We made the offer on the house Saturday and the sellers called to officially accept Saturday night.

You'll forgive me if I don't take a lot of time to write about it. I've caught a stupid cold and other things and mostly feel like sleeping or lying around reading or watching movies, and not sitting up at my computer.

Yes, the house.

I have spent an insane amount of time online lately, but it was all apent searching for houses to view. After looking at houses all over the two towns that are located where Rice's job is, we found nine to look at. Mostly it was very discouraging. I have lots of entertaining stories to tell about the houses we viewed, but I may save those for another time.

It became apparent quite quickly that Rice and I would either have to settle with a house we were happy with but would have to spend a lot of money and effort whipping into shape (e.g. replacing all the electrical work so he could use his computers -- he's a software engineer and is self-employed) or would have to start looking at much more expensive houses. We had the mortgage allowance for a more expensive house, but I was uncomfortable with buying such expensive houses. (The market and thus the prices of houses has really boomed in the last few years.)

One of Rice's cousins said she's look after our kids on Saturday while we house hunted. Her sister-in-law had told Rice, and her mother had told my in-laws, that she and her husband were selling their home in preparation to move out of state so he can attend school. I had been at their house once before about 1 1/2 years ago. It was a nice house, but from what I had seen it didn't necessarily have the space we were looking for. Also, based on their asking price, it sounded as if they wouldn't have a finished basement. (We saw listings for lots of houses comparable to hers that only had the upper part of the house complete, and because of necessary office spaces, etc., we wanted a full house and had little interest in a) paying so much for an uncomplete house, and b) don't have the skills to finish a house on our own. These houses were $20,000 to $30,000 more than what she and her husband were asking.)

Rice and I dropped off our kids and asked if she'd show us her house. We figured we might as well look. And she had two "For Sale By Owner" signs in her yard. It turns out we really liked the house. It was practically perfect. It wasn't quite what we started out looking for, e.g. it was built in 2001 -- we weren't looking for a new house due to the usual prices, but their new house was running about $10,000 less than houses twenty and thirty years older. AND the basement is practically finished. It has a space for another bathroom in the basement and the one bedroom that's not finished only needs painting and carpet, and we can do painting and carpet. Also, the space is used differently, and though it seems smaller in some respects, e.g. the kitchen, the space is designed a great deal more functionally and intelligently than our house.

The upshot is we found a house that was almost everything we wanted and more in some respects. And it was less than it probably should be. We talked them up a few thousand dollars because honestly they weren't asking enough for it and it wouldn't make that much difference in our mortgage payment, but it would help them with their move. They called this morning, still uncomfortable with the price we settled on, so they're going to refund part of the "extra".

Rice and I had talked about the improvements we wanted to do on our house, and their house has practically all of them. It also has garden space, a raspberry garden, an apple tree, a maple tree, and a peone. It has a large driveway ready for a basketball hoop. It's in a great kid-friendly neighborhood. They're leaving their tiller, their food storage shelves, and they're going to plant flowers for us in May and start a vegetable garden for us. Why? Because they're that sort of folks. And they said they were trying to find things to do and leave because of the final price.

Anyway, we're all very excited. The final topper was that we weren't looking to move in until the time when they were looking to move out. They were ready to move in with family way out in the sticks and drive their daughter to school everyday. AND they said we can start moving in boxes into the spare bedroom that needs carpeting and paint whenever we want.

We're planning on going to a local nursery and buying a sweet cherry tree that will be ideal for that climate. We're having our trees pruned here soon and we discussed taking some starts from our tree, but it's colder there, and we can buy a hardier variety for not very much.