grown-up stuff

We've been doing a lot of grown-up stuff in the past few weeks since I've been away.  There's so much that I need to document for Jude's 'scrapbook' aka this.  Bullet points are how my mind works, so here goes:

• 2 bottom teeth
• da da da da da talk
• crawling like crazy (started around Thanksgiving after he saw his cousin Macy....must've been jealous.  am I raising a competitive boy?)
• sitting up (started a little after he began crawling)
• pulling himself up and standing (since before Christmas.  I remember we told Dr. K at his 6 month check-up and she couldn't believe it!)
• 7 months old!!  (yes, I have 6 month pics to come.  Let me just say these photoshoots aren't easy anymore)
• leans in for 'kisses' (my personal fave)
• plays with blocks aka eats and hits them on everything
• is the greatest helper momma could ever have (so far we broke only 2 ornaments in the taking down of our decorations)
• Mr. Busy Body.  end of story.

So that's the goings-on in the life our our Judebug.  Now our life you ask?  Well, we made a spur-of-the-moment trip down to St. Louis to look for houses the first week of January.  We were mostly going down to look at a short sale we thought had potential.  We figured if we liked it we could start the process of buying it since short sales take around 6 months.  That was in a part of St. Louis that everyone seems to love called Webster Groves.  Unfortunately, it was a bust.  The house was a pit (for our standards) and with what they were asking (it was in a great area) we wouldn't have any money left to fix it.  We saw about 10 other houses in Webster and Kirkwood that day, none which we thought could work for us.  Our poor little monster was such a trooper as we drove all around and popped in and out of houses.  He's seriously the best. baby. ever.

We were only there for a short time; drove down on Monday and needed to get home Wednesday because I started work on Thursday.  We didn't plan to see anymore houses on Wednesday before driving home because I hate driving in the dark.  But we were so disappointed by our findings on Tuesday that we decided to drive through our personal favorite neighborhood in the morning.  We had heard various things about this neighborhood, but only good things about Webster, so we sort of thought we'd better just go for Webster.  We almost wrote of University City completely.....until we drove through it again.  It gave us that feeling.  You know, the one where you just feel home. 

We were looking at the houses for sale and I decided to call to get information about a big white one that I liked.  Long story short, our poor (amazing) realtor, Deb, who hadn't planned to see us that day, ended up meeting us in U City to go through some houses.  This area was calling our name.

We went through the big white one and although it was nice, it seemed to have some foundational issues.  We were bummed, but continued to look around.  And then we came to a 2 story brick house that I'd seen online.  I remembered I was 'keeping it in the back of my mind' because it was still too expensive.  It was amazing though, at least from the pictures.  But we had learned that pictures were deceiving, so we decided to pop on in and take a look.  And that's when it got us.  We fell in love.  Except I couldn't fall in love, because it was out of our price range.  So I told myself to fall out of love.  But I couldn't.  How could I?  It was perfect for us: 3bed, 1.5bath, 2car garage, partially finished basement, all newly refinished hardwood floors, great paint colors, small yard, close to a park, Catholic school in the neighborhood, met the neighbor-nice, normal, my age has a 2 year old-gonna be my best friend, just doesn't know it yet.  Yeah, perfect for us. So on the drive home I pondered how we could pull this off.

Pulling it off when your husband likes it just as much as you do, is actually not too hard.  You just put in a low offer, and wait for the sellers (who had already relocated to Boston and wanted to get 'rid' of it) to counter.  Then you counter. Then they counter.  Then you repeat that 3 times and voila, you got a house!  Ok, not that easy, and yes, we will be living on Ramen at least 4 times a week, but STILL.....a house!!! And one we like.  We won't have to stress about going down again to find one.  We won't have to settle on one we don't like.  YAY! 

Now, I thought about whether or not to post this before, but I decided not to because I didn't want to jinx it.  We're still waiting to hear back about the inspection and whether or not the sellers will make any repairs.  So there is still a chance that this won't work out.  And if that happens, then it's God telling us that's not where He wants us to be.  And we'll be ok with it, and keep looking.  But until then, want to see our (almost) new digs?

 home