We Finally Bought a House

I'm clumping February and March together because Feb is such a blah month, except for the fact that we get to celebrate our favorite son. So I'm glad that's in there. But aside from that, these two months were occupied mostly for me with finding us a place to live.

This was one of Cody's favorite presents and he built it himself.

Along with his Tom Brady shirt.

 Ben gave a community presentation for work and it was on FaceTime so I could tune in. He did a great job talking about lameness and some treatments.

 We had cousins come over to celebrate Cody.

 Annual blue gold banquet for scouts with a derby

Time Out for Women.

I think this was the first year I've ever gone to this but I can see that it is going to become a favorite thing. 

I should start the house hunt story with the first house I looked at. I wish I would have taken pictures.

We really didn't know what we wanted but were thinking about finding horse property.

But we quickly discovered that the house we could have gotten with that property would have been disgusting.

So - we went and looked at a home on an acre. The first red flag was the pile of garbage out front.

The second red flag was opening the front door. I literally don't know if the floors have EVER been vacuumed.

The door knobs kind of grossed me out to touch. They were filmy.

There were hundreds of hanging statue heads and plants in a room upstairs. Poop on the floor of some unknown animal. probably multiple.

There was a person, in the dark, downstairs when we went down, that never said a word to us. It was weird.

We still looked at a couple of other horse properties but that was probably a good way to help it sink in that horse ownership at least in this decade wasn't going to happen.

In all honesty, Ben doesn't necessarily want to go to work and work with horses all day and come home and work on horses. He's got a little burnout going on. Maybe that will change, maybe it won't.

We put an offer on two houses and backed out before we found the house we finally got. Bless our real estate agent. I know she wanted to crawl in a hole and never help us again but she kept coming and showing us houses.

The first one was this one:

It was small and cozy but charming. It had no yard but was fully finished inside and decorated cute.

The weirdest part was to get anywhere in the basement you had to walk through the bathroom??? Who planned that oddity I wonder.

It was also right next to humongous power lines and that really bothered me more for resale, and the fact that this house wouldn't be a long term purchase made us a little leery, and we backed out.

My cute vt friend had us over for dinner. Her son was in Mackayla's class and madly in love with Mackayla and just the cutest little thing. They had a pet snake!

We looked forever in Plain City for houses because Weber County schools do not have great ratings and Plain City/Farr West area were the best. The downside of Farr West was that the school was so crowded some classes were meeting on the stage and they were maxed out with portables.

So they are building a new school but that would mean that in two years our kids would have the opportunity to go to their fourth new school, and that would have been okay, but if we didn't have to, we didn't want to.

But this area is growing rapidly for sure. There are a couple of huge developments that we looked into.

This is the next house we put an offer on.

It was also super charming and had an amazing yard, fully fenced and finished.

The downsides were that there were literally no kids living on that isolated street and the street it led onto the main road for the city. So there would be no friends nearby.

But the real kicker (I'm about to sound like a crazy person) was that I woke up in a sweat early the next morning knowing that this house was the wrong house, and we took our offer off the table that day.

More looking. Mackayla came to most of the appointments and was such a trooper. She's so easy and good, but how boring.

St. Patrick's Day. I don't know what's happening here but it looks like fun. 

 We stayed at a hotel in Salt Lake one Sunday and went to church at Bonnie and Jeff's ward at the U of U stake student ward where Bonnie was speaking.

 And these...we went somewhere and did something ... but I don't remember.

 I love Macey's point of view.

When we saw this house we weren't planning on buying it. It just snuck it's way to the top.

The cons would be that it is north facing, a terrible direction in the winter.

It's also on a pretty significant slope, pretty terrible in Ben's opinion.

The stairs are steep and it's a two story and we wanted a rambler.

BUT it had a room for my piano where no dirty dinner fingers could touch it (my list of wants).

And, it had a (small but significant) mudroom (Ben's list).

It also has a three car garage (Ben's list).

And a bedroom for each of the kids.

The kitchen and living are large and open and the pantry could practically fit another bed.

 For being our starter home maybe we shot a little high.
Maybe we could have used equity and moved in a couple years.

But we lived in a home much smaller than we could afford for five years in California saving for a home. We were ready.

And those people didn't just move across the country five times.

So I say let them talk and travel. I've done my traveling.

I'm not moving again until I'm good and ready!

And we'll still sneak a vacation in here and there:)

 We didn't move until June after we closed, after my parents got home, and after the kids finished their year at Burton.

This move has been the most stressful of all nine moves because it seems the most permanent.

Anytime I found something I didn't like in our previous moves 

I just told myself

I could do anything for a little while.

But this is a little more permanent.

But do I dare say, it doesn't have to be forever, so I'm not overly stressed. 

I tell Ben all the time there's TONS of horse vet jobs in New Zealand,

and I'm always up for a new adventure. 

I sound like I know what I want, huh.

Easter egg dying and conference!!! One of my favorite times of the year! 

 This year we had a little extra work to keep us awake during conference.

We can't forget the grandkid egg hunt at the farm - one of my kids' favorites!