our house, is a very, very, very fine house

almost one year ago (april 10th) bub and i made our way to our realtor's office and signed a nice big stack of paperwork that declared we were somehow financially stable enough to own a little home. it was a terribly stormy day (perhaps a foreshadowing of the year to come???) we (ok mostly me!) spent the first few hours as new homeowners hunkered down with the radio informing us of all the tornadoes in the area and the comcast cable guy hanging out with us b/c it was too stormy for him to climb up his ladder to flip our cable on. as a side note we are not crazy tv people, bub was enrolled in an online class at the time and had to have the internet asap to keep up with his school work. so there we were, sitting in our new little home, our very own home. little did we know what would happen. over the next few months we had to have several big electrical issues corrected and some plumbing work done. ok, not that big of a deal, it's an old home, this was to be expected. over the last year we also discovered that our "new" roof isn't so new or done that well and we consequently developed a rather large leak in the roof right over bub's side of the bed one rainy summer night. we've got several dead trees that seriously need hacking down before they crash on us. our a/c died while we were on vacation and we arrived home to a very HOT residence. we've discovered some random quarks involving the ability to use electrical outlets while the lights are on or off. we've got a crazy cat neighbor who's four-legged friends use every inch of our lawn as their own personal kitty litter box. oh and the highway that didn't' seem like a big deal (how noisy could it be, right???) when we first looked at the home, the one that is only 200 yards away and lined with giant highway sized lights that glare into our bedroom all night. and then there is the grandaddy of them all - early into to our first home owning experience we realized our new little place was infested with brown recluse spiders. yes, poisonous gosh awful creepy crawlers. and they. were. everywhere.

so here we are almost exactly one year later and i wouldn't trade one bit of it for anything. i love our house - quarks and all... ok, maybe i'd trade the spiders for like ants or something, that part does still freak me out a little bit... but in all seriousness, this little place has been a big blessing in so many ways, all the icky stuff is outnumbered. it has brought bub and i so much closer together. when we didn't think we could stand one more thing going wrong and then it did and we still got through it, we were made stronger as a team. when we realized we could take care of ourselves, buy a home and manage it, i finally started to feel like an adult, able to stand on my own two feet. that's not to say we didn't have lots of love and support and offers to help us get out of spider hell hole from our amazing family, but we stayed, we stuck it out and i am so so glad we did. this year we have lots of fun plans for our little home. the bathroom is going to get an almost total overhaul - new shower, floor tile and paint. the kitchen (yes, i painted it once already, but i hate it!) is going to get another coat of fresh paint, as are the cabinets (i don't know how to paint these yet, if anyone has any pointers, i'd love to hear them!) we're adding some fun elements to our unusually large kitchen (it's a tiny house and i think half the space is kitchen!) we're going to add a desk and an almost full wall of shelves to one end. the kitchen will also get a new floor - woot! no more bubbly, rippled and stained linoleum! and we'll also be painting another room in the house - but we'll talk about that later :-)

so here's to you little house... i'm glad we stuck it out - here's to several years more! oh and we have gotten the spider issue under control - so please don't worry about being in our little home - i promise you won't see any!

xoxo