Flashback: We bought a house.

Well, we bought a house. That's where we've been this whole time. My apologies for not keeping you all updated as frequently. We've had quite the adventures over the past few months.

The house hunt began on a whim in September. My mom {Val typing} had mentioned a house for sale in Greenville across the street from friends of theirs. It was a brand new construction. Just for kicks and giggles, Jon and I drove by and peeked in the windows. Let's just say, the dreaming began.

Did we want to stay in Greenville? We have good, stable jobs. We love Greenville. We have established friend roots here. We have found a good church body. Why not? We decided that we would at least be here for 5 more years, so why not buy a house? Why not invest in something? Ah! But a house! 30 years! Wow.

Jon and I searched online and put together a list of homes in our price range. We spent a whole day driving around neighborhoods using a Zillow App as our guide. The hunt was on! We found residential areas we didn't even know existed! We also learned that you can't always go by the pictures you see online, and that the price really does say a lot about whether or not you're going to end up with a "fixer-upper."

We visited about 10 homes in the area. We narrowed it down to 2 {3 if you include the house that started it all - we knew that one was way out of our price range - but we could wish right?}.

We loved the back yard of one and loved the inside of the other. Do we satisfy our dog with a fenced in huge yard? Or do we satisfy each of us {Dakota included} with a little more open feel inside?

We knew which one we loved.

November 10, 2011, we became homeowners. Later, we began to understand the depth of that statement -- in a good way... and a bad way. Ha.

{the keys to our first place}