1st Time Homeowners!

We bought a house! Our first- in Shaker Heights, Ohio. It is a suburb of Cleveland. We'll be moving there mid July for Scott's 3rd and 4th years of school. He'll do most of his rotations at South Pointe Hospital there. We went last week during spring break and after 4 days of going in and out of about 50 houses we bought this!

It was actually one of the first we saw and we fell in love with it. The homes in Shaker Heights are all old and colonial and are beautiful! The area has some incredible homes! It was so fun to drive around and see them all. We found this house on a great street, just around the corner from a park and elementary school. It is in wonderful condition overall. There will be a few things to work on (like the maroon and yellow tile in the bathroom!) but the kitchen is updated with all new appliances and the rooms are all spacious and nice. The hardwood floors are beautiful. The living room has a gorgeous fireplace and moldings. It has a brick patio out back and a yard that we are so excited about!

There is just a lot of character in these old houses, but this one is amazingly well kept. We think it is a great find! It is ours May 8th! We can't actually move until July, but we had to agree to this early date because the sellers have to move. There was another offer on the house, so we were trying beat it, so we negotiated on that date, and it is ours!

Once again, we feel so blessed to have the support system of the church to help with moving. (We had some members help us find our place here in Kirksville and they became our next door neighbors!) The Lord totally blesses us! Here is how it worked out (I'm mostly writing this all for my own personal memory, but if you feel like reading on go ahead...) My good friend from high school, Amanda Flamm (jager) has a sister Lindsay, who had twins nearly a year ago. When she was pregnant we started emailing back and forth chatting about twins, and have stayed in touch ever since. She heard that we were moving to Cleveland and it turns out that her best friend, Diane lives there while her husband is in law school. Lindsay got me in touch with Diane who has been so helpful in giving us info about the area and housing etc. Then she told us about a girl in her ward, Ali, who was a realtor in the area and was putting together a ward housing list. So Diane got me in touch with Ali, and she is the one that helped us find our house! The first night we got there she invited us to her house and she spent 2 hours with us going over listings on the internet and showing us different areas. It was so nice of her to do that for people she didn't even know. She was able to tell us right where to look and places to stay away from. Then she set up for us to meet with her old partner (Ali is not currently a realtor) the next 3 days. The realtor and her assistant took care of us from then. We found the house and signed the contract friday morning and got on the plane that afternoon. It was a whirlwind, especially because we weren't initially sure if we were going to buy. It turned out that the circumstances all fell into place and we had a great feeling about the area, and about the house. I can't wait to decorate!