Die Buchwalds

All three of the houses I talked about in my previous post were a bust. We actually did decide that we really liked the first house, but it sold two days after we saw it. It was a sad, sad day. Today, on the other hand, was fun. Our realtor took us to see a house he had *just* listed. He put it into the computer system literally less than an hour before he met us at the house. It’s an adorable little Cape Cod with “three” bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms. The basement is unfinished but useable. It has a back deck and a nice size yard (about a quarter acre). The only real negative is that it’s a little bit farther from where Matt works than what we had hoped for. The positives so far seem to outweigh that one negative, but we have one more house to look at tomorrow and then we’ll go back to this house & take a more thorough look, probably on Saturday. I’d love to post a link with all the details, but it’s so new it’s not showing up in the search yet.

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As mentioned in our year-in-review post, we’re moving. Our target is the direct center between Grove City and Blawnox, which means either Evans City or Zelienople. At first, we were just going to rent for another year to see if we liked living so close to our parents and how Matt felt about the drive. The problem with renting was going to be finding a place that would allow Ratzi to live there, too. Then, Josh told us about a house for sale behind where his parents live. That house was absolutely beautiful, though the location wasn’t the greatest (on a very steep hill), but it turned out to be too much for our budget. The more we talk about it and the more I looked online at different house listings, we decided to continue looking to see if there were any other houses that we could buy that would fit our needs/wants. There are a lot more options for buying a house than renting when a cat is part of the equation.
We’re going to look at two more houses, and I’ve found a third that I want to see, but I haven’t had a chance to mention it to the realtor.
Today’s houses:
**House 1 is in town, within reasonable walking distance of the local church and has a finished attic. It’s advertised as a third floor room, but who would want to spend any real time in an un-air-conditioned third floor room in July or August around here? The back yard appears to be a reasonable size for sending rugrats outside to entertain themselves :) It’s definitely an older home but doesn’t seem like it would need an excessive amount of work – the wall paper appears to be minimal.
**House 2 is a few miles outside of town. It has more land, but is smaller than House 1. The wall paper in this house is, in my opinion, excessive and would take quite a while to get rid of. If I remember this house correctly, it’s also on the corner of a pretty busy road, but the back yard does have a fence.
The other house :
**House 3 is a street over and further down from House 1. It’s the smallest lot of the three. It’s best feature is the beautiful front porch. I <3 front porches. Looks like I see a porch swing, too. I’m curious about what it looks like inside and what the back yard is like.

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My husband has a job!!
He’s not much for details, but I am, so here you go:
The job is located an hour and fifteen minutes southeast of our current location and has excellent benefits. The pay is reasonable for this area, though it would be a definite test of my ability to be frugal if it were our only income and there were children in the house.
The goal now is to survive the commute as long as possible, then move to a location in between our two jobs and rent for a year there. By then, we should have minimal student loan debt and a big enough chunk of savings to buy a house. There are three potential roadblocks to this plan, but they fall under the category of Top Secret Future Plans, so you’ll just have to wait to see if any combination of the roadblocks become an issue.
Now, about the future location of (temporary) Casa de Buchwald… There’s an interesting story. As you may have gathered from looking at our pictures, I attended the same parish my whole life until I got married. In that lifetime, we’ve only had one priest (seen there at my baptism). When he asks you to volunteer, you just can’t say no to him, and because he’s been around for so long he’s much more like a member of the family than just “the parish priest.” Father has been telling me, since before my wedding, about every house he sees for sale in town. All summer long, he’s been telling me about the house of an older parishoner who is moving to Florida to be with her family. Our response is always “Find Matt a job.” We still have no plans to buy the house he keeps mentioning, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s exactly the same amount of travel time from the church* to both of our jobs. I’m chalking this one up to the power of prayer.

*Matt asked me to check travel time from the town where the church is located, and since the church’s address is the only one I know, it was the easiest point of reference to provide to mapquest.

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One of the worst things about Matt’s pending job interview is that I have absolutely no patience. He says job interview, I automatically think “Yay! A House and Babies!!!” So I’ve gotten myself stuck into that situation. The one where I’ve spent WAY too much time gazing at baby items in stores and searching the Howard Hanna website for my dream house.

Whilst I was browsing, I thought I’d investigate a mystery. We saw a suspicious sign in front of a beloved former teacher’s home a few months ago. I looked it up. Not only is it absurdly out of any price range we’ll be able to afford in the next 20 years, it’s also perfect. I would love to be able to buy it and keep it as it should be. It’s one of those wonderful old farm houses, perfect for raising a large family of children who like to play outside, but no longer perfect for having a farm. I’ll cry if anything other than a nice refurbishing happens to the dance studio inside that home. What I’d really like to know, though, is WHY the house is for sale. It’s been so many years and I’m so out of touch with people who might know. *sigh*
Would anyone like to donate a few hundred grand to the Buy Amy’s Dream House fund?

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Today, Matt & I have been married for six whole calendar months. Marriage is great. I highly recommend it.

Married life is even better now that I get to see my husband for pretty much the same amount of time every day, with bonus time on the weekends. There’s finally enough time to share all our stories from our times apart and then have additional conversation about other things going on in the world and in our marriage. It’s bliss.

I’m starting to feel motivated to accomplish things in life again. I’m working on a craft project in preparation for Christmas and I’ve even started reading for my own benefit and enjoyment.

The current 6-month plan:

Personal Goals
*finish said book
*work on scrapbooks (currently: high school; college; “before”, “during” and “after” wedding albums)

Marriage Goals
*job for Matt
*house (or at least a start to the house hunt)
*trip to Disney World
*family expansion

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