Our cute little new house

Okay, now to the post you've all been waiting for: Our House!

Obviously I'm not going to post our address on here, but I wanted to tell all of you that might want it that we will be publishing it on the family webpage. If you are not a family member, feel free to send us a message (e-mail, private facebook message, phone call, etc.) and we'll be happy to let you have it.

Also, as I know many of you were looking forward to this post, just know that we will probably be posting 3-4 other posts today, one about our visit to the temple, one about our favorite park and Cockatoo we found, and one about our trip back on the airplane. They'll be worth your while.

All introductions and announcements aside, on to the main event!

Here is our beautiful new home. We will be moving in the first week of June.

It looks really small from the front (and it's not huge) but below you will see a picture of the builder's floorplan.

Here's the cute little porch out front...

Below is a picture of the front "formal dining room." Why anyone would want to eat on carpet right by the front door is beyond us, so we've decided that this is going to be a little library until we get some chairs to make it a sitting room.

Here is another picture from the doorway. As you can see, it's a pretty open floor plan. There is a hallway off to the right of the pregnant lady that leads to the 3 smaller bedrooms (non master).
(Christy just told me she thinks that she looks huge in this picture, so no one make any pregnancy picture comments)

Here's another angle of our library.

Okay, these next four pictures are of our kitchen/dining area. I tried to take them in a sort of panoramic way.

Above is the portion of the cabinets that borders the entry to the room. The stove will fit in the empty hole (they've told us the appliances can either be black or white... we have to choose. We want you guys opinion, do you think we should get black or white kitchen appiances? The true color of everything comes out best in the 2nd picture below.)
Below connects to above going to the right.

Below connects to above moving left to right. The diswasher and fridge will fit in the empty spots.

And below is the dining area. Behind that half wall is where the living room is at.

One of the things that really made us love this house was all of the half walls. We felt like they allowed the house to still feel open while separating the rooms. Below is a picture of the living room from the kitchen/dining room doorway. The door in the back leads to the back yard.

Here's another view of the doorway to the family room with the family room behind it. Notice the arches and crown moldings. Christy loved that part.

Here's a view of our tiny little back yard. We will definitely grow out of this, but for a family with only little kids and this being a starter home that is this nice on the inside, this was something we were willing to sacrifice.

One thing that Christy fell in love with in the family room was the vaulted ceiling. I think eventually we are going to change that light out for an overhead fan.

Right off of the family room (to the right) is where our master bedroom will be. Below is the view from the doorway.

The closet sits right off to the right just passed where the door hits the wall (it can't be seen here) in the above picture. The below picture is a view from the closet doorway.

Another thing that Christy fell in love with in this house was the master bath. I have to tell you a funny story about the below picture. Christy always... always... makes fun of the people on the HGTV shows that get into the bathtub at a house that they are looking at. I found it hilarious to walk in to this picture and I couldn't help but take the picture.

The cool part about the master bath is that not only does it have a full sized tub, it also has a beautiful shower....

and double sinks.

The bathroom was definitely a selling point in this house.

Since I made so much fun of Christy getting in the tub, she made me get in too so that she could blackmail me if I gave her a hard time about it.
Gabs thought it was pretty funny.

Another thing that Christy loved about this house was the pantry. Seen below, this pantry is about 3 times the size of anything we've ever had before.

Something we've also never had before is a linen closet. This linen closet, below, is in the little hallway that connects the entryway/library with the garage/laundry room and other bedrooms.

Right next to the linen closet is the Untility/Laundry room. You can't really see it from the view pictured below, but the garage is right through the door on the other side of this room.

Off of the utility room is the hallway to all of the other bedrooms. They are all basically the same.

As you can see, Gabs loves her bathroom.

Here's another room (looks just like the other one, just flipped around).

One thing that Daddy loved about the house is that it has a garage. Not only does it have a garage though, it has space where I can build a little workshelf for myself (pictured below) along with a little space for our freezer (not pictured).

So, you've all been waiting for it. There you have it!

We feel really blessed to have gotten this house. A few months ago we were really disappointed when we realized that we weren't going to be able to come up with a downpayment to buy a house (the only thing keeping us from fulfilling our pre-qualification requirements). We didn't think there was any way that we could get into a home without leasing for a year or so. We looked at everything we could to try and come up with that downpayment (from looking into other loans, to looking into government programs, to asking grandma).

When we happened upon this lease to own program with this builder it really came as an answer to prayers. On top of it all, while we were down in Texas they made a bit of an exception, allowing us to lease this house under the lease to own program when it wasn't even supposed to be included (most of the lease to own homes were actually more townhouse style rather than simgle family homes. We begged them and had some help from the leasing agent who convinced them that it would be better that we lease it and buy it in a year than to have it sit there for another year or more). The cool thing, too, is that 3 months of our lease payments will go to the purchase of the home (as a downpayment) at the end of the lease period. It really is a blessing for us to be able to live in this house.

Anyway, there you go!