That one time we bought a house...

** June 10, 2015 **

And then, after Mexico, there was that one time we bought a house.

A pretty big moment for our little family...and something we have waited for and worked towards for a very long time.

2 years ago, we were THIS close to closing on a house.

But it was right around the time that we were going through fertility treatment and in the end, when our IUI's were unsuccessful and it was pretty clear we would have to do IVF, we knew a house just wasn't in the cards for us.

So we took the down payment $ we had planned on using towards a house, and used it to pay for IVF instead.

Totally worth it, of course.

But I will admit, I still had my moments over the 2 years of apartment living that followed.

Moments where I cursed living in an apartment and felt like we were THE ONLY people we knew who still lived in an apartment.

Moments where I felt like we would NEVER be able to save up enough $ again to come up with a down payment on a house.

Moments where I was embarrassed to even have people over because our apartment was so small.

But I will say, that what this experience has taught me is that the harder you have to work for something and the longer you have to wait and the more you have to sacrifice...the more that end result means to you.

And buying our very first home for our family means so much to me.

I won't ever forget the e mail we got from our lender and realtor when we were in Mexico, telling us we were good to go and could sign papers immediately when we got home from our trip.

I won't ever forget sitting at our tiny dining room table in our itty bitty apartment and signing stacks and stacks of papers.

I won't ever forget 2 days later, when we officially got the keys, and took the boys over to the house and surprised them by telling them it was their new home.

I won't ever forget how Madden break danced in the living room because he was so excited that he didn't have to be quiet for the grouchy neighbors that lived underneath us.

I won't ever forget how Madden said, "we are DONE with that apartment!" and Randy and I laughed out loud.

I won't ever forget how excited the boys were to help me pack and how one afternoon, while I was packing up my closet, I turned around to find Beckett like this...

Or how another afternoon, I put on a movie for the boys to watch while I packed, but then I caught Madden in the kitchen, packing and labeling boxes with things from his room.

I won't ever forget how Randy and I slept on a mattress on the floor in our furniture-less house for a week so that we could stay up until 1 am, drinking energy drinks and painting every night while our boys slept upstairs.

I won't ever forget watching the boys watch monsoons and dust storms from our backyard...and thinking....holy crap, we have a backyard!

It may just be our starter home, not our dream home.

And we may only live in it for a few years.

But I will never ever forget our first home.