It's OURS!!!

STATS
1730 Square Feet (+1200 in the basement)

2.5 car garage

3 bedrooms

2 bathrooms

2 living rooms

A three seasons room with a hot tub

AND IT'S OURS!

We closed on our house today - signed our life away and got the keys.  The first two things on our list are to clean the carpets and get the painting started (prep, prime, and GO).  Before it's all over, we will paint every wall in the house... EVERY WALL... it's going to be quite a project.  Luckily, we have our apartment until the 14th and our storage unit (where most of our stuff is) until the 30th.

Slow and steady wins the race!!

A New Year is Upon Us!

School in Michigan starts after Labor Day - THANK GOODNESS!

All my friends have been back in school for at least a week.  I started today.

The start of a school year is a very busy time for me - meetings, trainings, promotional events, LOTS of students are have all of a sudden returned and expect undivided attention and quick responses  even though they have not been responding to us for 3 months.  Such is life.

On top of the start of school, we close on our house this week - not a huge deal... just THOUSANDS of dollars invested into a single item that will (hopefully) be ours for years and years.  Just kidding - it's really not that scary, especially when you know that your investment is sound.

We are in the throws of packing up our apartment, which is also not a huge task since it's only 700 square feet, but it's still an annoying pile up of energy draining activities that I'm having to deal with right now.  This weekend will consist of cleaning, taping and possibly some painting.  We keep saying we are not in a hurry, but let's get real, who wants painting to take that long... NOT ME!

So, send positive energy my way this week - I'll need all the energy I can get!

Buying our Second Home

Even when we were buying our first home, we weren't typical first time home buyers - we have high expectations, and while we are not afraid of work, we have a pretty good grasp on what kind of work is going to be worth our time and money and what won't.  We have the ability to look past paint, carpet, wall paper and even walls to see the potential in a home, and as we go through a house, we can differentiate between what has to be done right away and what we could save for and do later.

When we met with our realtor, our list was actually pretty flexible:

We want a garage - attached, detached, space for us to put one up later, whatever

We want 3 bedrooms & 2 baths, or enough space to add a bed and bath to a 2/1

1 story would be nice, but 2 story is fine

Central air - well, that's kind of a non-negotiable

So we started looking in Ann Arbor and the surrounding cities, and let me tell you, the amount you get for your money in this area is WAY less than what we got in our first time around.  We saw a lot of houses that, on paper, looked like they had potential, but most were just too much work, or they were too small with no room for expansion, and the number of 3 bed/1 bath houses in this area are just ridiculous - WHO WANTS TO SHARE A BATHROOM WITH EVERYONE AT THE HOUSE?!!?!

The budget we started with this time around was about $40,000 more than last time, and we still ended up going $10,000 higher to get our house, but we got a great one!  We can't wait to move in - only a week and a half until we close!!

Quite a Year

It's been a little over a year for us in Michigan, and the start of year two has been quite the whirlwind!

When we moved here, we moved for my job.  We moved because we thought that all the cities and universities close by would create a great number of opportunities for J, as long as we could be patient.  We made the decision early on that he did not need to get a job, just to get a job - we wanted him to find something that was a career.

To say the year was a challenge is an understatement.  The year that we've been through, and specifically J has been through, has shown me over and over that I married the right man.  I am very confident that I'll never know what the year was like for him, but I can definitely say that my admiration for his attitude and approach to such a tough year is so high.

A few weeks ago, J started a new job - a new career, in a field that he has never experienced before, but I am so excited because he is working for a great company and so far, he feels like he will really enjoy it there.  Once the job offer came along, so did the opportunity to purchase a home.  We have lived in an apartment for the past year, and while we have been very happy with the place we are living, it's hard to go from an 1800 square foot home to a 700 square foot apartment.

After looking at 15-20 houses, we found one that we felt like we could grow in to - one that has the potential to be everything we could want in a home and a chance to FINALLY live in one place for more than 2 years, which is something that neither of us have done since leaving home for college.

We are working hard to close on the house on September 5 and we are SO excited!  We are excited to move in, we are excited to make it our own, and we are excited to (eventually, but maybe kinda soon) start a family!