anniversaries, yes, with an -ies - pt I

i hadn't really made the connection beforehand; the girls were coming to visit, it was superbowl weekend & there was a possible cub scout meeting. for us, that's a busy weekend & we ain't even football fans....

see superbowl weekend is actually another anniversary for us from the year of 2001 [remember the year of crazy?] yes...i didn't even get into house hunting details. so when B was about 4 months into his 6 mo deployment i remember telling him my mom was driving me crazy & the first thing we needed to do as SOON as he got home was to find somewhere to live. we started apt hunting but didn't like our options & prices so we'd started house hunting.

we liked the area our old apt was in, it was somewhat central to our work/school environment so we were hoping to stay in the same vicinity. um, in case you haven't noticed, B & I are not planners nor are we into sports so without even thinking about it, superbowl sunday morning we were calling real estate agents to view some houses. i know i called & left a few vm's, probably 3 or 4 & finally one lady called us back & it was on.

the 1st house we looked at the front was so small the entrance was on the side [ie, narrow lot]. the owner's creatively spruced up what they could via paint, i remember one of the bedrooms all red, white & blued out, talk about patriotic. it was cute house but about the size of a postage stamp inside & out.

i don't know if there other stops in between, but at some point i brought up the house up the street that i knew was out of our price range. now looking back at it, i'm surprised the RE lady even bothered showing us, but she did. i had driven by it several times, i had read the best thing to do was find a neighborhood you like & drive around & i had my eye on this place for some time.

the lot was much bigger & when you walked inside it had a completely open entry with a view through living/dining room into the kitchen with a sliding glass door to the back yard. one of the things i loved best was 2 small windows in the kitchen, between the counter & upper cabinets, they let in so much light & are perfect for small plants. down the hallway was a bathroom & 3 bedrooms sprouted off. the rooms were kinda small but we were told that was basically the norm in newer developments.

so yeah, we, er...i, loved the house. we left & went over to mc'ds to work over some numbers to see if it was even possible. it was, supposedly, you know, on paper, but it was insanely higher than what we had been paying in rent, we decided to go for it though.