Hey, did you know I bought a house?

Oh yeah, uh, like a month ago or something.
It's been a really crazy last couple of months. That is a true understatement.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I had some challenges with my home search. Basically, my dh & I had to do our house search with his sister & her family. We all had varying degrees of "must-haves" (theirs being extremely more rigid than ours, by the way), but we had to live near each other. In that post I mentioned a good possibility for us. It ended up that it really did work for all of us, and so we put our deposit down and our two townhouses are being built right now!

It was a long, odd process, and one that doesn't even seem believable in this under-water market right now... The builder is only releasing 8 units at a time for sale. Every time they have another release they raise the price a bit. The price was just right for all of us, and if it went up any more than there was a chance we'd be out of our budget. Since we needed two, the sales rep recommended lining up on Thursday for a Saturday release.

That seemed crazy to us, but since we really had to have two units, and there were only two of the models we needed, we HAD to get in line. Except... someone beat us to it. They got in line on Wednesday, complete with a tent and camping gear & wi-fi... and they wanted our unit.

We resigned ourselves that this just wasn't our month (although it didn't deter my in-laws from getting in line for their place, even though if we didn't get one the next month we were going to all have problems).

On Wednesday night my bil asked us to come up & hold his space while he went home to get some supplies. I stayed in the car and bawled my eyes out. My dh went and chatted with the guy who was taking our unit. I could see through my tears that he was helping him set up his tent. They seemed to be getting along well, which was annoying me to no end.

Eventually we got a call that my bil had gotten really sick when he got home and they decided they would try again in the morning, hoping no one would come overnight to take their spot.

The next day while I was at work I started getting urgent calls, both from my sister in law & my husband. The people who had claimed our unit, the guy my dh helped with his tent, had changed their minds and decided on a different type of unit. Ours was now available!

I have no idea why they changed their minds. I truly think it was becasue my dh was nice, and they could see how upset I was. They changed to a cheaper unit, even though they were downsizing from what they currently owned and could easily afford ours. The reason they gave was that they didn't like the look of our building (I actually agree, Ithink it's the ugliest of the three different types in the development), but still, it wasn't worth not moving into and downgrading in my opinion. But, I guess we'll never really know.

My dh & I spent the next two nights outside the builders office with the rest of the people who will eventually be our neighbors. We got along with everyone, and we are all keeping in e-mail contact with each other while our homes are being built.

So, my sil, bil, and my 2 year old nephew will live in the townhouse right next to us, and my mil will live with us in the 3rd story loft (which has been converted to a 4th bedroom w/ bathroom). We're all pretty excited, and I'm so happy that my future children will have so much family close by. Plus, my own parents live just a few minutes away, too!

Here's a slideshow of the construction so far: