Our New House

We bought a new house. Curtis and I have been looking for a new house, albeit sometimes only half-committed, for, well, almost two years now. We finally jumped in last winter/spring and put our house up for sale, and even entertained an offer, but wimped out when Emma came early, and we realized we could be homeless because we hadn't found a house we liked yet. For the past year, our realtor continued to search periodically for homes that met our criteria, and we even put offers in on a few, but still nothing seemed to work out in the end. All that searching finally came to an end with this home. It's not perfect, but it's a floorplan we've seen several times before, and it's by far the best one we've seen in a long time in our price range. The nice thing is that it's still in our church ward boundaries, so we won't have to make new friends at church. The sellers have upgraded quite a lot in the home, so it is a turnkey property, and while we don't agree with their decisions on all the upgrades, what they did was good - high-end materials and good workmanship.

It is a two-story home with an open floor plan downstairs and all travertine flooring (which we don't like because we would have liked carpeting in master bedroom and family room): Wood floors upstairs where there are 3 bedrooms and a large bonus room (to be used as office and playroom): Kitchen with eat-in area attached to the family room: Backyard has both a fenced pool (yay!) and grassy play area (yay!) as well as built-in BBQ and outdoor fireplace (all yay!). We have the preserves on the other side of the back fence, so we don't have neighbors gawking into our backyard (yippee!). And I think that's Bishop Rodgers' house in the distance.
We really appreciate our realtor (who is also our friend, and we hope it stays that way!) for her patience and understanding while we sat on the fence (a lot), for her persistence in looking for just the right home for us, and for her professionalism and expertise. We are picky and risk-averse, and in this market, we're probably the worst clients! Now our challenge is selling our current home (yes, for a lot less than we would have sold last year), which was Curtis' first home purchase, the home we called ours after marrying, and the first home Emma had, where she grew big and learned to crawl and stand. Does anyone need a house?