A Series of Fortunate Events #6: In which we buy a house (deja vu)

It took longer than we hoped it would to sell our house. But there are plenty of people out there who've had to sit on a house for years, so I can't complain. However, the selling of our house definitely would not fit in this series. It was more of a series of UNfortunate events, at least for us. Once it was FINALLY done, we were ready to buy a house here. We called up our super lovely real estate agent from the rental hunting.

We tried to stay in the same sort of area, so that our girls could stay at the school we had fallen in love with. Originally, I'd really thought I wanted a split level. Our rental was a split level, and after living in one for a few months, its glamour had worn off. So we were no longer looking for that.

We went to open houses, we checked places out with our realtor, and we did innumerable drive bys. After a few visits to one house, we were really excited about the potential. It had a master bedroom upstairs and down, and it had a couple of bedrooms with a pocket door in between. So perfect for the girls! We'd have to do quite a bit of painting (so creative with the colors, these owners were). But the layout was pretty good, for the most part. Biggest drawbacks: the backyard was right on a major highway, and there was a pool. The highway issue was iffy. It had the concrete wall, so it probably wasn't TOO noisy. But the pool. Two problems there.

1. I am a Nervous Parent.

2. Captain America and I are not really maintenance pros or fixit people. Sounded like a lot of work and expense for the 3 months out of the year you can use it.

We were ready. Time to put in an offer. We'd either tear out the pool, or figure out what to do with it. Get the girls some swimming lessons. Get a giant fence to keep out neighbor kids, which was my biggest worry (just last summer a girl here in town wandered into a neighbor's pool and drowned - so sad).

My parents were coming down for the weekend, and we thought it'd be nice to have my dad take a look at it before we made anything official. I think it was a Thursday when we made our appointment with our realtor for Saturday. On Friday she called to say, "There's another one going on the market Monday just a few blocks away - do you want to see that one while we're out?"

Saturday we went and looked at the house again. It seemed workable. The pros outweighed the cons. Then we headed over to the next house. It had a similar layout. Only it didn't have the pool that made us nervous. And it didn't have a highway in the backyard, IT HAD A PARK. SOLD! After one look (just like our first house), we put in an offer. We had it all settled before the MLS realtors got to look at it.

The best part? That other house would not have worked nearly as well for the baby we ended up adding. Also, by the time we ended up moving I was pregnant enough to tell people, and I didn't have to carry anything! Or scrub the floors of the rental on my hands and knees!

We're no longer in exactly the right school zone, but we're close enough that we can stay (unless numbers at either of the schools get completely out of whack). This house has been just perfect for us. The timing was everything!