I had wanted to take the time to sit and document my feelings about our home purchase since our offer was accepted, and had really wanted to get it written down before closing, but only now have I found the time to put my words into any sort of legible format. In all the excitement that has surrounded us lately, an old tenet of blogging has reared its ugly head once again, and that is, when you’re busy doing things worth blogging about, you really don’t have any time to blog about them, but when you do have time to blog, it’s because there’s nothing noteworthy going on and you end up blogging about nothing at all.

But I digress. In regards to buying a house, I have to say, this whole thing was my idea. For quite a while, I had been dragging The Wife to open houses, and scouring the internet looking at properties. Never with much of a plan, mind you, it’s just my nature to want to know everything about everything, and this was no exception.

Ever since we got engaged, she and I have done quite a bit of soul searching; trying to figure out if we want to stay in this city, and if we want to stay in our jobs, or even our careers, and if we want to move, then where, and when, and how, and all the other questions that come along for the ride when such things are being discussed. And often times, when you discuss such things, nothing really happens. You end up having surface conversations, and playing a ‘what if’ game, but making no real decisions, and kind of gliding along, not putting the effort into any one conversation long enough to make a single, true, concrete decision. At least that’s what we did.

Until one day, while looking on the internet, I found an apartment that I really liked. REALLY LIKED. I sent the link to The Wife, who was out of town, and she felt the same way. We decided that we at least wanted to go see it, and so she called her real estate acquaintance, and I went to the bank to get information on pre-approval.

We went and viewed the property, and we liked it very much. We saw a couple of other places, and went on our way. Two days later, though, we looked at each other, and we knew. We wanted it. People always tell you not to buy the first property that you look at, but we didn’t care. I don’t really think that old saying even really applies anymore these days. With the internet, we knew what was out there, in our price range, and in the areas that we wanted to live in. And this was it. The creme de la creme. A diamond in the rough. We spoke with our (now) real estate agent, and decided we wanted to put in an offer, and so we spoke with the mortgage broker. And that’s when the dream died. The property wasn’t FHA approved, which meant that we would have had to put down at least 20% in any offer that we made. Now, I don’t want to get into the fine details of our finances, but I will tell you that we don’t have 20% of the average purchase price in our area to put down. We thought we were doing well to scrape together the FHA-required 3%.

And so we moved on, albeit disappointed. We put together a long list of potentials. Some excited us, most didn’t. Unfortunately, in our area, and in our price range, there still isn’t a ton of available options very close to the city for purchase. Foreclosures gave us more space, or a shorter commute, but also brought with them the risk of unforseen repairs, or hidden damage. We saw a few more apartments, and decided that we were just more comfortable looking at rowhomes, townhouses, and if we could find one on our price range, a single family home. Then The Wife went out of town on business, and we put our looking on hold.

Throughout all of this, she was very hesitant. I don’t blame her; in our relationship, my role has been defined, by me, as jumping our ahead of her, and trying to drag her along into something that she isn’t comfortable with, and her job has been to dig her feet in and resist as long as possible. The results of this arrangement are that I am forced to explain the situation to her in depth, adding to her comfort level, and her resistance allows me to give second and third thoughts to important matters that should probably be getting second and third thoughts anyway, before their endulged. It’s our system, and it works.

I never really felt like she completely bought into the idea of us owning though, with the exception of that first apartment. I, however, continued to scour internet listings, and while she was gone, went to a few open houses, one in an area that we hadn’t even really considered. And of course, that one, I really liked. I told her about it, and told her I wanted our agent to take us there when she returned. And then a contract was signed on it before she even got back. However, we continued to to look in the area when she got back. I showed her one more open house in the neighborhood, and while it wasn’r right for us, she liked the neighborhood, and the layout of the houses, which were pretty much all the same.

And then we found it. I saw it online first, and I wasn’t sure how I’d missed it. I found it on a Sunday night, and it had been open that day for viewing, and we had been in the neighborhood, but not known about it. From the moment I saw the first pictures, I knew we would both like it.

And we did. Our agent showed it to us a few days later. I got there before she did, and knew before she arrived that she’d want it. We made an offer the next day, and two days later, we had a contract. And while settlement was long, and stressful, and there were some unexpected bumps in the road, we got moved in on time.

And now I’m scared to death. We have poured over our finances, and I know in and out our payment schedule, for both this mortgage and our other debts, and our time frames for payment, and our monthly budget, and how much we have to spend, at any given moment, every day. I’m still nervous though. With everything in the news today, about the housing market, and the economy in general, it’s hard not to be.

For now though, everything is good. We’re slowly getting moved in for the holidays, and tonight we’re going to have dinner with our real estate agent and their family, which is the connection that lead us down this whole path. And afterwards, we’ll go home.

