When Brandon got his first commission check for helping a client purchase a house, we started thinking about buying a house for real. And then within a few weeks, we did! We took one day and saw seven different houses. I was starting to feel discouraged after the first few - they were all fine, but just nothing we really loved. I started feeling like maybe we couldn't really afford what we wanted. Then along came house #6 and I was in love instantly. It was the oldest house we'd seen so far, and it had all the charm of a 100+ year-old house. Plus it was in a nice urban neighborhood within walking distance of restaurants, the library, post office, etc., and it had a huge garage for Brandon. We saw one house after it, which I also really liked - it was also old and also in a cool neighborhood - but I think we both knew this was the one, and after a few back-and-forths with offers, it was ours.
The next few weeks were kind of stressful - the sale was dependent on the sellers finding a house, and we were getting closer and closer to the date when we needed to be out of our apartment. It was starting to look like we'd have to move in as soon as we got possession of the house (and right before I had to go out of town for a week for work), which felt overwhelming, considering that we wanted to paint everything and redo the flooring upstairs. But God is good and miraculously we got the house a week earlier than expected so we had a week to work on the house before we had to move in.
And we had a lot of work to do! Brandon worked nonstop all week painting and laying flooring. I took a day off to help and Jackson even pitched in, too. We were so grateful to also have help from our family - my parents both came twice to help with cleaning and flooring - my angel mother deep-cleaned the kitchen and all 3 bathrooms (which were pretty gross), my sister came one day and painted, and both of Brandon's parents came and helped with painting and carpet. My grandma even came and helped clean one day. There's no way we could've done it without all of their help.
We officially moved the day after Thanksgiving, and were so grateful to have help that day, too - Brandon's grandpa, uncle, cousin, and brother-in-law all pitched in, as well as a friend from church. It was a little bittersweet to leave our apartment - we lived there for almost 3 years, which was almost our entire married life. We had some great memories there and had such wonderful neighbors. It was a blessing to us, but we are really excited to move to the next chapter!
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