Home Sweet Home!

The most exciting thing that has happened recently is that we BOUGHT A HOUSE! It is perfect and wonderful and I love it so very much!  I never want to move again and hopefully, I will never have to! When we sold our house last summer and began renting we thought we would be renting for a while, and that was fine. We wanted to make sure that all went well with the new business before buying a house again. Renting was fine, it obviously wasn't our ideal home, but I knew it was temporary. Of course, then little by little we just started 'seeing what was out there' We'd do on line searches, and grab fliers every now and then. It was fun to dream. I did know that if we did move, I wanted it to be somewhere we could live for a long long time, if not forever! After things going very well with the business, we felt a bit more secure in making the decision to buy again. We knew we were staying in Spokane, and it was a great time to buy with the market ever so slowly going back up again. (In Spokane anyway)

I saw our house for the first time on a search on trulia.com. It was out of the price range we wanted to stay in. We got approved for more, but didn't want to be house poor, so we limited ourselves, and this was JUST beyond that. We looked at a lot of houses (23 total--thanks Mark Spear!) :) All of them in our ideal price range were bigger, with enough space to grow, but old and needed a lot of work. OR.... nice and new and beautiful, but just no room to grow, or even too small! We found a beautiful house just a bit out of our ideal area, but still here in the Valley that was too good to pass up. It was a foreclosure, and was just beautiful at a great price. We made an offer and of course, that very day (after being on the market for like 9 months) they received another offer the very same day that was higher than ours, and the other people got it. But I wasn't devastated, so I took that as a sign that it wasn't for us. And...I kept on going back to this house. OUR house. We even went and looked at it when we thought it was out of our price range, just to see it. I just kept on thinking about it. It was perfect! New enough, but not brand spanking new to be way TOO expensive. Enough bedrooms and living space AND and unfinished basement. It was in a great neighborhood, at the end of a cul-de-sac! I fell in love with it instantly! And one of our favorite things about it, is that it is different than every other house on the street. It is in kind of a cookie-cutter neighborhood, where all the houses look very similar, and this one totally stands out with the pitched roof and tudor style. After looking at a lot of houses, we found out that this house had actually been on a short sale that had just fallen through. The people who put an offer in on it waited on the bank for 8 months! (Bad for them, good for us!!!) They finally found a different house, and it was available, and found out that the bank was FINALLY ready to just get this house off their hands, and were willing to negotiate the price! It was totally meant to be ours, and I thought from day one that this was my house. I just knew it! :)

It actually went pretty fast for a short sale, we put the offer in at the end of December, and heard back at the beginning of Feb. Then they wanted to close at the end of Feb! A few little hiccups with paperwork etc... an extension later, and after signing about 5000 papers, and our lives away,  we closed on March 13th!

We went out that night to celebrate with Blizzards at Dairy Queen!

I love these crazy kids!

And this funny little girl!

The moving process wasn't as stressful for me as the last time 'round. Although being 6 months pregnant didn't help! My motivation and energy level were severely lacking this time! Luckily, I had a lot of great friends who helped me take car loads little by little over to the new house. And, luckily, there was no date that we had to be out of our little Blossey house so there was no pressure to have it done by a certain time. (in fact, our crib is totally still in tact over in the old house! We didn't have an Allen wrench to take it apart on the day of the move, and since we don't have a need for it for another few months, it's been demoted on the priority list! We will hopefully be going over to get it this week!) Anyway, with the help of a lot of wonderful friends for a about a week or so, I had scheduled different friends to come and help on different days, just load up their cars with boxes and take them over. It was perfect! Then with the help of our awesome Branch members one Monday night, they got all the big things, and luckily we were able to stay with my dad for a few days in between while getting things situated and found. And then we were in! And my mom showed up on that day to help with the organizing and unpacking, and stayed for a week or so, and it was perfect!

Little van loads are much more doable for a pregnant woman, than one huge haul! Luckily the new house is like 5 minutes away from the old.

Many many mornings were spent loading up this garage (in our PJ's) with junk until we moved in. Taylor would find every little thing and of course, have to play with it right then, and couldn't live without it!

So, here are the stats:

First floor is living room, dining room, kitchen, office area, and half bath.

Upstairs is 4 bedrooms, laundry and 2 full baths. One of the rooms is a big bonus room over the garage that we will use as Tuckers room for now.

Unfinished basement has room for a living space, plumbed in for a bathroom and a big bedroom.

Some things I love about this house:

*In ground sprinkler system! I didn't think that was important when we bought our first house, but having to move the hose every few hours during the summer with a memory like mine is not good at all! Most days I would forget and either not do it at all, or leave it in one area all day. I'm so grateful for in ground sprinkler systems!

