Nomads no More

After the last 8 months of being homeless nomads, we're finally back in a place of our own. We closed on our new house on Thursday, wrote the single biggest check of our lives, and were handed the keys. It was a day of moderate anxiety--not so much about writing the check, but mostly just because we were wholly tired of the process and just wanted it to be finally over with.

The only moment when my hand did waver in the face of a signature was when we signed the initial contract offer on the house back in June. That is when I thought--what the hell are we getting ourselves into? After that was all over, I didn't expect to have to go through another month and a half of inspections, appraisals, paperwork, having our phone calls, messages, and emails ignored by various parties involved, multiple rounds of negotiations with the seller, and not knowing if we were actually going to get the house until the keys were in our hands. I suppose that going through things like this is the stuff of adulthood.

Now that all of that is behind us, it's on to the fun part! Painting, yard work, tearing out carpet, emptying all of the plumbing traps of mysterious black sludge... Well maybe not fun, per se, but knowing that everything we are doing is an improvement to something of our own is a pretty awesome feeling. The projects abound and to do list seems never ending, but at least we know that we have the rest of our lives to complete it all (and I'm sure it will take that long).

Hopefully it won't take too much longer to get the paint and flooring done though, as we've postponed moving in the majority of our things for ease of work. So we're working every night so that we can actually move in the rest of our stuff in a timely manner. In true Jay & Lauren fashion, we spent our first night sleeping on the floor on the same camping pads that we used in our roadtrip out west. We have now upgraded to sleeping on a pull out sofa bed in the living room. Our utensils and chairs are also straight out of our camping gear. Its like a camp-out every night in our house!

The help from our friends and family has already made everything much easier on us. The monumental undertaking of home ownership would be so much less enjoyable without everyone being so willing and able to help. Thanks to all of you in advance for your trucks, your lawn mowers, your used furniture, and your company at our soon to begin house party circuit!