Our New House

The story of how we got our house:

(it’s a bit long-winded but I wanted to remember all the details, so I won’t be offended at all if you skip right over it)

We were so excited to finally be done with looking and looking for the perfect house for us. We spent hours and hours pouring over listings on line and driving around our favorite areas hoping to see just the right house. We had found a good house that we really wanted but it needed some updating done to the wiring that we wanted the owners to fix or drop the price so we could do it. We made them (what we thought) a good offer on their house, lower than what they were asking. But it had been on and off the market for about a year so we thought they would take us up on it. But, no, they countered us with their original price and said they wouldn’t make any repairs. Well this kind of gave us a sour feeling about the whole thing. We let about a week go by,had an electrician give us an estimate on fixing the “knob and tube” wiring  and were ready to make them another offer that Friday. It turned out that their realtor was out of town and asked if it could wait till Monday. Over the weekend we saw another house on the market that looked amazing and exactly what we had been looking at. We quickly emailed our agent and told him we wanted to see this house before making the offer on the other one. We went and looked at the house and immediately fell in love and knew this was the right house for us. We surprised our agent and told him we wanted to make an offer that day. He advised us to go through the house one more time just to make sure. We were sold, the kitchen, and one of the bathrooms, had recently been renovated, had tons of old, Victorian character, and was at an amazing price. It was perfect. So we made the offer and a few days later the owner accepted our offer. We found out that our agent helped us out by letting the owner (whose husband was a dentist) know that Matt was a dentist. Dentists have to look our for each other ;)

We knew the owner was selling the house because her husband had died recently from a stroke and wanted to downsize so we offered to buy some of her furniture that she wasn’t attached to. So a few weeks before closing, we went through the house with her daughter and bought some really great things (like Grandfather clock, dining room set, dressers, chairs, lamps, an old radio cabinet). But the one thing that I was really interested in was her upright piano. We didn’t know anything about pianos so we did some research to figure out which brands were better so we’d have some idea of how much money to budget for. It turned out that she was just going to give us the piano as a house warming gift. What?! We were shocked. It’s a beautiful piano, with a good sound (so we’ve been told) but no one can figure out who made it. It may be a mystery forever but we like having a piano in the house. And maybe I’ll take lessons the same time as Lily and we’ll both learn how.

We did a final walk through with the owner (she is the sweetest lady) and she showed us some of the tricks to the house (it was built in the 1890s so it definitely has it’s quirks)

Our first meal at the new house: Little Cesar’s pizza.

Matt immediately started tinkering with the sprinklers. He LOVES having a yard again. He was starting to go crazy (and driving the rest of us mad too) in that apartment. He claimed he, “lost all will to care for things,” which explains why he let his beloved bonsai plants die.

Unfortunately he found some broken sprinklers that were losing tons of water, making the water pressure low, which explained why there were dry patches in the grass. He spent the next few months fixing sprinklers, pipes and hand watering the lawn to try and get it back to a beautiful lush lawn again.

Catching some netflix while her clothes were drying from running through the sprinklers. Her place of choice: under the piano bench. Such a silly girl.

Moving Day (July 4th)

We had some awesome movers come help us and stay with us. Isn’t family amazing!

Nina brought matching outfits for all the girls to wear. I tried to get Lily to sit next to Tessa but she wasn’t having any of that. But Tessa still loves my camera :)

Sophie liked playing with the rope in the truck.

sweet little Jacob

our kitchen. You better believe that was the first room to get unpacked.

We also had some people from church that helped us move too. This became “box central” where EVERYTHING ended up. I was so happy when I could see my dining room and entry way again.

Sophie worked so hard she passed out on the lawn chair.

That night we took everyone out to eat at a local pizzeria just down the road from our new digs. Lily was LOVING her lemonade.

SUGAR RUSH! The girls were having a great time swinging their hair back and forth. The cousins always have so much fun when they’re together.

Sophie and Tessa had their heart set on being in a bike parade. So during nap time Jessica ran to the dollar store and got things to decorate the bikes so they could ride them around the neighborhood yelling, “Happy Fourth of July!”

Don’t Dan and Jacob look great on my bike :)

Our house has a lot of stairs, but the favorite stairs are these ones in the main entry. The girls were practicing their jumping skills off them. Lily was still learning how to jump and couldn’t quite figure out how to get both feet off the ground at the same time. All the adults were getting a good laugh from her numerous attempts.