Be it ever so humble...

So, yesterday and today were kind of exciting around this house. Maybe not as noteworthy as the 2 days before that (the ones where Jordan turned into a raging maniac and Carter foud his voice. His LOUD voice.) But those 2 days are another topic all-together...

Yesterday Dave announced that he wants to move. He has done all of the work that he is capable of doing himself on this house, and is ready to move on to a bigger and better home. I was not a fan of this idea AT ALL. But, I realized that he was serious, so when he talked about it, I acted interested. I thought the idea would fade away after dinner, when the screaming/crying/tantrums and bathtime routines took over. Leave it to my children to pick the ONE NIGHT I was counting on their antics, to behave. So, later in the evening Dave calls me to the computer to show me a house. "Yeah, okay" I said only half looking. Then I glanced again and saw what he was showing me. A GORGEOUS looking house, on an almost completely FLAT acre and a half of land (all you Calvert County people, insert "GASP!" here). It had a wrap around porch, fenced yard, 2 decks and a swingset. The pictures of the inside were vague, but I knew as well as he did that it was worth looking at, as it checked every box on our previous "dream-home" list. So he called our realtor.

Before I knew it we had a list of 4 houses to look at, and were checking comps and "good-faith" estimates of mortgage payments. He hung up the phone with a smile, and said we were meeting her at 4:00 Friday to look at the houses, then she would be coming over to our house to look around, take pictures, and if we decided so: HANG THE SIGNS. WOW. I was dumbstruck. Dave was giddy.

For those of you who don't already know, the house we live in now is almost completely my fault. I saw it, I loved it. We went the next day and looked at it, and several others, but that very day we put a contract on it. Dave was not in love with this house. He had another in mind, one with a 4 car garage and multiple sheds. But this house was for some reason "the one" for me.

So, I decided, with the help of counseling from a couple of friends, that if Dave could do that for me, I could do the same for him. I could go, look at a house, and if he HAD TO HAVE IT I could live with that. It is only fair, right?

Today was a mess of cleaning and second guessing, and looking at pictures OVER and OVER and Over again. Then 4:00 came and we went to the first house. The one with the porch and whatnot. Almost double the square footage of our house, and double the lot size...and HORRIBLE on the inside! Well, to us anyways. There were just walls EVERYWHERE and no flow to the house at all. It was hard to get passed the dated paint and carpet and the odor. Suddenly the outside didn't make it so appealing.

We saw the other homes, I liked one, Dave hated it, Dave liked another, I hated it. We didn't decide on one but had our realtor over to talk comps anyways, and look at the logistics of buying/selling, and talk about what we were interested in.

She left and Dave talked about how dissapointed he was in the houses we'd seen, except the one he liked (and of course the realtor had sided with him earlier and went on about how nice it really was). But, I felt like Dave just wanted a different house, not that the one in question was really better. So I said "our basement is EXACTLY how we want it, without exception. I don't want to move to another house where we have to change a bunch of things to get it perfect. We have carpet throughout almost our entire house that is less than a year old, I don't want to move somewhere that doesn't. Our shed is wired for electricity, and our yard is landscaped like we want it, I don't want to move somewhere that it isn't!" Then after about 10 minutes of looking around our own house Dave came to the following conclusion:

"I walked around as if this were not my house, and I were interested in buying one. If we would have walked into a house exactly like this one, we would have immediately been in love with it and jumped at the chance to buy it."

Its so nice to know that although this wasn't the home he'd have chosen 5 years ago, its the one he'd choose now.

Sigh. There's no place like home!