It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday....

After 6 long months on the market, 1 failed offer, a $10,000 price reduction, we closed on our house today. As happy as I am to have sold the house, I'm just realizing how much I am going to miss our first home. I mean, it's the first place we bought as a married couple, where we raised our little pup Charlie, and where our darling Kai crawled for the first time, took his first step, and said his first word. All these months I've been dying to get rid of this house, and now I realize just how many memories it holds. Here's to an amazing 4 years!

A boy and his dog......

People always laugh when we tell them we have two kids, Kai AND Charlie, but these pictures really help make our case. Kai loves Charlie so much and would be so lonely without his best bud. They are the "Two Amigos" for sure! Now if I could only stop Kai from eating Charlie's food.......

Let the games begin!

It's official...our baby is no longer a baby :( Kai is potty training and it is going fairly well. The biggest struggle so far has been getting him comfortable with a daily routine of using the potty in the morning. When he wakes up the first thing he wants to do is eat breakfast. However, I have learned the art of distraction and have found that putting on a Backyardigans DVD helps him forget his tummy long enough to sit on the pot!

In all seriousness, I am truly amazed at how quickly he is growing and how he seems to change just a bit every day. Watching him learn to put a puzzle piece in the right spot and run around the playground following the older boys with wild abandonment just fills our hearts with so much joy. This baby...little man...is such a gift and we thank God for him every day.

We got the house!

Well, it looks like we're going to be home owners again! The sellers countered our offer and we just signed the paperwork accepting the counter offer. We are really happy with the house and the sellers are quite generous. We requested some unusual items - their entertainment center, riding mower, bar stools, extra refrigerator in the basement - and they agreed. They're also selling us (at an insanely low price) their dining room set which includes 6 chairs, a table, and a matching buffet/hutch. I'm particularly happy about the dining room set because my budget for new living room (leather!) and family room (crate and barrel sectional!) has increased! The first thing I want to do is paint the exterior a nice neutral taupe or tan, and the shutters black. We used those colors for our house in Florida and it looked awesome. Also want to paint the interior a great neutral color - Benajamin Moore's Shaker Beige (thanks Amy!!)

The pictures posted here are from the MLS website. The decor is not my style for sure but the house has great bones and fantastic layout. This is the living room which has new carpet and the entertainment center we asked for in our offer. It is solid wood. I will paint it black to make it a bit more contemporary and modern. We are also going to put a leather sofa and 2 chairs in here using the current layout (minus the coffee table) and replace the light fixture. It is a pretty big room so we'll use this room mostly for entertaining - no kids or dogs allowed!

This is the family room/kitchen. I love how it the kitchen opens up into the family room. It will be so much easier to keep an eye on Kai when plays indoors. The new C&B sectional and chair will go in this room. Check out the built in desk! This is the perfect place for Kai to do his homework when he gets bigger! I also like the stone fire place but the screen has got to go. We have a dining set very similar to the one in the picture that we'll put in this room.

The kitchen is on the other side of the room. I am changing out the brass knobs as soon as we get the keys. I'd like to restain the cabinets (cherry) and get new countertops (corian or some stone material) in a year or so. We also need to update the refrigerator and stove to match the new dishwasher and over the range microwave. I can't begin to tell you how excited I am to have an over the range microwave! I also love the color of the appliances...they were white in our last house and it was a pain in the backside to keep them clean! Oh, I'd also like to re-do the floors..again we had white floors in our Florida home and keeping them clean was impossible!

This last picture gives you some idea of the backyard and side yard. We're going to replace the wooden fence with a slightly taller vinyl fence, and extend it to the back of the property and the other side of the house. The fenced in area will be Charlie's space to run, play, and do his business! That still leaves about .28 acres on the left side of the house for Kai to play and have a playground set. The 2 car garage has enough space for the cars and a workshop and it has windows, so it looks like an extension of the house. I also love how the garage doors are on the side of the house, not the front.

So, now the fun begins. Inspections are set for next week and if all goes well, we are scheduled to close on or before July 30th (somewhere around the 15th would be ideal!). The house appears to be well maintained (it was built in 1989) so we're keeping our fingers crossed!

Our first post..coming to you live from the Keystone State!

We are finally settling in here in Lewisburg, PA. After days and days of cleaning, our rental home is starting to look (and smell) decent. We rented a refrigerator and air conditioning unit and can finally rest comfortably in our humble (and I do mean humble) abode.

We put an offer on a house yesterday and will know by this evening whether it is ours or not. If the sellers accept, we'll close on or before July 30th which gives us plenty of time to get settled before the semester begins. The house is really cute but the exterior definitely needs to be painted (can we say school bus yellow). It is a little over 1900 sq. ft, 2.5 baths, has a living room, dining room, family room that opens into the kitchen, and has 4 bedrooms. It also has a lot of land (.86 acres) so that Charlie and Kai can run wild!

In other housing news, we are set to close on our home in Tallahassee on June 25th! Selling that house has been such an answer to prayer...our buyers are nice people, the inspections have gone so smoothly, and we have a fantastic realtor who has managed to take care of every little thing now that we are more than 1000 miles away. It's funny to think how I prayed all those months for the house to sell and just when least expected it, we received a full price offer 3 days before our departure. God is good all the time, and all the time God is good!