Houses and houses and houses, oh my....

We journeyed to Illinois this last weekend in search of a new place to call home. Wow, I'm not quite sure I'm ready for this whole growing up stuff. Nate took Friday off from work/school (I'm not really sure what to call it, it feels like he goes to work everyday, yet he is still in school and paying to go to "work.")

We looked at about 7 houses on Friday with the kids and visited 2 schools in the area. That is a lot of patience and endurance from the kids. They really did GREAT!!! They were so excited to see some houses that could possibly be where we would live. They did get a little wild near the end, but who can blame them for wanting to run around and be wild in these huge, empty houses. We bribed them with McDonald's and DSes. Linz took a little nap in the afternoon and we headed up to my mom's (about an hour away) in the early afternoon.

We found 2 houses that we really liked on Friday and honestly, I didn't think I'd find anything that would jump out at us when we went down on Saturday. A HUGE thanks to my mom, my sister and her husband for watching our kids ALL day Saturday while we went down and walked through about 10 more houses. We could not have found a house without their help, so thank you tons!!!

We did manage to find one house we really liked on Saturday. We put together an offer and had it in by Sunday. The house was a foreclosure and an offer had been put in on it on Friday. Basically, if we wanted it, we needed to have an offer put in by Sunday. It was a really nice house with a lot of potential and a LOT of work to make it nice. It was a great size house and had lots of wonderful features. Our realtor called us Monday morning to say that our offer had been rejected and the bank had chosen to work with the other offer.

This is the foreclosure house we aren't buying.

So, just today we are putting in an offer for this house. This was our second choice of homes (only because this one needs virtually no work, but is smaller than the foreclosure.) This is a really nice house and hopefully will work out well for us.

Our House-maybe

This is the house we put an offer on today.

Here is the family room just inside the door.

And here is our favorite feature of the house, the kitchen. This is one of the best kitchens we saw in any house. It looks nice, is good size and has a bar. The kitchen opens right up to a good size dining area, which was a great selling point for us.

A Flower For Me

Ethan made this for me out of marbles at my mom's house. It is a beautiful flower and says "mom's" under it. Isn't he just so sweet?

Cousin Pictures

Here is Linz with my sister's little girl, Celeste.

Here are my mom's six grandkids that live in the midwest. My sister has 2 boys and a girl like me. They have so much fun together and here is the most recent traditional on the stairs picture of all six of them.

This is my mom with her six midwest grandkids.

She has three more grandkids that live in Utah.

Here is my super cute niece Celeste with my mom.

I just had to put this one on, it is just adorable.


Ethan was so good with Celeste and LOVED to hold her. Linz is really quite the good helper with the baby also. She is SO gentle with babies and always pets their cheeks (as shown above.) I think she'll be a wonderful big sister someday.