House Hunting Update . . .

It seems that we have found ourselves a house and it is actually a pretty amazing story.

We arrived for our house-hunting trip and spent two days pounding the pavement with our realtor. We saw many, many homes, but nothing really clicked. At the end of the second day, we ended up making an offer on a home in an area we really liked, but one which would require some significant updates. There were a lot of positives about it, but we had a few reservations. The home owners counter-offered and we were ambivalent about raising our offer. Therefore, before making a decision, we decided to drive through the areas we most liked before it was time to meet up with our realtor.

It was a sunny Saturday morning and few people were out and about, but as we drove down one street, we noticed a man out on his lawn talking with some yard workers. Mark recognized him as one of the two people he knew in the area because he was one of the people Mark interviewed with during his interviews at the bank. It just so happened that he was also a stake president in the area. We stopped to talk with him and he graciously offered to drive us around the area to get us a little more acquainted with it. We then met up with our realtor and went through another day of fruitless searching.

That night, as we were talking through options, we received a call from this stake president. He mentioned that he had been offered a job with the bank in another office and that he was fairly certain that he and his wife would be moving. He said that if we were interested, we would be welcome to take a look at their house to see if it would be something that we might be interested in. He mentioned that they really wanted to bless someone's life and would be selling it for a reasonable price. We went through it the next day and thought that it would be a great situation for our family for now. Anyway, bottom line is, we now have a house and will be moving at the end of June! We feel very blessed and grateful that it has worked out the way it has -- that we just happened to bump into one of the two people Mark knows in the area, that he just happened to be the only person on the street out in his yard as we were driving by, that he would just happen to be selling his house . . . We just can't quite believe it!

Book Quotes

I am currently reading Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale -- the jury is still out on whether or not I really like the book as I'm not very far into it -- and I came across several passages about books/reading that really resonated with me so I thought I'd share them:

"I read old novels. The reason is simple: I prefer proper endings. Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and miraculous restorations, tragic separations and unhoped-for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled; these, in my view, constitute an ending worth the wait. They should come after adventures, perils, dangers and dilemmas, and wind everything up nice and neatly. Endings like this are to be found more commonly in old novels than new ones, so I read old novels."

"I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything."

Odds and Ends

I took this picture from our front porch this morning! So beautiful!

We've had a fun week. Last week was the girls' Spring Break, but since it was not Daddy's Spring Break we didn't really have too much planned. We had some fun playdates, the girls and I visited the Children's Museum of Richmond, and later on in the week went up to D.C. for a few days to visit Grammie and Grandpa Ward. We loved the time with them! We saw the tail end of the cherry blossoms and went to the National Zoo. The girls especially loved Grammie's abundant supply of chocolate chip cookies and Grandpa's "Hillary and Hank" stories. I vividly remember him telling them to me and Jennifer when we were little. We loved to hear about the brother and sister who lived in a treehouse in the forest and had all sorts of adventures with the animals. The girls really eat them up, too.

The girls are so full of life these days! They say such funny things which I always tell myself to remember, but then end up forgetting. Jane is so, so, so busy (it seems I have sounded this refrain before)! We returned from our house-hunting trip to find that she had learned to climb. My first realization of this came when I walked into the kitchen and she was sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. She is gradually saying more words, but is a little careless -- okay, very careless -- with her articulation so we still have to ferret out what she means. Three things that keep her most occupied -- being outside (royal tantrums if she can't go out and again, when she has to come in), plunking away at the piano (she'll sit on the piano bench for a half an hour at a time, turning the pages of the book, and "playing" and then she'll perch at the end and yell "Mama!" until I come and lift her down), and "reading" books. She loves to sit and look at the pages and has just started jabbering as she "reads". She refuses to sit in a high chair any more and desperately wants to be one of the big kids. I'm amazed at her daring on the trampoline. She is growing so big!

It's been so much more fun around the house now that Daddy is home so much more. We are reaping the rewards of his front-loading his second year at Darden and are glad that he has only one class a day. He is also glad that this allows him a little more time on the golf course :).

As for our house-hunting trip, it was a pretty stressful trip, but we had quite a remarkable experience. We found a house that we think will work well for us nicely, but things are still in the works so I'll post more about it and some pictures when it is finalized. Hopefully it will all come together this week! It is amazing to think that we could actually own our own house :). We wouldn't trade the experiences we've had for anything, though, and are grateful for how things are working out.