New Home

After a year and a half of searching, lots of compromises on what we wanted versus what we could afford, we have entered into a binding contract for home not far so very far from where we live now, but about twice the size.  Although the outside architecture layout is not what I wanted (its "snout front"), the front walk, inside layout and back gardens are very beautiful and congenial to our lifestyle.  The sellers are an older couple who are obviously devoutly Catholic (I believe Italian, but maybe French) and have kept it meticulously, and with great style although theirs is the style of an older generation.  They are now downsizing.

We didn't end up with  4 bedroom home we set out for.  However, the size of the girls room and the presence of a large storage room as part of it provided a satisfactory answer to the central problem that really has been the driving need for change.  The storage room will likely becomes JA's private artist nook where she can also go to be alone when her foul moods strike. With the large bonus room there is plenty of place space and opportunity for AM to set up a corner as a sewing nook and also for me in a corner as an office, etc...  The master room is spacious as well.

The yard is the big question in terms of how we will adjust.  The actual yard is rather small, but there is no fence between it and the large continuous common area of the HOA that runs behind all the homes.  So we won't be limited in terms of play area really, just in terms of area that we can directly own and that doesn't have restriction on its use.  So not sure what we will be able to do in terms of a garden.  Being part of a home owner's association can definitely have its downsides, although there is a tiny pool and tennis court that come with being members.

Overall, this seems like the right move for us at this time.  We have loved our present home so much, but we look forward to the increased space and we hope the new neighborhood will also bring the opportunity for new friends for the girls,

Front walk

 Dining nook

Kitchen

Open kitchen/study/living room architecture

 Living room

 Back Porch

 Extension of porch into back yard.

(Our realtor calls the statue the Greek Goddess, I think its just a standard Italian maiden)

Master Bedroom

Master bathroom

(Don't think the statues are staying.)

Standard looking Bonus Room

Making our own traditions

Growing up, Easter Sunday was often marked apart from other Sundays by a large multi-generational feast.

Living in Tennessee, we don't often have the opportunity for this sort of Easter tradition. 
However, living in the South one feels much more like Easter is a holiday because many of the local churches celebrate Ash Wednesday, Good Friday.  The children get out of school on Friday (officially for teacher training but in reality for Good Friday.) 

At the same time, of course, Jewish family are celebrating Passover.

Since the LDS tradition does not have any activities that specially mark Easter week, this year, we decided to create one, modeled loosely on the Jewish passover seder, but tying in the three events that are central to the LDS tradition: passover and the exodus; the last supper/crucifixion/resurrection; and the return of Elijah/restoration of temple keys.
So Friday night, we turned off all our electric light, lit candles and had a meal of lamb, flatbread, grape juice and semi-bitter herbs.

I asked the kids what they knew about these events.  Not the four questions, but maybe forty questions.  Turns out they know their New Testament better than the Old Testament or Doctrine and Covenants.

I don't know if this will become a tradition or not, but it was a nice change of pace.

Still would be nice to have the big multigenerational family dinner.

Radio Silent

We have not gone radio silent, we have just been very busy house hunting and getting our home ready for sale.

Some thoughts from house hunting:

I have a strong dislike for the look of homes where the garage door is the most prominent feature of the front.  This signals that the home is built to shelter automobiles and not humans..  Nevertheless, everything in our price range that we are ending up looking at seems to have the garage door in front.  So I am resigned to having to give in to this sad trend in automobile worship.  Just a plea to anyone who is a developer.  It cost slightly more to give a home a decent front, why not built a few decent looking homes to go along with all your ugly ones? 

Two things have kept us from buying a lot of homes that would otherwise be great buys for us:
Lack of good schools and lack of walking/biking/short trip access to work, mass transit, parks, school, and shopping.But we live in a city that thinks its too expensive too fund these things consistently so huge tracts of homes we won't even consider.Talk about pennywise and pound foolish.  The nearby county that funds most of these things grows and attracts the best and brightest, while our area struggles.  There is irony in this, because they are primarily tax-haters, but have been willing to fund these things because they get that quality of life is worth paying for.  I wish our city council got this or that I worked somewhere that did.

Realtors speak in terms of dollar per square foot and comps, but mostly these are pretty useless measures of a home's value to a family and therefore cost willing to pay.  Whether a home supports a families lifestyle well is the key measure, and two homes with the same square footage can differ markedly.  I wish there was a better metric for this.


In the old days, there were salesmen for everything even in clothing stores and hardware stores.  With each passing year, a salesperson seems more and more a superfluous cost of most transactions.  Instead  you pay principally to have a few staff persons who mostly stock shelves but occasionally assist customers to find what they are looking for.  With the rise of the internet,  people pretty much go find what they want and buy it and advertising alerts a general audience to a products presence, cutting out the salesman per se entirely. So when do you think the housing market will follow suit?  I'm guessing ten years from now, it will be most common for people to pay a small fee to a person who helps them prepare their house for sale and then the house will primarily be sold by homeowners directly online with showing scheduled on-line as well.

Its kind of fun to go to different homes and think about what it would be like to live there.  It also feels somewhat voyeuristic because you feel like you learn an awful lot about strangers when you walk thru there home and poke into all the crannies.