through the neighborhoods on our first visit and Phil and talking about how incredible it would be to live there.

Everything started to fall into place earlier this year.  First, and most importantly, Exxon announced that they would be moving their facilities to The Woodlands.  They are building an insanely large compound to employ about 10,000 people.  They are even moving their employees from Virginia out here. They aren't beginning to move people until next year though.  Shortly after the announcement, I had one of the most vivid dreams I have ever had.  In my dream, we had gone to try and buy a home and interest rates had gone up a ton so we couldn't afford the house we wanted.  Whoever I was talking to in my dream said, "you shouldn't have waited so long, you should have moved before the end of the year."  I awoke with a very strong impression that now was the time for us to buy.  I told Phil about it and he said, "okay, let's start looking on line at what's out there."

Cut to June and July when we hired a realtor and got really serious about finding a house.  We initially thought we wouldn't be able to afford a nice house in heart of The Woodlands so we were looking in areas around there.  We were looking at houses every chance we got.  We had said we wanted a new house, built within the last 5-6 years.  But every house we looked at just didn't do it for us.  They all looked the same to us.  There was one house that we both loved, that was ridiculously nice.  We made an offer, they rejected it, so we backed out and kept looking at houses. We couldn't find anything we liked more than the one we had already put an offer on, so we made another offer. After some negotiations their realtor said he thought they would accept and they would sign the papers that weekend. Thank goodness it was a weekend and things didn't get done. We had a horrible feeling about it.  We drove by the home again and saw these MASSIVE power lines (not your residential lines) less than 200 yards away that we couldn't see from the house because of the trees.  We started researching living by power lines and basically surmised that nothing good can come from it.  So we withdrew our offer again.  I know, those poor sellers probably hate us.  We were SO ready to give up, then our glorious realtor said, "what about looking at older homes that have been remodeled in The Woodlands?"  We found out the property tax rate in The Woodlands was actually lower than every where else we were looking too.  Why didn't we know this before!?  Side note: property taxes in Texas are redonculous. Kind of lame.  Almost as much as your actual mortgage kind of lame.

One day Phil emailed me and our realtor a few houses he had found online and asked if we could see them that day.  Jennifer said she couldn't make it, but her mother could meet us and show us the homes.  We looked at two and liked them but were not over the moon.  Then we pulled up to this house and were crossing our fingers this was it.  The yard was amazing and just what we wanted.  And much to my surprise I loved the inside just as much as the outside!  We made an offer right then and there.  They had another offer already but fortunately they accepted ours (again, after some really annoying negotiations where we almost walked away).

Once our offer was accepted we needed to find a sub letter for our apartment because the lease isn't up until January.  We found someone that could move in September 1st, only problem was we didn't close until the 17th.  We decided to move out on the 1st and stay in Phil's parents time share on Lake Conroe for the two weeks until closing.  As we were driving all of our stuff  over to a storage unit Phil and I were talking about how many times we had moved since we had been married. I was counting up all the times we had moved (7 at that point) and I said  "well we've been married almost 6 years, because our anniversary is coming up...." and I thought about it and realized that our anniversary had been almost two weeks prior.  Phil and I had both completely forgotten our anniversary!!!  I couldn't believe it.  If it hadn't happened to me I would have said it was impossible.  But that's how stressful/busy everything was.

My mom came to visit us last week and we decided to fly Don out as well to do some repairs for us.  The house is almost 30 years old so there were definitely some issues that needed to be dealt with.  Don made some updates/repairs to our water heater, he put in a door for the study (amazing!), fixed some shingles and the flashing on the roof, etc.  The list goes on and on.  My mom and I stayed busy painting and gardening.  We did the dining room, the half bath and the study.  The dining room was a hideous forest green with some faux touches.  Our first paint choice for that room ended up looking like the Crayola Flesh color so we decided to go with a subtle Antique White instead.  I am so grateful they came and helped.

 they love digging in the dirt!

 Jack blowing bubbles and Livi cleaning out the pond.  The pond has about 10 turtles and some koi fish that the kids love to feed.

a picture of our lemon tree!  I have made just about every form of lemon dessert there is!

We still have a lot of finishing touches: rugs, lamps, mirrors and pictures etc.  But we are so happy to be here.  And we didn't even have to rent for 10 years. I am so incredibly grateful for prayer and the guidance of the Holy Ghost.  I know that we are where we are supposed to be and that everything worked out as it should.  We could not have done this without guidance from Heavenly Father.  Which reminds of a funny story: right after we moved in I had some potentially costly decisions regarding the house that I needed to make. I was about to say a prayer when Livi walked into my room and asked me to play with her.  I told her I would after I prayed.  She asked why I needed to pray and I told her that when we have questions or need help with something we can ask Heavenly Father and he will tell us what to do.  She listened to my prayer and as soon as I said amen she asked, "what did He say?"