House Hunting

Hello, friends. It's been a while. I've been busy. How? I'll tell you.

We've been house-hunting.

When we had prayed about it before, we always got the answer "No, stay where you are." Then suddenly, one day, it was, "Okay. Time to move. Now." We weren't bothering the Lord about it, honestly. The answer just changed one day. But, as anyone who can read the news knows, it is an excellent time to buy a house -- especially if you're not also trying to sell one.

Our house-hunting began with the help of our neighbor, former bishop and real estate agent, Carlos. Husband would look up houses on the MLS listings, send the MLS numbers to Carlos, and then we'd see five or six houses in a day. It was exhausting, and none of the houses presented everything we wanted. Most of them in our price range were quite worn out and needed some serious TLC before being acceptable.

Then we got the bright idea of looking outside our city. We concentrated on a group of three smaller cities -- towns, really -- about 25 to 35 miles north and west of where we live now. A whole new vista of possibilites opened up for us immediately. Homes that were new or nearly new -- or, if we wanted, not even built yet -- were well within what we could afford. We have now selected a lovely home that was built in 2000 and has five bedrooms and a huge backyard with plenty of space for a garden, and we are under contract. Husband's commute will be longer, of course, and the kids will be an entirely new school district, but it's a great area and the house is big enough, in great condition, and beautiful. We don't have anything to do to make the house perfectly acceptable. The owners, who were living in the house, had it so immaculately put together and staged that it was very easy to walk through the house and imagine ourselves living in it. It even has fruit trees! And a hot tub!

Note to self for the future, if we ever sell the house: Keep the house immaculately tidy for showings or move out before selling. We saw so many houses being sold privately that were so messy that it was hard to envision living in the house. Also, don't lock key doors, such as the master bedroom and storage rooms. That makes prospective buyers (people like us) very suspicious.



The front of the house. It has a very nice front yard, which is perfect for someone like me. I can weed and mow, but having to come up with landscaping ideas is beyond me.




View into the kitchen from the living room. There isn't much room for dining, so with eight of us eating dinner, we're going to have to get creative with seating.




Part of the backyard. At the end of the long yard (which is fully fenced, yay!), is a dirt area that will be a garden. It even has a gate in the fence so we can dump lumber and dirt for the square-foot-gardening frames right into the yard from the street and not have to carry it through from the front yard.

In other news, Little Gary dropped a large pot on his prone and unsuspecting older brother. The rim of the pot hit Joseph on the forehead and gashed it open a little. He doesn't need stitches, but we had to put a butterfly bandage on it and there was lots of crying.

As Husband was searching the internet for trampolines and doing some research, he went to a website for Aeroball tramps. Lo and behold, there was a picture of our own Gabrielle in the advertisement. I kid you not! She's on the right, the second to last picture from the bottom. We had no idea her picture had been taken and used in someone's advertisement. Isn't that illegal or something? Apparently, it happened while she was with a friend and his mother playing Aeroball at some sports center or other. That was about two years ago. At least her name, age, address and phone number are completely lacking. I don't know how her picture got on an ad for an Arizona company.

Little Gary's new favorite song is "I Can Sing a Rainbow." Argh. Sian loved that song when she was that age, as well. She used to scream in the car until we sang it over and over and over. And over. She can now sing it in sign language and she's not so fanatical about it at fourteen.