Our First Home

Our first home..

September 2013

It has taken me awhile to post about our new home. I have wanted to share it here for awhile, but not until recently did we get two extra seats at our dinner table and extra sofa's to help our one sofa look a little less lonely.

Aleah's room didn't seem necessary, so I'll leave that out. Also, the extra room is always messy and it's just an extra boring-kind-of-room, so there isn't too much to show of that one.. And our bedroom is in need of some night stands and organization.
So this is what you get!

Before "New" Furniture 

Now, our extra room that we use for the tv/computer/play room has a couch in it too and we don't have to do this (blankets and pillows on the floor) to have a movie night. :) By the way, this picture is deceiving...she doesn't sit anywhere for more than two seconds. We just got the picture quick enough.

 And After "New" Furniture

Our living room with our new (to us) sofa, love seat and "over sized" chair..:)

Don't be surprised though if you come over and our sofa looks more like this though. I mean, isn't that really what these things are for? Holding laundry that is waiting to be folded.

No? Not at your house?...oh...

The night Cade, with his Dad's help, (thank you Father-In-Law!) brought home the couches, he had just rolled his ankle playing a basketball game at the church. Oh church ball....I have mixed feelings about you... 

We are breaking in the couches with plenty of dorky Hansen family pictures. 
You're welcome.

And then my sister let me take this cute little table off their hands. I love it.

I'm pretty stoked that I can now invite friends and family over and be able to offer them more than two seats in our kitchen to sit. Or one sofa to fit everyone on. 

Woohoo! This is exciting stuff.

But don't surprised if you come over and my house looks like this..... 

I can not clean a house as fast as Aleah can destroy one. :)
And well, to be honest, I'm not very organized myself.:(

In our backyard.

A year and a half old- next month? She looks so much older to me here!

Fun at the neighborhood park.

Taking a walk..

If you read my blog from a previous blog address, you know already, I didn't enjoy house hunting. I only loved two houses that we looked at and both happened to be in Nampa, this is one of those. 

I wanted a simple house in a nice neighborhood. Somewhere I could take my daughter for walks and not feel nervous. The above picture was taken while I was having one of those....."ohhh, this is exactly what I hoped for and it's happening" moments. Taking a walk in the back of our neighborhood, discovering cool spots.

We had six months on our apartment lease left when we started getting the itch (or push) to look for houses again. It's funny how things fell in to place, or didn't, and lead us here. 
And actually we did like three homes I guess. The last home that kind of brought us to this point was a town home. I fell in love with it. It was in our ward boundaries, cute, and in a safe looking neighborhood, in Boise... But we couldn't pull the trigger fast enough. We couldn't get a hold of the right people. I had a few questions on my brain that made me hesitate... And then it was sold. Thank goodness in the end though. 

I went back to zillow and searched Nampa homes. Probably just because I wanted to look at some cute houses in our price range. The homes are cheap here. And cute! Cute for cheap! But when you are looking for a home in the Boise/Meridian area, a lot of people will show their disapproval for Nampa and try to convince you that you don't want to buy there. Our realtor though, never tried to convince us to stay out of Nampa, if anything she helped me to consider it more. I still tried to avoid it. I didn't want to move here. But, after we missed the town home, I searched again and then I found two homes in a neighborhood worth just checking out. Not too far from a home we had put an offer on a year before (this was the first home I loved and was pretty bummed about being out-bid on). We drove to the neighborhood, decided we really liked one- (not this home), and another one (the home we actually ended up buying) was...at least still worth checking out. 

We went, I think, the next day with our realtor to both homes. This home, we went to first. Immediately, I LOVED it. I can't put my finger on one thing exactly, but it was perfect. I didn't need to look at the other house, I was already talking with Cade about the offer. We still went and checked out the other home that I had first thought I would like more. It was a short sale. It was bad inside. That was that. We made our offer that night on the first home and it was accepted not much later, maybe the next day or two.

Everything worked out in the right way and right timing. 

This home has been SO perfect for us. Our neighborhood is great! I love the area we are in. I can't speak for ALL of Nampa, I'm not familiar enough with the whole city, but where we are at is good. There has been some interesting crime activity near our intersection....but it really hasn't bothered me too bad.. I feel pretty safe here. Cade left for a month for work just after we bought this house and I never felt really too uneasy the whole time he was gone. A lot of people in our neighborhood are in our ward. And we are really close to shopping, restaurants and freeway access. I definitely have more positives to list about Nampa than I do negatives. I could even go on about how much I love the cashiers here. Seriously. Weird. 
Nampa is GREAT. 
Come be our neighbor, there are quite a few homes for sale or lots available!

And use our realtor.  

Sharon Walker <Link here>
She was GREAT!!!