*A/C. I know that we only have to use it for like one month here in Spokane, but seriously the thought of not having to haul out the huge and heavy window units to each room every year, makes me giddy! :)

*Office space off the dining room! I love that there is an office space on the main floor, in a common area, that we don't have to use one of the rooms as an office!

*All the bedrooms are upstairs on the same level! No more monitors to make sure my babies are ok in their rooms! :) Our room was in the basement in the last house, so I used a monitor every night just to make sure I could hear if something happened. But then every little thing would freak me out and it would just be a car driving by or something. I am so glad that the kids are just down the hall, and can come to me if they need anything! I think it helps Tucker sleep better knowing we are closer, too!

*A master suite! We've never had a master bedroom, and this is so nice! Not having to sleep in a dungeon and having room IN our bedroom for our dresser and side tables is fabulous! Ben and I have never ever shared a closet because we've never had one big enough! He's always had his clothes in a different room! :) We can now share a closet AND have our own bathroom to boot! :) We've only ever had one bathroom to share with the kids and guests! :) I am one lucky girl!

*Tons and tons of storage in the garage, shelves galore for all of my tubs and boxes! It is fabulous!

* The paint was already pretty great, we don't have to do anything to that, and the previous owners really took care of this house. The inside is clean and the yard is beautiful! One of my friends lives behind us, and told me that it was an older couple who lived here, who were empty nesters and he was a pastor. (we don't know what caused the short sale, but I do feel kind of bad for taking their beautiful home!) :)

There are of course, little things we would like to do in the future, little changes and updates here and there, but it is absolutely perfect! We did get new carpet in the living room, and new laminate hardwood floors through the dining room. (It was all carpet and was getting a bit worn!)

We had planned on putting this huge green sectional in the basement for storage until we had it finished, and then just having them down there when is is finally usable  but it's kind of a tricky corner getting into the basement, so they ended up in our living room. I was fine with it, but they are a really akward shape for most living areas. Realllllll long and they just didn't fit in this living room like they did our last house. Unfortunately they had to go!

We cleaned them up a bit and put them on craigslist and they were gone the next day!

(I was taking pictures of them to post and my mom, Tucker and Taylor were behind them so I just told them to hide while snapped a few shots. They had to be in one!) :)

Even with this bad boy on the back of the couch, Ben was able to sell them for more than we got them for! He is a Craigslist wonder that one! :) I don't know how he does it!

Anyway, here is a shot from the front door looking into the house, you can see the new laminate in the dining room. So glad we decided to go with the darker, we love it! It looks so nice! I do have to sweep a lot, but I'm pretty sure I would have to do that no matter what color the floor was! :)

Here's a better shot of the dining floor. I need to get some updated pictures, because this is literally the first night in our new house and everything is just a mess!

The sweet sister missionaries came one day to help organize the kitchen. Their help was wonderful! We love Hermana's Sanchez & Judd...

This is funny, because we discovered that some gas had accidentally spilled on the outside of one of the kitchen boxes. Of course, most of the silverware and dishes were just fine, we ran them through the dishwasher, but all of the towels that we had the dishes wrapped in smelled like gas. So we read on-line that the best way to get out the gas smell is to just put them out in the sun for a few days. Well the sun in March here in Spokane is so hit or miss, they'd be out there for a few days, and we would be ready to get them, and then it would start snowing, or raining, or even hailing once. So they ended up being out there in our backyard for like 2 weeks because they were never dry enough to bring in and I wanted the sun to heat off some of that gas smell. They were finally in the sun for like 3 days straight, and I brought them in and washed them and the smell was gone! It was wonderful! :)

The kids had a grand time sleeping with Grandma on the blow up mattress for a few days in the play room room.

After we sold our couches there were a few days of no furniture, just the TV in the corner. Of course, Taylor got sick on one of those days so I made her a make shift bed in front of the TV. Poor girl, acted like she was fine for most of the day, then of course the two times we were in public that day, at the furniture store and at Red Robin for lunch, she puked! And it was not pretty!

