Little Mister or Tiny Miss?

We are SO thrilled and excited to be welcoming another little BOY to our family in March!

His little feet. I'm a sucker for baby feet. :)

Honestly, until about a week ago I was sure it was a little lady, but then I just got a gut feeling it was a boy. 

I am so happy. :) 

20 weeks

And a little nervous about being a mom to two energetic little fellas. 

Who insist on being in every picture. :)

Time to start a list of possible names!

Pictures and plans for the house

We spent the weekend at the house, getting estimates on flooring and painting, starting a little demo and starting to feel a little overwhelmed with our (hopeful) 3 weeks till move in date.

There's actually not a ton that we need or want to get done before we move in.

The biggest items on the to-do list are replacing all the flooring and repainting most of the house.

For the sake of our budget and keeping our costs as low as possible, we'll be doing most of the work ourselves including installing new tile in the kitchen, downstairs bathroom and laundry room, laying hardwood in the front room, and painting what we can. 

We do plan on hiring out for laying the new carpet and painting some of the rooms with really high walls etc.

Here are some stats for the house before we get to the grand tour.

2500 sq feet

(It's 1600 sq feet bigger than our current apartment. Crazy.)

4 bedroom

2 1/2 bath

Built in 2005

So you want to see the house? 

Again, the front.

When you walk in you'll enter the foyer/formal living/dining room. 

Plans for this room:

Hardwood floors

Un-texturing the walls (hopefully)

New paint

Removing the old nasty lighting

Adding some awesome molding/wainscoting etc

My vision is clean, bright, airy with a New York brownstone vibe. 

Something like this, this and this.

And then we head into the kitchen.

We're really lucky because the previous owner did a lot of upgrades with the cabinets and granite counter tops so there's not a lot to do here. 

Plans for this room:

New floors 

New paint

New lighting

And maybe one in a couple of years, replacing the sliding glass doors to french ones.

I'm thinking an warm, slightly industrial look.

One of my favorite parts about the kitchen is the addition of the bulter's pantry. (I think that's what it's called...) 

It separates the first living area and the kitchen and offers a lot of extra storage and prep area.

Right next to the kitchen is the main living room. 

I LOVE this room because of it's super high ceilings (20 ft) and all the natural light.

Plans for this room include:

New carpet

Smoothing the walls

New paint

and some built ins on the wall above. 

I'm planing on carrying the look of the front room into this one with clean lines and some detailed molding etc.

Here's the downstairs bathroom. 

With the exception of the floor it will stay about the same for now. 

We'll probably paint it and look for a new mirror or  lighting, but we're in no rush.

Across from the downstairs bathroom is the hall to the laundry room and garage and the stairs leading upstairs. 

All  4 of the bedrooms are around the balcony.

One day, we'd love to replace the balcony wall with an actual open/spoken banister (like this), but that will have to wait. For a long time. 

The second up stairs bathroom. 

Bedroom #1 

This will be the playroom.

Bedroom #2

Rhett's room

Bedroom #3 

The babies room

(It's already painted pink....maybe it's a sign :))

The foyer leading to the master.

The master. 

It has 2 separate walk-in closets which is fantastic.

And the master bath.

 The upstairs, including the stairs, foyer and bedrooms will all be getting new carpet and we're debating on putting hardwood on in the master. 

I've got some plans/ideas for the kids rooms and those are our first priority with the upstairs.

The upstairs bathrooms and master bedroom will probably stay the same for awhile till we finish the bigger projects and rebudget for all of it.

I forgot to get pictures of the backyard, but to be honest it's just dirt right now. 

Welcome to Arizona. :)

We're actually OK with that because we have a great covered porch and it offers us a blank slate to work with over the years.  We'll be laying winter grass in the next two or three months so we at least have a lawn for Rhett and this baby. 

If you remember my post on our wish list as we started our house hunt we definitely got most of what we insisted on and what we hoped for, which is awesome. 

And now we get to make this house or home. :)

Signed, sealed, delivered: The house is officially OURS!

We signed the paper work, wrote a big fat check and got the keys. 

The house is OURS! 

And this is a picture of us after we signed our first apartment contract when we got married. 

4 years, 1 and 1/2 children, and a move to a Arizona later we're so excited to be in our first home!

We bought a house

It's a miracle. 

We bought a HOUSE! 

And yes this the house we originally loved, made an offer on, were told it was going into foreclosure and that our offer was rejected, and then were given another chance to buy it. 

Confused yet?

Here's how it all worked out. 

After our offer was rejected we resumed our house hunt.

We couldn't find anything. 

About 3 weeks after our first offer was rejected, the bank called our realtor and explained a huge mistake had been made on their end. 

The house was not supposed to be in foreclosure and if we wanted to resubmit our offer, we would have another chance to buy it. 

So we did. 

And last Saturday we found out we got it.

(!!!!)

We are SO happy. :)

In total we've looked at close to 3 dozen homes and none of them felt right or met our criteria. 

Except for this one. 

Even when we thought it had slipped through our fingers, we still couldn't help but talk about and compare everything else we saw to it. 

If you've house hunted before and found a home you love, maybe you'll understand what I mean when I say that when we walked into this house for the first time, we just KNEW it was meant for us. 

We knew logically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually...it just felt like home. 

And on Friday when we sign all the paper work it will be ours. :)

We feel so grateful to be blessed with the opportunity given to us again to buy it. 

We feel so grateful for our families and friends and their advice and wisdom and support in this process. 

We just feel so grateful. 

PS. More pictures coming soon. :)

The birds and the bees according to a 2 year old

A conversation from our breakfast table. 

Me: Rhett, Mommy has a baby in her belly.

Rhett: O-tay.

Me: Do you think it's a girl baby, or a boy baby?

Rhett: Ummmm.......

(Gets a real serious look on his face.)

Rhett: No, it's a doggie. 

Me: A doggie? 

Rhett: Yeah, CUTE doggie!

Hopefully he's not to disappointed in March. :)

PS: We find out what we're are having on Oct 23.

PPS: I promise I will post a bump pic soon!

I really don't show till around 20 weeks and I'm 17 right now; so as of right now there's not much to show.

An offer and the waiting game

Hopefully I'm not jinxing us, or the offer we submitted on this house over the holiday weekend by posting this, but I'm just a little excited at the thought that it might, possibly, hopefully, be ours soon! 

The house is a pre-approved short sale, which means we've got a 3 to 4 week waiting period before we know if the bank accepts our offer. But the offer we made was essentially the asking price, and there are no other offers on it, so we're really hopeful it will be. 

For now I won't share any details on the house other than we feel really lucky to have found it. 

(I don't want to jinx us any more than I am by posting this. :))

So now we're kind of in limbo and playing the waiting game. 

(Insert Jeopardy theme song.)

We'll see....

A baby! A baby! We're having another baby!

Due March 10th 2013. 

We couldn't be a more thrilled momma, poppa and soon to be big brother. :)