The Yellow House on the Corner!

That is what we call it...it is our home.
And this is the story of how we found it!

These are a few of the pics we took at the walk~through the day before closing!

The bushes have grown quite a bit...and the lawn is not nearly this lush and green!

We had just welcomed our third child into the world. We were living in a 3 bedroom town home while David went to grad school...seemed to be easy to keep up with no yard work etc... but we quickly realized how small it was becoming.

For about 1 year, after dropping the kids off at preschool, Zac and I would drive around our little town looking for neighborhoods that we thought we would like to live in. We loved the area where we currently lived, but the houses and town houses were so new that there were no trees...and the newer homes seemed to lack the character of some of the older homes we found in older neighborhoods.
When the time was right, we put our town home on the market. We looked at a few houses right away, but became disappointed when they were purchased by someone else before our town home sold.
So...we made the decision to wait until we had an offer...then we would get serious about our house hunt.

Then the offer came....and our house hunt began.
I knew that we wanted to live within a 10 minute radius of our current location....so I narrowed the search to about 4 or 5 neighborhoods. Ones we had found on our pre-school morning drives. I searched the internet and cruised the neighborhoods.
One Thursday morning while David was out of town, I drove to several of the houses I had printed off the realtor's website. I marked a few off the list for various reasons...too modern, not enough trees, small backyard, etc...things that I could tell from the outside. After my drive, I had 5 houses that I wanted to see on the inside.

I remember very clearly the moment that I saw the yellow house on the corner. It is situated on a double cul-de-sac meaning that both of streets (that the house sits on the corner of) end in a cul-de-sac. The huge driveway on the side is surrounded by beautiful azalea bushes that happened to be in bloom. There was a big basketball goal and a baby basketball goal...and a very awesome swing set in a fenced in back yard.....with tons and tons of trees.
It reminded me of the house in the movie "Father of the Bride"....it felt like a home that you could make memories in, raise a family, host a 'tiny' bridal shower and then have your grandchildren visit for weeks at a time.
I called David to tell him that I had found our new home. I said...it would have to be pretty awful on the inside for me not to love it. We had an appointment with our realtor for the following Tuesday....but on Friday evening, when David returned home, we had to drive by the yellow house on the corner again.
This time, when we drove by, the owners were outside doing yard work. We drove by, then drove back by...then we stopped. I said "Hi! We love your house and we are hoping to have a formal showing on Tuesday with our realtor."  The owner said, "Why don't you come in and look at it now?"
Yay! Yay! I about jumped out of the car. She offered to watch our kids in the backyard while we toured.
Her husband was inside, hot dogs were cooking on the stove, there were dishes in the sink, toys in the living room, etc.... It was awesome, and homey and perfect!
Sold! Sold! I knew it....but I knew we had to go through the proper channels and not look too excited!

The following week, we visited the other homes that I had on the list...all the while comparing them to the yellow house on the corner. The one that had been waiting for us....while we were waiting and praying for our town home to be sold!
When we moved in and started meeting people in the neighborhood, we would always name the street we moved to...usually after describing the location...the person would eventually say, "Oh! The yellow house on the corner!"
Yes! Yes! That's our home!
And believe it or not, there is actually someone (not me) in this family that thinks when it's time to have the house painted, we should choose another color. Uhhhh! NO!

Stories are fun!

It's alphabe-Thursday! The letter of the day is "Y".
Head on over to Jenny Matlock's blog to read more!