House Hunting!

Chris and I have always shared an interest in looking in at homes, in fact, it is probably at the top of our list of hobbies as a couple! We have been looking at houses since we were dating! We love to drive around on summer evenings, eating snow cones and stalking our favorite neighborhoods as well as completely new destinations for for-sale signs, and dropping in on open houses on Sunday afternoons. We have mulitple real-estate websites bookmarked and check for new listings weekly. We have more maps and house-info flyers in our cars than you could ever count. We have gotten lost more than once while looking for a house, and have been approached by concerned neighbors for stopping in the street and starting at a house for 15 minutes. We can quote you the average listing, selling, and per-square footage price of almost any house based on it's location. Yes, we are house-hunting nerds!

But, interestingly enough, we have just been looking "for fun" for the past 2 and half years. We took a hard hit financially when we sold our home in Greenwood and it has taken some time to bounce back, and in addition to that, we have a list of things we really would like in our next home, so we wanted to make sure we were in a place to buy the home we really wanted. Well, we are now very excited to be "officially" house hunting and we are hoping to buy a house sometime between now and the next 6 months! It is such a fun but also extremely stressful process and I have already wanted to quit looking and just live in a tent at the city park a few times just this week ;) The list we have is quite extensive and while most of the things are mutual wants or needs, some are not and therefore it has been the source of some heated debates in the Anderson household! The biggest area of discord seems to be location and yard size, and yes, you can guess, the Boardcamp-bred boy I married thinks he needs a huge yard and/or small forest to be happy. And, in our price-range, you can only get these things if you drive 20+ minutes outside of Bentonville. This is where I, the one who stays home with the kids all week and loves being 5 minutes from Walmart, parks, library, mall, MDO, etc, has a bit of a problem. While I do appreciate nature and trees, I also appreciate convenience and lets not forget it costs $90 to fill up my tank. Just sayin'. SO, all that to say, we are trying really hard at this whole compromise thing and are trying to keep all our options open. We have an appointment to see another house tonight (our 3rd to see in less than a week) and we are very excited to see if it is something that will work for us. The last one we saw is still on the list, but I am hoping this one knocks them all out of the park...because it is IN BENTONVILLE! :) I keep telling myself that if it is the right house, it will work out. I guess we will see what happens!