my boy shakespeare for the win!
i apologize for being MIA the past little while. we have been busy as bees over here in the great state of texas, and part of that is because we are buying our first home. you heard that right, guys. homeowners.
so here's the thing: david and i have been dreaming of being homeowners for longer than we've been married. it's a freaking big deal to us. this job gives us a lot of perks, but one of the major downfalls is how often we uproot and move. we have been craving a place to settle and call our own and establish as home for so long.
but becoming a homeowner isn't the easiest task. it takes a freaking ton of money. and saving a freaking ton of money is really freaking hard. and just when you think you're making leeway, you find out that closing costs are an additional million dollars and that you have to pay mortgage insurance and property taxes and oy vey, all of the sudden your proposed house payment is double your mortgage.
but all of that aside, we want to be homeowners! we want to paint walls and set up a christmas tree and bake homemade bread in a kitchen that's all ours. so we've been planning and saving for a really long time.
i don't know if i have mentioned this on my blog before, but just in case i haven't, the world wide web should know how amazing my inlaws are. i have the worlds' best. they are truly the most generous and thoughtful people i know. a couple months ago, they loaned someone in david's family a significant amount of money to help them get into a house. and while that offer was also on the table for us, since we've been married, we have made the decision to be financially independent. to make it on our own, to know that what we have has been earned through hard work, to be real legit adults. so i'm not going to lie, the situation stung a little bit when these people in david's family were handed something that we were working so hard to obtain. we felt a little bit cheated, even though we volunteered to do it the hard way.
to make a long story short, after only about three months, these people in david's family moved out of state, and the house was put on the market. the combination of realtor fees, closing costs, mortgage payments, etc for this home meant that my inlaws would be losing just about all of the money they had invested/given.
all the meanwhile, we began the search for our first home. and one night on realtor.com, i fell in love. in the most dreamy neighborhood, perfect size, new construction, colonial style, this house was a dream! it was everything we were looking for and i was sure it would be mine. so i contacted our realtor and i started the pre-qualification process and then just like that, it was sold right from under me. my heart is still a little tender about that house, but such is life, guys. such is life.
losing my barbie dream house left me a little defeated. and one day while i was venting my frustrations to my mom, she suggested that we look into buying the home that my inlaws already owned and were going to lose a small fortune over.
and then pride spoke up. like no freaking way, why would i want to live in a house that someone in my family lived in? no freaking way! the whole idea of buying a new house would be gone! the thrill of "we are new homeowners" would totally be tainted! no freaking way!! we have worked too hard for this to go any way but exactly what we envisioned!!
but then i thought about what my inlaws would do if the roles were reversed. and surely, without a doubt, they would help us out. i know that if we ever needed help, they would be the first people we'd call and they would help us in any way they could, without a second thought. and here i am, not even entertaining the thought of helping them?
so after a lot of soul searching and what-if scenarios, we are buying the house my inlaws bought for someone in david's family. (is that not super complicated or what?) i still have to fight my pride about it and i still am working to accept that although this scenario is not what we envisioned our first-time-home-owner experience would be like, this is still really freaking awesome. we get to move in whenever we want, we get to pay less in closing costs, we can get all our furniture and remodeling done before we move in, when we sell, we will be able to pocket quite a bit of money we didn't have to pay interest on, and in only three years, my inlaws will be completely paid out. everyone wins here. (except my ego, but i don't even like her anyway.)
that's the point of this post: expectation is a bitch. and most times, reality doesn't match it. but that is life. show me a man whose life has gone just as planned, and i will show you a liar.
so i apologize for sporadic and inconsistent posting the next little while. i will be busy going HAM at ikea and target. only the finest furnishings for our home, of course. i have dreamed of the day when i could furnish my home, and now that it's here, i am kind of deer-in-headlights.
also, this post is a huge dose of authenticity. and that is one of the principles i wanted to found my blog on; being real. let's all try to embrace that a little bit, shall we? heaven knows this blogosphere needs it.