Our house - the old old and new new

Some days I am more emotional than others. Today I ran across a picture of Neil and I's first home, just as we are going tonight to talk about building plans with our builder. Of course, you know me, it brought back memories and I got emotional thinking about it. I get way too attached.

The house. . . it was our first "home". It was a rental in the country of the small town that we are from. We rented from friends of my grandpa's. It was a cute, but small, old farm house. We had a couple acres, and we had energetic Frankie, so all this land was very exciting for her! We have lots of great memories there . . . sitting out on our front porch watching the fireworks, chasing our cat through the bushes after she accidentally got outside (she is declawed and I went into a panic so I remember this really well), having my first garage sale, hosting parties and throwing bridal showers, unwrapping all our gifts from our wedding day in the middle of the living room floor, saying goodbye to my bunny rabbit "Kitty" after he died in this house (he was my first pet after being out on "my own"), and then I remember little things like talking to my grandma on the phone (she passed away, too, while we lived there), a friend spilling red wine on the cream carpet which took about 6 of us to clean up (was pretty funny), planting sunflowers that towered over our heads . . . oh the memories. And oh how life has changed now. It was almost 8 years ago that we first moved into that house. Man, we're getting old. That also means we are coming up on 8 years of marriage. Holy cow.

So . . . the house . . . isn't it cute and cozy?


And to update on our new (not even drawn up yet) house . . . .

We did have a house plan that was all drawn up and ready to be built, except that we started questioning it. Well, Neil did, which got me to thinking. (Thank goodness I have him who thinks clearly! And no, please don't tell him I am giving him bonus points.) The plans included changing the dining room to my office and making the breakfast area our dining room by pushing out a wall 3 feet. We decided that we could probably find other floor plans with better set-ups so that we could still have our dining room. We could handle just having one place to eat at now, but in the coming years as the kids got older, brought friends over, etc., we felt we'd start wishing we had more room. So back to square one! Ugh.

Well, we found 4 that we really really like a lot. They all have dining rooms, family room and living rooms. We'd just turn the traditional family room into my office which is very do-able in all 4 plans. So we are meeting with the builder to help us rule some out based on bigger costs and so on. Then when we pick one, back to having the blueprints drawn up, waiting 2 more weeks and then hopefully we can get moving. Yeesh, this stuff takes a lot of time. I think it'll be this way the entire time as we make decisions. Good thing that he and I agree on most things. I think it will be fairly simple once we finally pick a plan. I think. I hope it's not too hard. We'll either be still be happily married come August or ready to file for divorce. We shall see.

The lot of land . . . we close on that Monday & sign a big check. Since it will then officially be ours, do you think it would be ok if I went to the lot, took out a lawn chair & my laptop and just chilled? The kids could run their little hearts out while the neighbors peered out their windows, deciding that their soon-t0-be neighbors are nuts. Oh well, they'll find that out soon enough.

So . . . that's the latest and greatest. Any questions?