house hunting

Back in July (I swear one day I will be caught up), over the holiday weekend we took a quick trip from Alabama to our soon-to-be home: Bossier, Louisiana.  Matt had a four day weekend for the July 4th holiday and we knew we wanted to get in a house hunting trip while we were already down that way so it worked out perfectly.
We had been searching and starting a list of potential houses for weeks...well lets be real, I started looking the day I found out we were going to Louisiana.  A few weeks out, however, we got serious about our search.  We talked to our realtor who sent us several and we added some on our own.  We racked and stacked all the potential houses and came up with our game plan - seventeen houses and all to be viewed on Thursday, the 4th of July!
We got into town on Wednesday evening and started the house search early on Thursday.  To be honest, I thought it was going to be a mess - seventeen houses, two toddlers, one car, and an overwhelming amount of information.  However, the day went really well!  I won't say we didn't get overwhelmed or tired but we saw every single house we wanted to, didn't even go into a few from our original list, and even saw a few extras.  In total, we saw eighteen houses!  By the end of the day everyone was exhausted but we were so glad we were able to see everything we wanted.

That night, the kids promptly fell asleep and Matt and I continued working.  We went through each house that we had seen and voted a yes or no.  The "yes" houses we were going to return to again on Friday and we really wanted to keep our list to five.  We ended up seeing six...of course we had to add a new house to the mix!
The second walk-through of those final houses was extremely helpful.  We spend much more time in each house, planned where things would go, how it would all work, and tried to picture ourselves living in each home.  We kept a very open mind about each one but the second we walked back into our original favorite from day one we knew that was the house we wanted (although Matt tried to say he wasn't sure).  After seeing all the properties and having my personal opinions, I had Matt call his parents just to describe our top two.  He kept going back and forth and while they were both great homes I knew when he described the homes to his mom it would click for him and it would reassure me about the right house for our family.  When he spoke about our top-choice house I just knew it was the one - he went on in detail about the location, the yard, the kitchen, the space, the opportunities, the master suite, the extra room, etc (you get the picture).  By the time he hung up the phone I didn't have to say a single word, he just looked and me and said, "yeah, ok, lets go put in our offer."  So we did just that, we put in an offer on our favorite house.
We decided to leave Louisiana that evening but we felt great about all the work we had accomplished.  We saw all the houses and neighborhoods we wanted including the base option, we put in an offer on a house, and we had two "back-up" houses in case the original didn't pan out.  I couldn't believe how much we got done so quickly!
On July 8 we were notified that our offer was accepted!

We will close on the house in the beginning of September and can't wait!  We are so excited about the house and the move, I think it is going to be the perfect house for our family for the next several years!  Here are a few photos but really, you should just come see it in person!!!

.katherine.