Our House's First Anniversary!

Hooray for one year! They say the first year is the hardest in any relationship. We did do a lot of growing up.  We've mostly behaved ourselves on spending.  Mostly.

I can't believe it has been a year since we went and signed our papers to own this house.  Well, own the rights to pay for this house would be more like it.  Although we do get to live in it while we pay for it, which is a dream come true.*

We have been going around the house looking for all the 'nail pops', cracks in the walls and stucco, loose paint, cracks in the wood floor.  That awfully crooked faux drawer panel that has been staring at me for this whole year in my master bathroom.  The warranty department came out today to have a look at my laundry list of items.   I have even been around with my pencil circling all the cracks and nail pops as I saw them so they didn't have to hunt them down themselves.  Aren't I nice?  Okay, just OCD, and I don't want them to miss one single thing.   Brendan and Addison have been having fun helping me with this project.  In fact, Addison came up to me a day later saying "MOM! One more!" Then pointing out several that we had missed.  It's a good thing she is eye level to that two foot mark. I missed a lot of those lower ones.  However, warranty guy says to put blue tape up so they don't have to look so hard. Boo.  Jason also gave the guy an earfull on what was done wrong and why.  He is calm and collected 90% of the time.  But give him an area on which he knows a piss poor job and he'll call you on it.  We did, afterall, just remodel the house we moved out of.  We knew what we were doing.  Mostley.
I look at pictures from a year ago.  Empty house, freshly stained wood floors without any dings or scratches. Clean walls without handprints, Nerf gun dart rings, slimey sticky balls stuck to the walls then slid down like a slug.  Not a speck of food mashed into the carpet.  Seriously- good times!  Since the day we got our keys and started putting our own touches in the house it has felt like home.  I never reach for something out of place.  Unless, of course, that thing has been put out of place by little hands that take everything everywhere.  That happens more often than one would even believe.

This tree sticker is hiding an enormously large fifth wheel that really needs to be hidden.  I am working on that.

This is home.  This is exactly where we want to raise our children.*  There are lovely families all over this neighborhood that are filled to the brim with 8 year old boys and almost 3 year old girls.  We will celebrate tonight quietly, perhaps with an ourdoor barbque at my in-laws.  Brendan has an outdoor cooking thing he needs to pass off in scouts, so why not?  One thing's for sure and that is I am still in love with this place.

*Jason would rather live on a lonely deserted mountain with no one in sight.  So I don't count his opinion, I just cover it up with my own and use the words 'we' and 'us' so that we seem cohesive.  Things just work so much better this way!