Home is where your family is - Right? Right.

    I'm a cautious buyer when it crosses the line from purchase to investment. I search and hunt for the best item for the best price and I take my time doing it. Often I take too much time and often I take so much time I end up missing out on an option. Sometimes I chalk it up to that old phrase "It just wasn't meant to be" and will take me a while to get over it. 
  
    I don't know why I let things hover in my thoughts. Maybe hover isn't the right word, its more like play pong in my mind. Just as I think the idea has left my mind it hits the board and bounces back in my thoughts. Ps. This drives the Hubs nuts!!! 

   Wondering where I'm going with this? I've become instantly obsessed with the idea of a house that recently came on the market - notice how I said the idea of it since I have only seen pictures online and drove past it (that was a bad idea, I admit). Now I'm having second thoughts about our house - which I shouldn't but it just feels like some force is showing off. 

   We have lived in our new house for just over a year. And let's remember, all five of us fell in love with it when we walked in the door after looking at a few other houses. We convinced ourselves that we would and could make it work with a few updates and adjustments. For the most part it has and continues to work for us. The kids have their own rooms. The Hubs has some space for his office. The kitchen is nicely updated as well as the upstairs bathroom. I can't fester on the fact that the windows need to be replaced, the front door needs to be redone and we now rock base board heaters instead of forced air so there is larger areas to avoid putting furniture with no option to install an a/c unit, or the cutback of land we took choosing this house. 

   I've also had a hard time adjusting to the feeling of this house being our home and not a rental. It's weird. It's like the house and I bonded before we signed the papers and then when we did and starting moving in, we became distant relatives. I get the occasional blurb of feeling at home but that flees shortly afterwards. 

   I know I shouldn't dwell on the fact that the house and land that we were originally looking for has come on the market around the corner from us. I really cant dwell that the front porch is that classic, dreamy porch that is coffee sipping on a glider friendly, there is a separate entrance for the upstairs office area that the hubs would love, a double garage, a slightly bigger basement or the wooded land behind the main back yard all still within the school district that we wanted to stay in and within our looking price range. There is absolutely nothing that we can or will do. I know we wont sell and move over there. I know we can't sell and move over there. But come on - what the heck?! Is this just a big test for me to be 100% true to myself grateful for the house we have and make it really feel like home??!  

   That has to be the case. This is a test. This is a challenge for me to overcome  and open my eyes and heart to. I have to look past what that house has and what our house doesn't have. Instead I have to look at what OUR house has and right now OUR house has my family in and my family is my everything. 

This was the picture that Lulu drew of our house before our move

- each kiddo is waving out a window.