A Grown-Up House

I really wanted to post about the new house when we wrote the contract, but thought it'd be best to wait until the house was officially ours so I wouldn't jinx it. I'm a little late on the post - we settled about 2 weeks ago now... but better late than never. Selling and buying a house at the same time turned out to be quite an experience. The inspection on the old house was fairly uneventful... until we got a call from our agent a week before settlement to tell us that we needed to install railing leading to the basement. So, Ryan installed railing going down the steps to the basement. Simple, right? Not at all. The day before settlement he gets another call from the agent to tell him that the railing was not sufficient, so he spoke with the loan officer and they agreed that parallel railing on the main level would be sufficient. Again, not so much... The next day, while we were at settlement for the new house, Ryan gets the same phone call about the railing being insufficient! In addition to all this, our settlement on the new house took about 2.5 hours as our 2nd mortgage wasn't officially approved until the bank got to review the revised settlement sheet. We finally finished up with the new house, and Ryan and my dad headed to Lowes to buy some supplies to install railing and balisters at the old house. What we thought would be an easy day off of work turned into a pretty stressful day, but it finally ended around 6:30pm with Ryan signing all the papers to settle on the sale of the old house. We are done with living in the city!!

Despite all of the struggles, we couldn't be happier living in the new house. It is so quiet out here in the "country", the first night we had trouble falling asleep, but we have gotten used to the peacefulness very quickly. The first day here, we saw a deer in the woods behind the house - you definitely don't see many deer in the city! It has also been so nice to come home and have a parking spot in the garage! I will admit that I needed Ryan to help me pull into the garage the first time as the door is a bit narrow for the Pilot... but it gets easier every day. We are slowly getting settled and are looking forward to hosting our first family event next weekend for Father's Day! Also, I wanted to say thank you to both my dad and Crystal. My dad came and waited for the movers during our marathon settlement and also helped with the railing on the old house and anything else he could help put together for us when we moved in. We are also very lucky that my dad likes to collect lawn equipment, so we have a lawn mower and weed wacker, among other things! Thanks, Dad. And thanks to Crystal who came the night before we settled on the new house in the dark and in the rain to plant such pretty flowers in the flower bed out front. What a nice surprise when we got here to move in! I also want to thank my dad and Crystal and everyone else for all the advice/opinions on the house buying process and for helping to keep us both calm with all the stress. You guys know who you are, and we couldn't have made it through the process without you! I have included a picture below of the house, although, I think most have already seen it.