Is the end in sight?

We're getting closer and closer to getting our home.  Close enough in fact, that I can refer to it as 'our' home.  Unless something weird comes up or for some reason the value of the house has dipped down low from past years, we should be approved for our mortgage by next week.  We're also set to give notice at our current apartment next week too, a thought that gives me stomach butterflies as I type this.

I'm so excited thinking about moving into a house.  I've been wasting spending time on Pinterest looking up room decor, storage ideas and ways to organize.  I've already decided which room will belong to the boys and which will be a future nursery.  No, that's not an announcement, we rather like the two year plan between kiddos.  I'm so excited to actually have a nursery since we've never had room when the boys were born.  But do you know what feature I'm really excited about?  There is a huge, deep sink next to the washer and dryer.  Bless you, Russian home designer for your wisdom in having a laundry room with counter space and a deep sink.  No longer will I have to wash poo clothing in my own shallow bathroom sink or in the bath tub.  No more having to find room to lay out my pre-treated stained laundry until I'm ready to wash them.

So how did we choose the home we're moving into?  It was a difficult decision.  We really like the part of town we're living in right now.  In this school district there are a ton of schools and we decided that we wanted to put our kids into one of their top two schools.  Those schools are new, a K-8 model and have the highest ranking scores.  Many of our friends have their kids in those schools, or have transfered their children there.  Of course I know that kids in poorly ranked schools can do just fine and come out just as prepared as anyone else.  I know that a huge part of my child's success is dependent on us as parents to be involved.  We did look at some other homes in different schools, but we both kept feeling like we needed to be back in our original chosen area.  We also toyed with the idea of an in-district transfer, but I decided that having to drive kids to school for the next decade or more didn't sound too appealing.

The decision to limit ourselves to a very small geographic area made for a lot of sleepless nights.  Homes in those schools are expensive and the lots are pretty small in our price range.  We could have gotten a few places with a much bigger yard had we gone to a different school.  The choice between a large yard with a smaller mortgage payment versus a good school kept me up for a few nights.  Through prayer we finally decided to go with a home in the school boundaries.  The yard isn't huge, but it's functional with a large cement area that goes to an RV pad that will be heaven for bike riding little boys.  There's a garden, mature trees and a semi-enclosed patio that essentially adds an outdoor living space that we can use year round.  David is already planning the game day parties we can have out there.

The house is huge.  Five bedrooms and 2,400 square feet huge.  We decided to skip the 'starter home' phase and go right to a house that we can live for a long time in.  We plan on having at least one more, maybe two more kids.  The market won't stay crummy forever and it would do us no good to outgrow a home in five years and need to get something bigger.  Yeah, money is going to be tight, really tight, for while.  It will be worth it though to get a home we can comfortably live in for a very long time.