It seemed like it would take forever and I was beginning to worry it would never happen. But it did. Grant and I are finally homeowners! We finally bought a house! During our search, we were really starting to worry that we would have to settle on damn near everything we wanted in a house in order to just get one. The house that we were renting was going to be put on the market, and with no concrete date or even timeframe, we felt that we should find one sooner rather than later. So the search began. Now, one of the MAJOR things that we wanted was to not be in Fargo or West Fargo. We wanted to be either in the country or in a smaller town, but still stay in ND. We were both born in ND and it just feels like home. Our radius was no more than 30 miles away from Fargo. We didn't want to raise our kids in the city. There have been too many reports of bad things and it was just getting worse. Crime was starting to creep closer to our house, and when someone tried to come through the front door at like midnight one night, that was the nail in the Fargo coffin. We started looking pretty damn hard. Thankfully we had gotten set up to buy a house over the winter and had started looking at that time. But if you're not looking in Fargo/West Fargo/Moorhead, the inventory drops way down. We were finding some things, but either the price was too high, the house too small, or it just didn't work for our family. We are now a family of 5 and a 2 or 3 bedroom house with no potential of adding rooms just wouldn't work, which is a lot of what we were finding. If we had been looking in the city, we would have found something within a month or two. But we weren't so we had to hold out for something more. Once we had a timeframe of when the house was going up for sale, we used that as kind of our D Day in a way. It took longer than we would have liked, but we finally found our home.
I love owning a house. Granted, we've only been here for about a month, but still. I love being able to change stuff. Renting the house was great, for a while. But after some time, you figure out things that you do/do not want in a home. Like I found out that I hate claw foot tubs as showers. As a stand alone bath, they'd be amazing! But having to have 2 shower curtains makes it feel really closed in. After 4 years of showering in a claw foot tub, I started fantasizing about a normal shower/tub combo. I also realized how much I missed having carpet in the living room. I know that some people would kill for gorgeous hardwood floors all over their house. But as a mom to young kids, I dreamt more of carpet. When you hear your child's head bang on the hardwood, you die a little inside. It sounds so bad and you're sure that they're going to scream. It usually sounds so much worse than what it is. But when you first hear the sound, your heart stops for a minute...or at least mine did. Every. Single. Time.
With renting, any time something big breaks down (plumbing, furnace...ect), we'd have to call the owner to get it fixed. It's really nice to know that if something like that does happen, we don't have to wait for the owner to find time to call someone in to fix it. We can either do it ourselves (or let's be real, Grant would be the one doing it lol I'd just be watching), or make the call right away. That's not to say the owner took forever to do it, that's not it at all. I'm just saying it's nice that we don't have the middle man.
It's the perfect location, for me, as well. One of the big things I wanted was either in my old stomping grounds (Casselton/Mapleton) or Grant's (Colfax)...that was big for me. We got lucky and found one in Casselton, and it's right next to the school! The kids' walk to school will take all of 3 minutes, at most. I love that. I had a dream of being able to walk the kids to and from school. This is even better!! When they get old enough, I can just watch them from my front steps. Whatever job I get after they all start school, I'm still going to make sure I see them off to school and also be home when they get done with school. That's also really important to me. If I could, I'd just be a stay at home mom/wife even after they start school, but I promised Grant I'd get back into the working world to help pay bills since the kids wont be home 24/7 with me. But as long as I get to be home before and after school, I'm still calling that a win!
We've been dreaming of our own house for a few years now. Renting that house was a huge blessing for us because it gave us the opportunity to start raising our family in a house rather than an apartment. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with raising a family in an apartment, but that's just not our style. But after 4 years of renting, it was time. We had had enough with renting anything and were more than ready to own. We have so many things we want to do, and have even started a list. Right now, and I'm not even exaggerating, there are 52 items on that list. From the smallest thing like redoing shelves in a closet, to the biggest things like doing bump outs in the upstairs and making that a full upstairs. But you know the most glorious part? We have time. Since we were lucky enough to find our "forever home", we have umpteen years to do the things we want. We have truly found a house that we WANT to make our home. You just can't beat that!
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