December 13th

I know y'all are missing my house posts so I thought I'd update you!

We took ourselves off of house-viewing restriction and started looking at a few more again. I'm beginning to see that God might be answering our prayers for wisdom about our next purchase by giving us PLENTY of time to shop. Seriously, we I have fallen "in love" with a handful of houses already but today is the first time we've actually given 2nd visits to any houses. We've also left numerous houses saying, "yeah...this could be the one" only to have our feelings change over the following days.

What if we had jumped on any of those houses early on because of a quick sale? I shudder...

Although I REALLY DID love that one house...

So today we saw 4 houses and 2 of them were 2nd visits. The first house of today was, by all recollections, the first house we saw in all of this journey. It has been the kids' favorite and it IS REALLY REALLY cool but after checking it out again, we're close to officially crossing it off the list. I'm going to do a quick google search about eliminating mold/mildew in basements to see if any technological advances have been made to remedy this problem in aging houses but am pretty sure that we don't want to tackle this potential health hazard. (But dang, we could probably get them to REALLY drop the price!) Our re-visit today caused almost all of us to have itchy/fuzzy tongues and watery eyes when we were in the basement and afterwards. We are a very sensitive family and feel pretty sure it was something we breathed in that musty basement that caused these problems.

House #2 was also a re-visit and it was one that Henry initially didn't like. He was turned off by the price the first time we looked at it and just didn't see it in a positive light because of it. But THIS time (since they dropped the price a little bit) it has catapaulted to the top of our LOVE list. It is H U G E and we are really leaning towards it. It's still too pricey, especially considering it will need some massive updating (not repair, just cosmetics as far as we can tell pre-inspection) but it has really great space for our family.

Houses #3 & 4 were around the corner from each other in a great neighborhood. Number three was crossed off almost immediately. No side door. Too formal. Bedrooms too small. It was probably the most BEAUTIFUL of all the houses we've seen this whole time but just not a good fit for us. I'm really quite surprised at the square footage it says it has because to us, it just seemed really small. A retired couple needs to get it.

Number 4 is the one I stood in the front of yesterday and prayed for God to take out of my heart if it wasn't meant to be. Today, he might have answered that prayer. The neighborhood is SUPER-awesome and desireable, but the house, not so much. GORGEOUS on the outside, but small-ish (for us) and too needy on the inside. Good enough, though, to be #2 on our list right now. It costs the same as our SUPER-SIZED fave but might have better potential at accepting a lower offer, though. We'd have to decide which is more important...location or size. And the location is good because of stability of neighborhood and closeness to parents and inlaws NOT location of church/work/ballfields. If those were our only criteria, Super-Size house would be tops.

Sigh...so much to think about.

Of course, we can't forget...OUR HOUSE MUST SELL!

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HAPPY 84th BDAY BOB BARKER!

It was one year ago today that we were in the audience of The Price Is Right. I can't believe how time has flown!

Today is Captain's 10 month bday, too!