House Hunting: Hopefully Over!

After looking at over a dozen houses (fun with a seventeen month old and a four month old!) and making one offer that fell through, we've got an accepted offer on a house we love. I would be packing, but my noises woke the Striderling up and so now it's Catch Up On Blogging Time while trying to get him back to sleep.

What sort of house is it? One with beautiful things that say, "let me be a home to your family," like a big family room and fire place inside, and old flowers (lilacs, peonies, lily of the valley, and hydrangeas) outside. It's a house with space to grow (1700 sq ft) and rooms enough for our children and hoped-for future guests. It's a house with things I'll have to adjust to (the kitchen definitely has some quirks) and things I'll change (dark, paneled walls will be painted a light, airy color). It is a house across the street from a playground and within walking distance of a grocery store I frequent... major blessings.

It is also a house that fell into our laps as an answered prayer. We thought we'd found The House we wanted.  It had been on the market for weeks with no interest shown in it at all, so we felt confident about it. We gave a fairly low initial offer, both of us being raised by frugal parents. The counter offer back took very little off the price, so we countered again. And as we did, Strider prayed that if they came back with X amount or above, we'd know to just walk away. They came back with X amount... so we left it. This was really hard for me to do; I'd been doing so much research on houses, and everything I'd seen in our price range but this particular house had been smaller and dingier.  I worked at swallowing my discouragement and then went back to the search.

Two days later, a house was listed for the first time. It was an estate sale, where the family, though they had good memories of the home (their parents had owned this house since 1959) also wanted to let the house go as soon as possible, so they'd priced it below market value. It is a better house than the previous one, and the price was thousands less to boot.

We've got a purchase agreement, have an inspection date set up, and hope to close by the first of June. I foresee a crazy, crazy next several weeks... but I am so very excited for what it's all heading towards!