"Jack's Blue House"

*In case you're getting these posts as emails: I just added a few people to my email list for our family blog. You can always see the original blog posts at http://sommerfeldts.blogspot.com/.

Last weekend was exciting because Jack got two new blue things: his blue cast (see previous post) and his blue house in Illinois!

Well, it's not ours yet. And it will come with a nice mortgage to go along with it. But we're excited and are hoping and praying everything goes well with the home inspection, financing, etc in the upcoming weeks.

The short version: Ryan and Will and I spent 5 days in Illinois. We spent a lot of time with our realtor looking at a lot of houses (most of which either had structural problems or neighborhood problems). We spent even more time talking to neighbors (establishing and finding out about said neighborhood problems). Finally, on our last full day there, our realtors sat down and found a house in a good neighborhood that they thought we might like. It was a little out of our price range but had been on the market for a while, so they thought we could talk it down. It wasn't the nicest or newest of the homes we'd looked at, but the neighbors described the street as "great" "good" and "fantastic" which was so much better than the "okay" "fine" and "good enough"s that we had been hearing from other neighbors in other areas.

We fully recognize we're paying a little bit more for a slightly less-nice house, but throughout this whole process we realized that being in an area with other families with kids, on a safe street and near a bus line was more important than having updated countertops and wall finishes. We both prayed (a LOT) and felt really good about this house. And our initial offer was just right, such that we ended up agreeing on a price that we felt good about.

Here are some pictures of "Jack's blue house!" Feel free to pray with us that the home inspection will come back clean and that financing and closing will all go smoothly.