And in the above picture you might notice that TV on the floor. That is our TV that we'ave had for 4 and half years now, that is perfectly good. Well...let me tell you about our TV situation right now at our house. After a few days of being in the house, the door bell rings. A delivery man. Here to deliver a brand new from Costco 55 inch TV. Ben had said nothing of this to me. I called Ben to make sure that these guys weren't confused, but sure enough, it was for us. Ben had met a sales goal doing some part time sales calls for a friend, and this was his reward for making the goal. That is fine, he was so excited, our old TV was 47 inches (still huge in my opinion) but we thought we could put this new 55 inch TV up here for now until we finish the basement and it would be great down there! Now we have two TV's. That is not unheard of. Well, then a few days go by and we had just purchased some couches from Walkers furniture, and Ben was out doing the last little bit of paperwork for them. And in true Ben fashion, HAD to check Furniture Row Outlet one last time just to make sure we didn't miss out on something better. (We LOVE our couches, we definitely got the right ones!) :) He had Taylor with him, and when they walked in to Furniture Row, lo and behold, they were having a giveaway drawing for 2 free I-pads. One at 5:30, which is what time it was when he go there, so he entered, they drew (actually they asked Taylor to draw the name out of the hat) And it wasn't Ben. They told him that you have to be present in order to win,. and the next drawing would be at 8:30. So they came home, we did dinner and bed time, and we thought, what the heck, just go back and see if you win. How many people are really going to go back 3 hours later if they are not still there shopping. So, I got the kids in bed and Ben headed to Furniture Row. He didn't win the I-pad, but after they announced the winner, they said, ok, if you're willing to stay for about 10 more minutes, we are also going to be giving away a free 60 inch TV. 10 minutes later they call Ben's name and he WON the 60 inch TV. So, in the space of less than a week we got 2 VERY large TV's basically gifted to us! I don't know how he does it! :) I don't know what we're going to do with all of these TV's.

Here he is the night of the big win:

You can tell he was very excited! :) (I was kind of hoping we could take it back to the furniture store and exchange it for a nice dining room set or something, but he was too excited to rain on his parade) :)

Here he had me pose like Vana to send a message to his BFF Doug to make him jealous! :)

And here it all is, the complete look with the new furniture. I love it so much! (Notice all of the TV's just lying around!)

Our new home just might be perfect for me!

This is how we ate every meal in the house for the first week, with Taylor on the counter. It's her favorite breakfast and lunchtime spot to eat! :) 

And, we may not have had a lot of groceries in the house, but we had the essentials!

Another huge blessing and great find was the gorgeous dining room set on craigslist. Beautiful and hardly even used, basically brand new. It has a leaf in the middle to make it a square, so you can put 2 on each side and it will seat 8. It is beautiful!

Of course, it got broken right in with the kids assessing their Easter Candy!

OK, here are some finished room pictures. Not totally finished, I really don't have anything on the walls yet, but every nook and cranny of this house is finally cleaned and beds and dressers and tables and toys are in their places, so we are calling it! :)

Tuckers room/ Play room:

To the right as you walk in:

To the left as you walk in:

I think it would be any kids dream room. So many fun toys!

Kids bathroom upstairs:

Taylor's yellow room with her awesome new bunk-beds:

I had originally planned to put both kids in this room and then just use the bonus room as the play room for toys only.  But Tucker is such a night owl, and Taylor is like super star sleeper, that I couldn't do that to Taylor and have her possibly pick up Tuckers bad habits  So, the play room had a rod to hang clothes and a few built in shelves behind the door, so that is his room for now, along with the playroom. It has worked out perfectly! The paint in this house was already perfect for our three kids. The play room is a red and gray. Taylor's room is Yellow and baby boy's room is blue, a perfect match for his crib bedding. (the same I used for Tuck) 

And Taylor has made the transition to big girl bed SO EASILY! I wish she would potty train that easy! :) She goes to bed as soon as I say good night and stays in her room and sleeps all nights and even will tell me if she's tired at night that she's ready for bed! I am SO not used to that behavior at night time from a child! :) And she loves her room and her new bunk beds! Which were hand me downs from a good friend, but still in awesome condition!

There was this weird built in shelf thing in Taylor's room, so I just took off the bottom of it to make room for her dresser and kept the top ones for more storage!

 

Here is our boring room, so far. Nothing too exciting. Although the amount of space it has is exciting enough for me! But also weird that the paint color in our bedroom perfectly matched the bedspread we already had! 

And that's pretty much it for now. I will post better pictures as I get more done. Another lucky thing that happened during this move, was after we cleaned the Blossey house, I knew everything was out of it (except the crib) I just had this feeling to do one more walk through. I didn't even want to go down into the basement again, but I did, just to make sure. I was pretty sure everything was out. Well, in the corner, I noticed a little shiny thing, and then two little shiny things. Two rings that I had gotten in Jerusalem and Egypt (and hadn't worn or even really thought of in years) were in the corner! I am so glad I went back and found these. I know I would have been upset one day to not have them. They may not have much monetary value, but lots of sentimental value! The bottom one is my name in Hebrew and the top one is the Egyptian Ankh. I've been wearing them since, because they bring back some great memories! :) (and I haven't unpacked my jewelry boxes yet!) :)

Well, that in a (very large) nutshell sums up what we've been up to this past month! It's been great, I love my new home and feel so very very blessed!

Thanks so much to all those who have helped, especially my kind and loving and generous parents. 

I don't know what we'd do without them!

 THANK YOU!