WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!

We weren't planning on buying a house... 

Actually we'd decided that we would wait until Matt left the military, found a job, and settle wherever his job took us. And we definitely wanted to live in the west!

But after searching Zillow for fun basically every night for years, and with Matt getting out of the military next year, and after thinking though all the options, we decided to make Virginia our home.

We love it here and I am SO happy to stay put for a while!

This is our 8th move in 8 years of marriage so I'm really hoping it sticks. Ha! Military life.

Here's the back story to remember in the future.

The housing market is CRAZY right now. Home prices are going up every day and mortgage interest rates are super low. We love living in this area, and houses here are still affordable (unlike a lot of the west) so we felt like it might be the time to jump in. We kept saying "if we'd bought two years ago we would've saved $50k." We didn't want to feel like that again in another two years.

And with Lydia starting Kindergarten in the fall and Baby due in July... it's time!

It all happened really suddenly.

One weekend in March we drove by the house after seeing it on Zillow, texted our realtor about it (who we'd just found that same week), and he said it was actually having an open house later that same day. When we walked through, we both felt calm and happy. We looked at each other and Matt said, "I really like it." We placed our offer the next day!

There were 15+ offers on the house (definitely the norm these days to get 20+ offers, the housing market is nuts), and there ended up being a little bidding war. But we made a counteroffer and won! Our offer was accepted! 

This is the first house we put an offer on - the only house we've ever seriously considered buying. We know SO many people lately (all over the country) who've had to put offers on several homes before they're accepted, so it feels like it was meant to be.

We've loved this area - all 3 times the Army has stationed us here.

We love the specific neighborhood - we've had our eye on it all 3 times we've lived in Virginia. I remember walking on the trails around the lake in 2018 and talking to Matt about how great it would be to live in a neighborhood like it one day.

It's in a top school district.

The neighborhood is close-knit with lots of young families - a must for us.

And it basically fell into our laps!

We close in a couple weeks and will probably move in May. I have a short list of updates to make, like interior paint (done by pros before we move in since I'll be super pregnant) and some repairs in the crawl space.

We're beyond grateful it worked out so easily and we can't wait to make this house our home!!