…while I’ve been gone. Let me just say that I’m soo glad that I’m not one of those professional bloggers. Every once in a while, after a few weeks, if I haven’t posted anything on the site, I begin to get nervous and fidget a lot. I know that I need to post something, hell, I usually have something planned to post, but in my mind, for each day that passes, the next post has to be that much better. And I wilt, like collard greens in the pot, under the pressure.

I feel the need to be witty, and smart, and charming, or at the very least, relevant, but at this point,  I feel the need to simply publish something, anything, to let everyone know that I am, in fact, NOT DEAD. Additionally, so much has happened since I last posted that I’m not sure what needs to be discussed here, on the & Matt - Wedding Blog" href="http://www.allieandmatt.com/blog/" target="_self">wedding blog, or not at all.  And I don’t really have the time that I’d like to devote to figuring all of that out, so instead I’m just going to put it all out there for you, and let you pick and choose what you’d like to concentrate on.

My car died, so I got a new one. It’s shiny, and pretty, and it makes me feel special. The Girl and I attended an engaged couples marriage preparation weekend. We liked it. We also went to a cooking class. We liked it, too. We learned new recipes, had a good time, and ate a good lunch. I want to blog about it someday, when I get more time. We had brunch with friends. The Mother and The Future-Mother-In-Law came into town, and The Girl had her wedding shower, and they all had fun, and I was jealous. Our two year anniversary came and went, and The Girl and I agreed that it did not get the attention that it deserves, and that we need to rectify such a situation when we can.

I believe that’s everything. It is neither witty, nor smart, nor charming, nor even relevant, but I am alive, and off the hook for the time being, and for that I am glad.

The Girl is gone this weekend, having traveled to the West Coast for a weekend work trip. Usually, when The Girl goes out of town, I spend a lot of time cooped up in the house. We are homebodies together, when I’m alone I’m even more of one. And this weekend has had its share of that, for sure. But yesterday I left work early, bought a new phone, rented some movies, and went out to dinner with friends before retreating to the comfort of home, and I’d also gotten it into my head that I wanted to treat myself to a really nice dinner tonight (Saturday), as well.

Both The Girl and I can be real food snobs sometimes, and for me, tonight was no exception. & Deluca - Georgetown, Washington, DC" href="http://www.deandeluca.com/Aboutus/Default.aspx?id=200&selItemId=200&parentItemId=14">Dean & Deluca is a really trendy, really high quality, really very expensive grocery store in Georgetown. I made the trip in to the city tonight in early evening to do some shopping for dinner, and breakfast and lunch tomorrow, which included some bleu cheese burgers, topped with prosciutto and pears, and some tomato, basil, and mozarrella and orzo pasta for dinner, while I watched basketball. Tomorrow, it’s fresh fruit and the remainder of the prosciutto for breakfast, and another burger for lunch (I told you I was a food snob).

The question is, when The Girl returns, will she be A) upset at me for spending so much money on so little food, or B) upset that I did so when she was out of town, or C) simply upset that I even thought about going to Georgetown without her? Guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

The Girl and I just returned from our nine day vacation with her family, and we had a wonderful time. Some of the views, and the activities, will be remembered for a long time to come. I just got the entire set of pictures onto Flickr, but you can see one of the better ones below, a view of our ship, from the beach on Labadee, Haiti.

The urge to smoke while on vacation was almost non-existent. As a matter of fact, I completely forgot to put on a nicotine patch a couple of days. Add that to the fact that cigarettes were, for the most part, completely unavailable, and the week was pretty smooth sailing, on that front. It also didn’t hurt that food was always available.

Hopefully I’ll have time to expound on our wonderful vacation in the next few days.

I don’t know if this will be the final design for the ‘Save the Date’ cards, but I had a lot of fun putting it together, so I thought I’d share.

Much thanks need to go out to our very good friend L, she of the photo-journalistic tendencies, for going with The Girl and I this past Sunday to take some engagement pictures. I really wasn’t feeling very good about myself on Sunday, hungover after a typical Rebel football Saturday, and really feeling like I just wanted to curl up on the couch and sleep my way through until Monday. We were going to take ‘a few’ pictures, and ended up with upwards of 700, but after seeing the finished product I’m so glad we did it, and I’m glad that L was taking the pictures. She helped pull us out of our initial awkwardness a bit faster than a stranger would have, and she had no problems giving us direction, and coming up with great ideas, and you can really see the care, and the love that she put into the finished product, and for that, The Girl and I will have to spend the rest of our lives trying to find a way to thank her, because these pictures are something that we’ll keep with us for the rest of our lives, and that’s priceless.

The picture above is one of my favorites of those that L has shown us so far. All in all, as per usual, The Girl looks much better in most of them than I do, but I’m alright with the idea that I’m the one marrying up. View the full set here, and thanks again to L for such a fun afternoon, and such a wonderful gift.