New House!

We weren't planning on moving so soon, especially with Carter being so young.  But as all these corporate headquarters began moving into North Dallas, the housing market was getting crazier and crazier.  We were also up to our eyeballs in toys and baby stuff at the Rancho house.  Jason finally talked sense into me and basically said, "It's now or never!"  Boy, was he right.  If we were to attempt to purchase our exact house today (versus when this started, in November), it's already gone up at least $150K!!!  No way would we ever be able to afford it.  When we began the house hunt last October, we prayed and prayed that God would show us just the right thing for our family.  We wanted a great neighborhood that's safe, family-friendly, and had more than just your run of the mill "stuff."  We actively looked (especially Jason, who would check out some of the neighborhoods online or in person since he wasn't carting two kids around) and on the weekends, we'd go visit neighborhoods.  Most of the we could rule out right away for this or that (too expensive, too poorly built, too far, too weird), and most of the existing houses were being snatched up before you could even make an appointment to look at them.  At the end of one very long day, we happened upon Windsong Ranch in Prosper and on a whim we decided to check it out.  Nothing was here yet except the models and the amenity center.  We chatted for quite some time with the salesperson at the first model we visited and you could tell this neighborhood just had more.  We visited two more of the models and the kids were tired, hungry, and getting cranky.  But on the way home, I think we both realized this might be it.  We looked at floor plans, researched the area and neighborhood, number crunched, visited some more neighborhoods, and realized we were sold.  Our wonderful friend/realtor helped us out and we got started on the process...and signed one cold November evening.

The floor plan we chose only had one house in the entire north Texas region.  Thankfully, it happened to be in our neighborhood, so we walked it to be sure it was indeed what we'd pictured and we fell in love with it.  That house became what we did every weekend!  We'd go check it out, hike on the walking/biking trails, walk through other houses, and dream about the day ours would begin being built.

 

Our dirt!

Framing

 

Slab poured

The other house that was our plan was really taking shape.  It was fun to check on it and see what we did/didn't like.  It was all in grey tones and we preferred earth tones, but some of the choices were beautiful, like the granite.

We also loved some of the details in the bathroom and kept them in mind as we made our selections.  We'd never gotten to make so many of the choices in a house, even though we've previously built two.  After hearing the design center was pretty overwhelming, we made a "pre" visit before our scheduled four hour visit. 

The house was coming along nicely and got framed.  Knowing our (lack of) luck, we fell through the cracks and didn't get called to be scheduled.  Thankfully, Jason made it clear that we had to get into the design center before school started back after the Christmas break because all my sick days had been used between the appendectomy and sick kids.  Laura and the boys were here visiting, and she graciously agreed to watch them while we met with the designer. 

Our designer was a tremendous help.  Oddly enough, most of our selections were not upgrades!  We were very excited about that!!  The hardest thing was choosing tile.  You just don't know how it will look with a whole floor of it. 

But once everything began going in, we got soooo excited!  It looked beautiful and we had something to look forward to amongst all the craziness of packing.

 

 

 

This guy was most excited about his "secret hideaway" under the stairs.  It's what he would check on every time we came to the house.

 

I need to take pictures now that we're all in and settled.  It's exactly what we wanted and are so thankful for God's timing and provision.  So far our two kiddos are loving it as much as we are. We look forward to making lots of memories in this house, and we hope to not move again for a VERY long time!!