Texas Home Search Update

What a weekend! We finally made it home! So here is the update from the whirlwind TX visit!

First off, I hardly took any photos! There was so much happening I really didn’t document much of the process, it was all we could do to live it! 🙂

I’ll start at the beginning…the plane ride went great! I mentioned over on my Instagram that we dressed the kids the same for our travel day. I do that mostly because it’s much easier to keep an eye on them when they are wearing the same thing, but also in case one wandered off it would be clear which family he/she came from!

But obviously that drew some attention from juuuuuust about everyone we passed and the kids enjoyed having numerous people comment on how cute they looked and “my what a large family you have!” And “surely these are not all YOURS?!”

Little Canon was very eager to tell everyone that his mom is “preg-a-nant again with baby sister” which drew even more raised eyebrows, some congratulations, and a lot of attention from the flight staff!

We sort of felt like a walking zoo exhibit! But I didn’t mind at all. I love the questions because every time someone asks me about our family it is an opportunity to share about how much we love them and how we were told we’d never have them. Sure the days get long, and traveling with all of them especially can take all of my energy, but I wouldn’t ever trade it. I love my big family!

We were met at the airport by our sweet friends who gave every one of my kids a cowboy hat! I have never ever ever liked cowboy hats, but I have to say the kids were pretty cute running around the hotel yelling YeeHaw!

The hotel had a free breakfast…and I am certain they lost money on our family eating there! The kids were shocked when I told them they could have anything at all that they wanted!

As far as house hunting….we saw 14 homes in 2 days. The kids did great coming along with us. They loved the homes that were vacant and wrestling in the open spaces. In every single home they would walk through and all claim which room was theirs. And then we’d have to break up an argument in every house by telling them we weren’t even sure we would buy that house so there was no need to argue about claiming rooms! Same conversation in every home!!! Of course I was annoyed at the time, but now I guess it’s pretty funny!

On day two the kids got some time at Chucky Cheese with some friends of ours to give Matt and I a few hours on our own with the realtor. They came back with loads of sugar and prizes…and huge smiles and hurting tummies of course! 🙂 Only one kiddo threw up in the hotel, so that’s somewhat a success right?!

As far as finding a house the process was overall a bit discouraging. After all of the homes we visited we never once had the feeling of “this is it” like we were both hoping.

We were at the very last home, #13, and I was sitting in the car with all of the kids tired and worn out from two full days of running around. Matt was saying his goodbyes to the realtor and locking up the doors. I was scrolling through email when I saw one house pop up that had been marked “contingent” as of last week. It’d been one I had been watching for SO long and I was bummed to see it taken off the market.

But now it was back on! I hurried over and showed it to Matt and told the realtor that we just HAD to go see it!

So house #15 was set up to see the following day. We got there and fell in love with the old farm house, but especially the property. It has EVERYTHING we would have hoped for in a house. Everything from 4 bedrooms, to a a kitchen sink with a window over it, old wood floors, a chicken coop, a POOL (with a diving board, which was the only request in house hunting from one particular kiddo!), a garden, over an acre of space where the kids can run and play and huge trees with large enough branches to put swings on!

Perfect perfect perfect in SO many ways!

Each kid asked me no less than 15 times each if this one could be our home. As they ran though the grass I got a little teary thinking this just might be our new home.

Matt loved it too. We put an offer on it that night, which we then had to increase because another offer had also been placed that same night that was higher than ours.

We just found out just this morning that our offer was the one accepted! We are super excited BUUUUUUT before you celebrate with us….there are some drawbacks that have us concerned…and I’d love to hear your thoughts too as we process through what to do now.

This home is old and charming… but it was built without a master bedroom/bathroom. All four bedrooms are upstairs and share one bathroom at the end of the hall. This would mean for our large family of (soon to be) EIGHT we would all be sharing one bathroom.

At first I thought it’d be fine, we’d get over that because everything else was so perfect…but now we are thinking it would be really hard to live that way with a brand new baby. We are considering an add on, but with the current price of the home that may not be the best or financially wisest decision.

Have you guys read that book “Rich Dad Poor Dad?” We don’t want to live what he calls “house poor” and have this lovely “perfect” home eat so far into our budget that we can’t life freely in other ways. But we just aren’t sure of the cost of an add on like that and have a lot of number crunching to do.

So, as things stand now we have paid a fee to be able to be under contract with the option to release within 10 days if we decide this isn’t a great fit. We’ll be looking into specific numbers and whether or not this would be the best option for us. There are so many factors that are moving around to get us more information as to whether or not we could/should stretch ourselves to make this happen.

(There is NO being subtle with five kids wearing cowboy hats in an airport!!!)

But in the meantime I am honestly curious what you all would do??? Would you take the “perfect” home with it’s one huge drawback and make it work? Would you keep looking? Would you be afraid of always regretting losing something that seems so right in every other area? Or is it worth it to wait until everything across the board lines up? Anyone have any experience with add ons? Or a story about saying no to only then find something better?

Leave a comment below as we would LOVE to hear your experience and/or comments and feedback.

And please be praying that the plan moving forward is something we both feel comfortable with and the numbers will begin to fall into place or that it would be clear to both of us that we need to continue looking. We love you all!