Life's Surprises

 If someone told me a year ago, I would be experiencing what I am experiencing, I would have laughed at them. But life is full of unexpected surprises. Good and bad, you just don't know what lies ahead for you. That's what makes life worth living. In the bad times, you can hope for fortunes to change. In my case, it's something so much bigger than I ever expected!  

We are under contract for a house. What a mundane sentence for something so life changing. I had assumed that I would never experience any more personal big life moments like that. I had always wanted a house, a husband and 2 kids. I came to terms long ago that Zach will be my only child. For medical reasons I am high risk and might actually die if I get pregnant again. But I never understood why the normal life event of a house was a life-long dream I was never going to have. 

My town is a very hot town for house hunting. Some people are curious about how we got a house with the second bid. Oddly, most questions are about the 2-bedroom condo we currently live in. Did we sell it? After we move out in mid-May my parents, who own the condo, will spruce it up then sell it. There are two types of homes on the market. Homes that "need love" that developers swoop in for a cheap price and fix up. Then there are, the home already fixed up that get a lot of money even in the current market. Most people want homes that are recently fixed up. Homes ready to live in as-is. We have a washer and dryer in unit and a garage. The condo has a lot to offer, and I hope whoever gets it loves it like we have these past 14 years. Yes, 14 years. 

Why are prices so high? For this I paraphrase a quote from my brother, "It's the baby boomers. They help their kids with higher down payments so they can bid higher. That's driving up the prices." I find that to be spot-on accurate! My mom points out that baby boomer careers spanned the pension days AND the 401K days! Meaning, they got the kinds of benefits that my generation and younger desperately need! A lot more offers these days are in cash. It's a mix of baby boomer parent help and my generation deciding to sell stocks so they can avoid mortgages. Boomers were more likely to keep their stocks. But my generation was finishing college when the recession started and saw the problems with adjustable-rate mortgages. Our lesson, try to do this without a mortgage! 

On to the good stuff, I'll tell you about the house. We started looking January 1st. Well, let me correct that. I started looking December 20th. Just not officially. Remember that blog post about waiting until after the new year? Yeah, this is what that was about. 

When there was a listing, I would walk or drive to it to get a look at it from the sidewalk. The house is a quick walk away. Literally, we have regularly walked by it a ton of times over the last 14 years. 

 An instinctual feeling washed over me. "This is my house". The same feeling, I had when I met Josh. "He's going to be someone important to me I just don't know what." At 16 I didn't think "husband" but, here we are. I also had that feeling with the pregnancy test for Zach. I had had 3 miscarriages. I had taken many pregnancy tests over 2 years of trying. This positive, it just felt different. The feeling I had before deciding to take the test just felt different. The first time I saw the house once listed I was talking to the next-door neighbor at the house. It turns out, her son is already a friend of Zach's. Josh worked with a different neighbor. 

When we got into the house a few days later, I could picture our life there. Where our things would go, what our everyday would look like. I finally met the owner on the day of the inspection. She is so nice! She's a life-long townie like me. She never wanted to leave. But her husband got a job out of state. She is thrilled the house she loves is going to a family of townies! Josh is a townie too, remember. My father-in-law knows her husband and had even been there for a BBQ a few years ago. 

To paint a picture of what a townie means, this house is along a walk we have taken for over a decade. We had talked to a different neighbor a couple of doors down a few times and are friendly. This weekend we were walking and saw her outside. Before we could tell her the news, she told us! She had seen me doing the inspection with another townie! She too is a life-long townie. So, final townie count ....5. 6 if you count Zach. She is excited we are going to be neighbors. 

We had another bid back in January that we lost. I am petrified of heights so finding a house for me was extremely difficult! What if there aren't any houses I can move around in? It took a while, but we found a great one!

I had said it. They say, "never say never". I had said, "sometimes never is the only option." It turns out I was wrong. A dream I was sad about not coming true, is coming true. I have a yard for my outside decorations and a different yard for grilling and my very own patio set! My own patio set! It really is easy to make me happy. After all, Burger King was the first date with my future husband. Embrace all of life's surprises.