So We Bought a House

When we moved to Florida for the first time (technically we've moved to Florida three times), we didn't think we would be here long. It was for a co-opt and we were just excited to explore and go on adventures and experience something different. I mean, Utah is cool and whatever but FLORIDA IS FLORIDA.

You get the picture.

Since then, we've been really on the fence about what we wanted to do for Greg's graduate school. Education is so important to us and he's always wanted to do an MBA, and he even considered doing a Ph.D. in managerial accounting as well. So I guess we always tentatively planned on going back to school full-time either next year or the year after. And you know, we were okay with being all poor again and doing apartment living for another 1048 years.

But this past spring we've had to reevaluate some things. Greg likes his job and his company and THEY STILL DO PENSIONS, WHAT? Also J and J will help pay for a master's degree if he works while he's doing it. And, it just so happens we live very close to one of the best part time MBA programs in the country, which is the University of Florida in Gainesville.

And, guess what? We have embryos here. (Like a lot of them. Funny story...PCOS women who do IVF have tons of eggs and therefore lots of embryos, they're just not very healthy). We've been struggling (again) with the 'build our family' thing and it was super stressful to feel like we were on a time crunch or we had to move our frozen children across the country or we had to be okay with not having kids through the two years of an MBA or whatever. It was all just stupid.

So one night we were talking and one of us said maybe we needed to just stay here in Florida for school and quit being on the move for awhile. And for the first time in a long time, we had some peace. It felt right.

Well, if you are going to stay somewhere, it is super annoying to rent. So after a couple of weeks of looking we put in an offer on an adorable little house, negotiated a little bit (AHHHHH), and we've found ourselves in a great little neighborhood just having a blast putting our first home together. We didn't even need to leave the ward.

Excuse the mess. Brynn's been playing and I'm too lazy to clean it up. That's the best excuse I have. But look at my cute fireplace. 

Backyard! Yay! 

With all the moving and a few pieces of new furniture and stuff, Brynn's been very helpful. She loves to play with Daddy's tools. Here she is repairing(?) her crib. 

Kitchen! This was when the other people were living here. It looks different now because we painted over the lime green wall. I could go take a picture of it, but again, I'm very lazy. 

Speaking of painting, choosing paint colors is literally the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life. This is me trying to paint our bedroom a buttery yellow. (Isn't the wainscoting fun?) I'm not sure we ended up with the right color but eventually you just get sick of painting. For the record, we went with Cornstalk lightened by 10% and then with some white paint dumped in. It was a very organized process, not a desperate late-night thing the day before we moved at all. 

The rest of the house is gray. We painted the ENTIRE house before we moved in, with some help of our dear friends the Leishmans who now own our souls. Doesn't the gray look truly horrible on top of this pink? Funny story, Brynn's bedroom was two-toned hot pink, and the paint had sparkles in it. I mean, I didn't even know you could buy paint like that but now I know. 

I'm sure we'll be sharing some more pictures soon, because we've really been having so much fun making this house our own. Greg's already been building some furniture in our garage (!) and I've been blowing all sorts of money at Hobby Lobby. I'm going with farmhouse decor which I think just means going rustic and putting cotton stems all over the place?? Who knows. All we know is that we love our little yellow farmhouse in Jacksonville. 

It's good to be home.