Back to Blogging/Big News

I have been a terrible blogger. For awhile I didn't care. Nobody reads my blog. I always feel bad for not reading other blogs. I play catch up on them and think I might post something. But I don't. I pretty much gave up for awhile but then on Sunday afternoon the 3 older kids were snuggled up together on the our love seat reading something and laughing

and giggling like crazy. It was my first blog book that had been publish

ed. I suddenly realized how many things I have been missing! So, maybe I cannot fully participate in the blog world as I used to do. And even more sadly, maybe I still don't have the time to learn how to take photos like I want to do. But I must record more often for my children.

Some big news for us is that we are buying a house! One time last summer I drove through a neighborhood that I thought was so lovely that I just had to learn more about it. It is called Spring Park. It was developed in different phases. Mostly the late 70s and early 80s and a couple of streets developed in the 90s. It has tons of green belts and wide grassy areas, a little lake for canoeing or fishing, a large community pool, and many other things. The huge trees lining the streets are what drew me to it most. I started falling in love with the area and was keeping an eye on houses there. I started researching the school and ward. I started testing my spirit-radar. I would be driving and not feel anything, I would enter Spring Park and feel all happy, I would cross the street out of Spring Park and feel nothing again. I started to feel like maybe that was the place we were meant to be.

All the while, I kept my mind and heart open. Jason drove through with me and liked it

very much as well. But we thought, who wouldn't? Its lovely? We considered maybe we could move out further from Dallas where we could have some land and maybe some animals and feel so dreamy. But that would take us farther from Jason's work and less time together. I thought maybe we could buy a house that would be in my brother Aaron's ward. How awesome would that be? My dear Catherine just moved about 30 minutes west of us into a great neighborhood that would be about 5 minutes from Jason's work! I thought maybe we would find a house there.

Just before Christmas I decided that I'd have our realtor (a friend I made through Allison and Catherine named Alice) take me through a couple of the homes in Spring Park that I'd had my eye on. Incidentally, another house in the subdivision had just come on the market. It was one of the houses built in the 90s and I didn't have as much interest in it because it didn't have lots of trees in the backyard and just didn't feel quite as charming (from the photos) as the other homes did. The house was vacant so I decided to ask Alice to run me through it as well as the others.

Come to find out, the houses I had kind of been drooling over were not appealing to me at all once we went inside. But we tried the new one and I almost started to cry I loved it so much. I kept my cool, knowing that Jason and I had promised each other to have open minds...and because I knew we really weren't ready to place an offer on a house yet. Our lease is not up until the end of May.

I told Jason about it but, again, just kind of kept quiet and was praying over Christmas. When we got back we arranged for Alice to take us both through it. We spent about 2 hours there. I think I knew then that it was going to be our home but of course there was much to work through.

Well, within a very short time we made an offer with a note that we couldn't close until after March, got permission to get out of our lease a month early from our landlords (so we'd be out end of April), got preapproved for the loan, made an offer and now...here we are! We had the inspection last week and sent an addendum asking them to make some minor repairs, they agreed and...well...at this point I can't really imagine anything happening to keep us away. So, with no further ado...meet our new home:

Although I am not thrilled about moving again, I am SO SO SO excited to have a place of our own and to feel like we are putting down some roots. At least for awhile. :) I feel very excited and very blessed!