New Assignment, New House!

Well, we are now house hunting, we saw THE house today; it’s just a question of if we get it or not I guess. Our realtor wasn’t able to get a hold of the seller, but on Sunday that’s not a huge surprise. We are crossing fingers, toes, and legs in the hope we get the house we want.

The second house we looked at was awful, the people had been foreclosed on, and they trashed the place, they reversed into the garage door, they poured bleach on the carpet, they punched holes in the walls, and they broke and shot out the windows, they smashed tiles on the kitchen floor, they sawed through the kitchen cabinets, and kicked in every interior door…………. None of that was in the listing info at all. So even though it was the least expensive of the homes we saw, it would have taken at least $30,000 to get it up to our standards. (It was being sold for $100,000 under perfect value, but we are not in the market for a $300,000 house, so having one in the end is of no use to us.)

Then we found THE house! It’s huge, and has a formal living room, family room, dining room, eat in kitchen, and then a amazingly huge bonus room with 16ft ceilings completely separate from the main part of the house. The upstairs is huge with great kid’s rooms and a large extra room for guests and sewing. The master has a huge bath that Paul can fit all the way in, a miracle for him, and he needs to soak his neck and back due to injury, so it’s wonderful for him. It’s a great house with enough to do to personalize it and make it ours, but not so much we can’t handle the work.

I shouldn’t get so excited just waiting to hear about it, if we can’t get it there is no point, but I can’t help it……. Is it possible to first day of looking find the perfect home? It sure feels like it! We haven’t put an offer yet because we need to know if there are other offers or not, and if there are, how much to we need to offer to be competitive?

Anyway, if we do get the house I have decided I will start a new blog all about the decorating and home improvement process.

Back from Italy!

Well, we just got back from Italy, and the trip was really long! 11 days away from home is just a little too much for a homebody like me. Florence was beautiful, but since I was busy with my conference Paul got to spend the most time with the kids. He tried to go to all the museums I went to with my conference so we had something to chat about when I got home in the evenings.

After my conference we went to Pisa and saw the leaning tower, then on to Rome. We didn’t love Rome, but there were beautiful parts. The Coliseum was pretty cool, and Vatican City (to include the Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s Basilica) was another check on our life’s list of things we would like to see.

We went up to Venice next and got rained out; we didn’t stay long, but are determined to go back one day soon-ish. We bought a stack of 16 blank masks for less then it would have cost for one panted Venetian mask, so we are going to paint them as a family craft.

We are so glad to be back and the cats seemed to be glad we are back, so I guess all that’s left to do is get over jet-lag before the kids have to go back to school on Monday.