We Bought a House!

Where have I been?

I am well overdue for posting an update on our family. There are many excuses for my absence, but the biggest one is that I am using every last bit of my energy for school and mothering. At the ripe age of 26 (almost 27) I’m finally in my last semester of my undergraduate which consists of student teaching at a local high school. For the first time, I am finding out how hard it is to be a working mother. I have a renewed admiration for mothers who work full-time while raising their children. It is no joke. The good news is, I will graduate in December and I’m not planning on working in education right away, so I will have time to be with my kids, enjoy their special youngest years, and document every milestone they make. I hope to also have the time to better myself as an individual and set new, exciting goals both professionally and otherwise.

Why did we decide to move?

Moving on from excuses, the biggest milestone that brought me to write this post today is that we recently bought our first house! This new step was so unexpected. We planned on renting for a while longer while saving money to travel long-term. We had decided that buying a house wasn’t our current dream and that we would focus on other things for a while. After all, the housing market has been INSANE, so buying a house in these circumstances just didn’t seem possible.

Then, our property managers told us they would be increasing our rent. And this wasn’t any old rent increase of $50-$100. It was about to go up by more than $200 every month! Felipe and I entertained the idea of buying a house just because we assumed we’d be paying the same for a mortgage as we were about to start paying to continue renting. We contacted a lender that a friend of mine recommended and to our surprise, we were pre-approved for a loan. (The reason this was surprising is because Felipe is self-employed and I don’t have an income. Getting a mortgage as a self-employed immigrant is HARD.)

How did we find a house?

Our house search began and we only had a month or so to find something and move in! We were in a rush because we had already told our property managers that we did not plan on renewing our lease. So we had to be out by August 31st. We really didn’t want to move back in with my parents so I started going to see houses like crazy. I went out almost every day with our realtor, kiddos in tow, and we eventually put in our first ever house offer. It was exhilarating. Well, the first time it was exhilarating… but when our offer wasn’t accepted, I was bummed out. Then another offer was denied. Then another. Ten offers later, I was losing hope that we would be able to get a house and I started looking at rentals again. There was no way we would be able to compete with cash offers and people who were offering up to $40,000 more than the listing price for these houses! I started to think that we had rushed into it and it wasn’t the right thing for us. But why had it felt so right when we started looking?

We put in two more offers and we were aggressive with the terms of the offers, trying to be as convincing as possible. My favorite of the two houses was one that was a bit smaller than what we were renting, but it was in good shape so it wasn’t in need of a total remodel to be livable. (Many houses in our budget were either tiny, extremely old, or very far away from where we wanted to live.) I told myself that this was my last chance and if it didn’t work out, I might just quit. You know how the story ends….the offer was accepted! And it was the house that I wanted most! We moved in about 3 weeks later.

What have we been doing since the move?

The moving date was shortly after I started student teaching. I’m teaching health at a high school, and it has been challenging and amazing at the same time. I haven’t even had a break to breathe since school started. It was school, then the move, then Emmett’s third birthday, then Beth’s first birthday, then my kids were both sick, and now here we are… approaching Halloween and two months since we moved in and I’m finally pausing long enough to write about it. I haven’t decorated, I still have boxes to unpack, and I’m always behind on laundry. But I can’t do anything extra until I graduate. I’m so close! And as soon as I finish we’re packing up and going on really fun trip. Stay tuned to see where we go…

My plan was to take a cute picture of our family on our front porch shortly after moving in, but that photo has yet to happen. I am giving myself grace and focusing on all the good that I AM doing. Thinking about what I could or should be doing better will do me no good at all. For now, I have a very cute picture of Emmett posing on the porch with his pumpkins.

What’s next?

Our biggest dream is to travel long-term as a family and be able to live and work from wherever we are. For now, we are making plans and goals to get to that point. We don’t know how long we will live in this house or what we will do with it in the future, but we are happy now and we are so thankful for the opportunities that have brought us to this point. As always, we will be cultivating happiness and adventure in all places.