Big News

I know this is going to be a shocker for a lot people....especially considering possibly the last conversation I had with you about our housing, but here goes.

We have a new house to call "ours"......except, we decided not to buy. Are you shocked????

After spending weeks, possibly months, scouring the Internet and going out looking we made a very drastic change to our plans.

Surprisingly....even after all this money/economy/bank/housing market MESS, the banks were still willing to loan us A LOT of money. Even more money than we could probably reasonably afford. Rand and I have been using Dave Ramsey's guidelines for budgeting and financial planning. His advice is a very "not-our-culture" way of doing things. So after looking over all of that and almost making an offer on a house that would definitely have left us quite house-poor we decided to rent. There just aren't a lot of options for good housing (aside from townhouses) in our price range (the price range that we would consider wise for us....not the price range the banks are willing to give us) and to tell you the truth, there aren't a lot of great rentals out here either (again, aside from townhouses and apartments). However, we started looking and found a 4 bedroom house we could afford on a beautiful huge lot. There is space for the kids to ride bikes, there is a huge yard, room for a garden, 4 bedrooms, a huge basement and good landlords. The clincher of the deal for Rand was the 6-plex little league park directly across the street (Audubon Recreational Area) complete with little league fields, a park and batting cages. The clincher for me was next door is a county-owned beautiful lot and across the street from that is the Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary, complete with bike paths, walking paths, museum and lots of nature! It even connects with Valley Forge National Park. So, we love it. We feel good about our decision (instead of burdened about a house payment that would have left us unable to do anything else). And the best news of all is we have the keys now! We can move in. No more waiting!

Crazy enough I haven't taken a single picture yet. I will today.

I did find a new kitchen table to go in the new house....and I have a picture of that for your viewing pleasure. :)
Gotta love craigslist. Practically brand new table to seat 6 for less than $200 (we couldn't even afford that if we would have bought a house! :) ) We have a small round table that seats 4 and the cool thing is that these are the exact same chairs (except I stained mine espresso). I might stain these eventually too. We'll see. I have a lot of furniture that I want to re-do to make new! :)
So I'm pretty excited to have a place already! I'll be back soon with more pictures. This morning we are off to go apple picking!