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It started in August last summer when we got home from our assignment at Timberwolf. A need to feel settled and a desire to put down roots. It was hard coming back to Morgantown. For no other reason than it felt permanent for the first time. And that's when I knew it was time to settle ourselves. We had in so many ways but one - finding somewhere to live that would be ours.

Unfortunately, the timing of all feelings and desires don't always match up with the rest of your life. Ted was starting Kindergarten in 3 weeks. On top of that, we were in our third month of 75% salary, and the future still held a 50% month and 0% month. Not exactly great home buying conditions. So, we decided to stay put until the school year was over.

Fast forward 8 very fast months. Our thoughts started moving toward renting in Fairmont (about 30 minutes down the interstate from Morgantown) for a year to see if we actually wanted to buy a house there. There seemed to be more available in our price range that would allow for a nicer, bigger house. We go to church in Fairmont and it's also part of the YL area that Ben oversees. So, around the beginning of March we started looking for places to rent. It was a total disaster. I called and called and called (and called) every contact I could get my hands on. Nothing. Not one thing. I wasn't even able to go look at things and turn them down. It was much different than what I anticipated. Looking at places to rent in Morgantown made me want to puke. For us, it was cheaper to buy than to rent.

So, I called the bank and went to meet with a loan officer. I told her everything about us financially the past year. On paper, it really is not pretty and my expectations were very low. To my sheer joy, they had the perfect loan for us. She seemed to think that everything would be just fine. And the beautiful thing is that it was a bank loan, not a government loan (that we had pursued before). So it is much less red tape and didn't require mortgage insurance which bumped our price range up a bit. I called the realtor we'd worked with last year and started looking at what was in our price range. I was a little more encouraged.

We looked at houses in Morgantown. I was encouraged and disappointed all at the same time. There was one house that I really, really liked (the first one we looked at) but it seemed so small. I wasn't sure this was going to turn out well.

We looked at more houses in Fairmont. We had basically decided that wherever we found a house that we loved is where we would live. We didn't find anything that we instantly loved or even really liked there.

We revisited 2 Morgantown houses that we thought had great potential. The one I really liked seemed to have pretty small bedrooms. So I did some measuring of our current bedrooms and furniture. We went back and we both really loved it. Absolutely knew that this was the house for us. We agreed that we loved the house and could see ourselves living there. It was such a sweet moment that we realized that there was a house in our price range that we really liked and didn't just that it would "do."

So, we're under contract on a house in a wonderful neighborhood, across the street from a park the size of a city block and it even has central air conditioning (I've decided that really important to me)! On days like today, I'm very, very thankful. The roof, AC, furnace and hot water tank are all 2 years old. It has a cute fenced in back yard, a deck, a detached garage and a little sun room (that used to be a porch) that will offer extra space for us. We do have to do a little fixing on a water issue in the basement (BOO!), but, with the price of the house and all that it offers, we couldn't loose the house for that (we had an estimate done on the basement so we do know what we're getting ourselves into!).

And the best part about our house? The address. West Virginia Avenue. Ben, who loves this state and will never leave, gets to live on West Virginia Ave in Morgantown, WV. Oh, and still within about 3 minutes from Ben's office. It's been such a blessing to live mostly within walking distance to his office for the past, oh forever years.

We're hoping to close around June 7th. We have to clean the house and paint all 3 bedrooms. Then we'll move in when YL kids get back from camp. (We are helping them earn money by helping us move and clean the old house!) We are really, really excited!