What we've been up to lately...

My blog was a little quiet during the last half of February. Don't let that silence and lack of posts fool you into thinking that nothing was going on, there was plenty happening, we just weren't publicly talking about it all. Now that it's March we've decided to be a little more open about what has been going on. We're buying a house! We have told our families and one friend who helped us out a ton by watching Emma as we went to fill out paperwork. This month when our Home Teachers come visit us we'll tell them and we assume they'll mention it in their home teaching report. If they don't, I at least know the Relief Society Presidency will hear about it since one of our home teachers is married to one of the RS presidency counselors. We figure we'll tell them first and then let word start getting around that we're leaving the ward. I couldn't wait until they come home teach us to share on my blog. Most of my blog followers (that I know of) aren't local and I have to tell someone our exciting news!

We were planning on buying a house next spring. That was the goal we were working towards. In January we started doing research on different areas of town to see where the better schools were and where there were newer (our current place was built in the 50s and we wanted something with a little more energy efficiency) homes and what neighborhoods met other needs of ours. Chris looked up the addresses of some of his friends from work and we decided to go drive around their neighborhoods because they lived in the part of town where we found better schools. This was just supposed to be a "let's get a feel for what the neighborhoods are like and see if there are obvious reasons to avoid these neighborhoods" drive. 

We didn't expect the promptings we would receive that this was the right neighborhood for us and that we were supposed to move much sooner than we were initially planning. But long story short, we're buying a house! The builder has a new line of homes where they pick everything out and the buyer cannot customize at all. Because there is no customization and because they can then purchase supplies in bulk it can be built more quickly and it costs less than a similar sized home. We found a floor plan we liked, found out that it was one of the first homes they are building, and found a community about 30 minutes away that has a model home of it. We've been to that model home 3 times I think, first to just check it out and then the 2nd and 3rd times we've gone with specific things to measure/figure out.The first time we saw what could be our lot it looked like the first picture. A foundation with some framing supplies.

The second time we saw it (4 days later when we went to sign paperwork to get in contract) it had some framing done:

And exactly one week after the first picture it looks like this (this was just this past Saturday):

It is crazy how it went from a concrete slab to really looking like a house in just one week! I can't wait to share more pictures eventually. I've got a ton of pictures from the model home and at some point I'll find my pdf of the floor plan so you can see what our house will be like!