A New House

I'm not quite sure if it's good that Ryan is as impetuous as I am!!! We've been looking at houses for the last couple of years and almost listed ours last summer, but didn't get around to it. I've been watching a house for a couple of weeks and saw the price drop. I set up an appointment for us to go see it on Friday evening. By Saturday afternoon, we had made an offer. They countered and we accepted after looking at it again last night (Monday). If the inspection and everything else goes well, we'll be closing on January 9th.


The house is in Fontenelle forest where deer and other wildlife are known to wander. (I've heard a guy went bow hunting in his back yard and got arrested). It's a 1.5 Story with a walkout basement.

The deck has as much square footage as the main floor of our current house. It will take Ryan all summer to refinish! (I doesn't look like it will need it for a while though). Benjamin was impressed by the wild turkey and raccoon tracks in the snow in the back yard. The yard has two wooden play sets and a sand box.

The front door is on the left of the photo. We'll have to put netting on the railing when the new baby starts to crawl or add slats to it. On the very top right of the photo, is the balcony from the office that is attached to the master bedroom. Last night, I was impressed to discover the built-in ironing board in the wall of the office. There is a laundry chute and we'll have to teach the kids that nothing but laundry goes in there. It would be horrible to have to clean cat guts out of the bottom or have a cat stuck in it!!!

Benjamin has already picked out his bedroom. It has a horse mural on the wall. We'll probably have the boys share a room and make the other room a play room until they get older (and/or we have more kids).

The upstairs full bath has a fish motif which Benjamin liked. I think the realtor asked if the sellers would leave the soap dish etc. for us.

Master Bedroom. It has a partial walk-in closet and a 3/4 bath with double sinks, tile floor, granite counter top, and ceramic shower.

Living Room.

Dining room. I am a bit sad the house doesn't have an un-carpeted eating area, but we can eventually put a wood floor in the dining room.
Kitchen and Family Room. To the left is the garage, a half bath, and a mud room with nice built in shelves.

Corian or granite counter tops would have been exquisite, but I love the kitchen nonetheless.

The basement has a large rec room, bedroom, laundry room with an attached 3/4 bath. The linoleum is 80s and the carpet isn't that nice, so the basement is really the only thing that could be fixed up more.

So that's the house. It's one that we hope to be living in for the next 20 years.

Family Photos

We went and got family photos taken today. Benjamin is sick with the stomach flu Ryan and I had on Monday and I was tempted to cancel, but it would have been the 3rd time rescheduling so we decided just to go. For Benjamin being sick, he sure has a lot of energy.Benjamin was doing this weird squinting thing in almost all the photos so we didn't have a lot of choices out of the 71 pictures they took. The one I've included is the one that ended up on the wall in our living room. I don't want to spoil the one going out with our Christmas letter (which I WILL get out this year... I only mailed ~10% of last year's... Not to mention Benjamin's 1 and 2 year old photos!) The other photo has my pregnant belly in it.

Free Pizza!

Last night Ryan took Benjamin on a Father/Son outing (not a date so I've been told)... to Pizza Hut. The local library has a reading program where children earn a free pizza once a month by reading or being read to. The reading goals seem pretty low to me because 64 books is the maximum and we can do that in about a week, including reading full Richard Scary books during that time. Apparently we read a lot (probably about 2 hours a day).

We had two coupons so Ryan got a free pizza too. I guess the Pizza Hut employees felt sorry for them when Benjamin kept asking where their pizza was and so they gave them an order of free bread sticks too. We're blessed and people are so nice!

It was a full outing because when Ryan and Benjamin got home they played a few games of Gran Tourismo on Ryan's old PS1. Benjamin runs the car in circles and at some point, Ryan tried to push him to the finish line. Then they raced as a "team". I almost ruined it for them when Ryan told me that their racing team won and I said "there aren't teams in that game, how does that work?"... I wonder if Benjamin will feel shorted when he gets a little older and finds out that daddy was just having him hold an inactive controller.