the dew baby

IT'S OFFICIAL! We found a house!! It's not exactly what we were looking for, but it's everything we need. It's a 3-bedroom, 2-bath cape cod, very close to both mine & Dan's jobs, as well as Sean's new school. It has a 2-car garage (aka: Man Cave), partially finished basement, beautiful landscaping, and lots of character. It has been owned by the same family for the past 8-1/2 years: a husband & wife, and two little boys. The Husband is a rockstar handyman -- he has done a lot of awesome updates to the house, so we'll get to reap the benefits of all his hard work. The neighborhood is lovely, the neighbors are as nice as they come, and there is a very large park right out behind the house! And to top it off, the payments are well within our budget since they're exactly what we pay right now!

Wanna see it?

Yep -- that's our house. We officially pulled it off the market today. After a lot of discussion, Dan & I decided that the best thing for our family right now, is to stay put.

The housing market sucks. We knew that, but we thought we'd give it a shot anyway. And after Sean got into the charter school, I became mostly ambivalent about moving. We left it on the market to see what might happen, we had a few more showings, no offers... and for us to sell it at what is likely its fair market value right now, we'd have to take a lot of money to the table to bridge the gap between the sales prices and what we owe on the mortgage.

A few months ago, we were prepared to do that. But now... now we're not. We got a good thing going here, really. So we don't have a dining room (one of my biggies I was looking for in a new place). We do have a table with food on it every night.

We have awesome neighbors, close proximity to Target & McDonalds (yes, these things are important!), our property taxes keep going down & down (thank you, crappy economy), and this place is ours! Well, in about 22 more years, it'll be ours.

And the best part? I'm getting that dang dishwasher I keep blogging about! Like SOON!