So…. after a very painless 45 minutes of interpreting and signing papers, we received all the keys and garage openers to our new home. I have to say, I had heard that buying a home is a terrible process and that it wouldn’t be the most pleasant experience, but the only problem we had was with our contact person for getting our interest rate for our loan. He was horrible at getting back to us. Other than that though, it was great. I really LOVED our agent, Meta- she is great at what she does, and she really loves it and works hard at it. She even got us “closing gifts”: a door knocker with our last name engraved on it, and a cute little silver platter that has a picture of a home and says “Bless this house” at the top of it. Good for using or decoration. 🙂

Naturally, we immediately had to go and admire our purchase. We are just so excited. I was just happy to see the place, but Jared was very good at examining every nook and cranny of the house AND yard. 🙂

These pictures were taken the night we decided to buy the house, but they can give you a fairly good representation of our new home.

Here’s the front of our lovely home.

This tree is now a beautiful maple tree and pretty flowers:

Here’s the backyard patio and in the corner is a cute little fountain…

And here are some of the lovely trees. See that little thing in front of the tree? It was a bird bath that reached to my waist or so…

And some inside pictures of the kitchen, decent-sized pantry, and entryway (with the nice tile work…):

And the cool lamp in the formal dining room and the fireplace:

That’s the most exciting stuff for now, since it’s not furnished…yet! Tomorrow we change the locks and I start doing a deep cleaning. 🙂

On another completely unrelated note, I am OFFICIALLY DONE with my first year of teaching! I am so pumped that I made it through. There were some rough spots, but considering some of the health issues I had and the completely different system I was trying to use to grade and teach (Marzano’s “Rubric” system), I think I did pretty well.

It’s going to be a busy summer with work trainings/meetings and moving/working on the house (especially the yard!) but I am so pumped and excited right now. We were truly lucky with how reasonable the sellers were and having Meta as our Realtor-  everything just worked out so well for us. Now… time for bed so I can be ready to clean the house tomorrow!