On my mind...

Looks like we might have found ourselves a house... The bid is in, so we're just waiting to hear if they accept it. A bit more than we originally wanted to spend, but also much more house than we were expecting to be able to buy... The place belonged to an old couple, so there are definitely some updates (paint, carpet, kitchen) to be done, but all in all, it looks like a good buy... I'll let you know as soon as we hear back -- and then we just sit around waiting for the lawyers to do their jobs, since you can't do anything in NJ without attorneys getting involved.

Went out house hunting last weekend and spent some time knocking houses off our list. We got spoiled last time when we only looked for one day, at three houses, and put a contract in that night -- on the first house we had seen. Somehow, I'm not expecting this one to be quite so easy.

It's also very very strange to be looking in the towns that we're looking in, since none of them is more than 15 minutes from where I grew up. One town that is showing a lot of promise is also where my grandmother was born, where my father and his siblings went to school, where my grandfather was a councilman... where we got our subs for dinner when we were kids... Where my wife sleeps... where my children come to play with their toys... (if you don't get the Godfather reference, shame on you)

So, we're off to look again... there's one that has a lot of potential, probably bigger than we should be able to afford, so I'm half expecting to find a gaping hole in the middle of the living room floor... I'll let you know!