Well...we finally bit the bullet.
We have purchased our first house.
FINALLY a place that is OURS. <3
We tossed around the idea of a house for a long time, months actually. When we moved to Bryant (remember, into the house that my parents' had just moved out of) we hit it hard, searching for an apartment, townhouse, or house because we just knew my parents' house was going to sell quickly.
Cut to about two months ago, right around Thanksgiving. My parents told me that they finally got an offer on their house! Bittersweet news. Great for my parents, not so great for us. You see, we had gotten kind of lazy with our housing search. I mean we occasionally would email each other links to various places, but nothing serious ever really developed.
My dad informs me that the buyers would like to move in at the beginning of January. Well once we got THAT news, we were kind of in a panic. We had a little over a month to find AND buy/rent a place to live. First Aaron says he is very serious about us buying our first house, which gets me all excited. So I go into a frenzy looking at different houses online in Little Rock, NLR, Benton, Bryant, & even Conway.
The weeks slip away and we are getting to early/mid-Decemeber and are trying to figure out our travel places plus our living arrangement. Aaron says "Maybe we should just stick to an apartment for now, because I don't think there is way for us to find a house and close in the time we have to move out of the Bryant House (which is what we called it)."
(insert tears) :(
I was so crushed. I had all these ideas and dreams of our first house together! CRUSHED.
*Side note: I tend to get way to emotionally invested in some things! ;)*
But then I thought about how I knew God had a plan through all of this and so I would just keep praying and it would work out.
So a few weeks before Christmas and I am in Conway at Target with my mom looking through all of the Christmas stuff and daydreaming about all the Christmas tree themes we would like to do in the future, and I see my friend Rachel. Rachel was my pledge sister at OBU, my "twin" in my EEE family, and who had also just bought a house in Conway. She was there with her mom trying to find Christmas decor for her new house! I tell her about our housing dilemma and she earnestly recommends that we check out her neighborhood. It's new, it's in a smaller area that can't really be over-developed, and she loves it! So later that night I mention it to Aaron over dinner. He agrees that at the very least it would be worth checking out. So we decide to drive to Conway that night and drive around the neighborhood. He keeps talking about how he really likes the area and it doesn't seem to "ghetto" or "redneck" -which are pluses to me!- and we go and talk to my parents about it.
Basically the next part happened in a blur. We end up looking at 3 houses in Conway over the following weekend, narrow it down to 2 and then try to figure out our finances/pray about it to see if it's what we should do. While all of this is going on, House #1 gets put "under contract" aka someone has put in an offer. I was so sad. I had already planned out furniture arrangements and how our backyard was going to look....sad sad sad.
The realtor we worked with kept in contact and over the holidays we ended up looking at 3 more houses, 1 from the previous trip. The first go-around, it was just Aaron and I, and the second time we asked both sets of parents to come along. The first house we had seen before and thought it was very cute, but we weren't sold yet, and the 2 other houses were still under construction. One house didn't even have most of the interior work done yet! The last house, although it was a different floor plan that the others we had looked at, we walked in and immediately loved the open floor plan. It hadn't been cleaned and there were no blinds, carpet, etc inside yet, but I could already see how I wanted it to look. We thanked the realtor for her time and the whole way home we discussed our plans. We both agreed that the last house of the day was the one we liked the best.
So, we worked out of finances and got a loan from the bank. We put an offer down on the house and once we filled out a giant stack of paperwork and signed our lives away, we worked out a deal so that we could move in early! Despite the daily fee until we close, we are so happy! ;) So I am writing while sitting on the couch in my cute little living room :) I love this little house and I am so proud that it is OURS. I've already been calling it The Nicholson Nest, so I'm thinking that name will probably stick!
merry christmas to us!
so happy!
our home
