house hunting #2: new house!

a lot happens and changes really fast at our house.  it's really always been this way, so i don't know why i expect it to slow down (ever), but this time is no exception for sure.  after my angsty post about our house, we actually found a house that was awesome a little north of our current home (neighborhood = not as hip/trendy but still relatively central and best of all affordable!).  we saw it on a sunday evening and decided we wanted to put in an offer.  long story short, our offer was submitted too late and the seller had already accepted someone else's offer.  we were SUPER bummed.  justin especially.  the yo-yo of emotions associated with house buying are exhausting.

anyway.  our realtor felt really bad about the situation with that house, so we all redoubled our efforts and made a list of six houses to see the following weekend (last saturday).  one of the houses was in roughly the same neighborhood as the one we lost, but the pictures looked kind of blah.  we weren't super excited about seeing it, mainly because we still had the image of the other house in our minds and we just couldn't imagine getting lucky again.  so, we went to the first four houses and they were all just so-so.  none that we would really consider living in, even though they weren't horrible.  then we headed to this house.  it was surprisingly amazing.  i think i walked into each room for like 12 seconds before declaring that i would absolutely live in the house.  i let emme crawl around on the floor and she was fired up about it too (or at least, i think she was as she spit up on their carpet - ha!).  it's a 5/3 or 4/3 + an office, depending on how you look at it.  and the layout of the house is perfect for us.  there's a big living room with the kitchen open.  a secondary living/sitting room with dining area in the front of the house.  4 beds and 2 baths on one side of the house and a really lovely guest suite on the other side.  this is super perfect because my parents come to town once a month and we always want people to come visit us but have always had to cache that statement with "and hotels aren't that expensive around here..."  now we can say "oh please do come visit - you can stay in our guest room that has an exit to the backyard and POOL.  very exciting.  oh, yes, so we also have a pool.

a pool was not something we thought we wanted or were really considering until we saw it at the house we lost.  standing outside on a june day in austin, we started thinking about how much we love to be outside and how much we love to hang out with friends and how much emme loves the water.  it was like we could envision family and friends hanging out around the pool as we grilled stuff and the kids played.  once we got that visual, it was like we could not get it out of our heads.

so, this house has a pool too.  we looked at everything, talked about it a little, and decided we should go for it.  our realtor brought the offer documentation to our house at 8:45 that saturday night, and our offer was accepted on sunday afternoon.  it's all moving so quickly, but the inspection was yesterday and everything seems to be go for launch!  we close july 21....start lining up your visit!