Making It Official

I'm starting this blog a little late to the game, admittedly, so I will attempt to catch up to the present over a couple of posts.

A year ago, we came close to buying 1+ acres of raw land and building on our own from scratch. When the seller decided not to sell, we spent months and months scouring real estate listings for an existing home to meet our needs. What needs? We are currently a family of 4 in our 1,000 sq foot (and that's being generous), 1 bathroom home. When we were a newly married couple, that was awesome. Now when 2 adults and 2 small girls are all trying to use the toilet at the exact same time, it's um, not as awesome.

So we looked. And looked. And installed the Trulia and Zillow apps on our phones and then deleted them b/c they were so annoying. Until one day, a coworker told us about the Ryan Homes plan they just moved into that was in the geographical area where we were searching (close to husband's new office and close to our church.)

From that recommendation, things seemed to go FAST. We were pleasantly surprised to find that Ryan's Oakmont layout was very similar to the Virginian plan we almost went with when we were going to build on our own through Heartland. So days later, we were signing papers and plunking down that first big check.

It took a few weeks (sorry potential lot buyers for letting you think it was available) to get out to the site and hang out sign, but we finally did in late April/early May.

Our 2-year-old was happy to play around in the dirt, but our diva 4-year-old thought the whole experience was miserable.

So, we just took turns taking our picture with the happy kid. And the dog. She's always happy to be along for the ride.

No, we aren't building in the desert as a FB friend asked me. It's just hilly as heck southwestern PA.