Home is where...

Home ownership.  It seems like an easy thing.  In you head it's an easy thing: you get together some money for a down payment, you pick out the home of your dreams, and you buy it using money a bank loans you.  In reality the process is much more of an emotional roller coaster than we like to believe.  

We originally went looking at houses without much direction.  We knew the areas of town we would ideally like to be in, but not much else.  The houses we saw at first were wonderful houses, we could easily see ourselves living in any of them.  As we continued our search, we saw what was available in our price range and what we wanted our home to be for years to come.  We sat down and evaluated the pros and cons of each house and decided what were our top few houses.  Did we find the house of our dreams?  Not at this time.  We were stuck with two different houses at the top of our lists...so we went back to the drawing board.

At this point, I was convinced that we were making a huge mistake not jumping on one of the two properties, but I was willing to look one more time.  We went out again looking at different houses in the same area and we found it.  The house was everything I wanted and everything Haley wanted.  We weren't sure if we'd get it or not, but we knew it was the one we wanted.  It's still not officially "ours" yet, we still have a few weeks before closing and "anything can happen", but it feels like ours.

Looking back on the process, there were a number of times we were both convinced we needed to settle on a house and a number of times we both were convinced that we weren't going to get the house, but it all worked out for us (so far).  I just wasn't prepared from the outset for the ups and downs of home buying.

Too much time?

I've lived in the Dallas area for the vast majority of my life and never have I seen so much snow and ice in my life.  This is the third day in a row that most of the school districts in the area are completely closed for the day.  Because Coppell ISD is one of these, I've had a lot of time to sit on the couch and think about the world for way too long, and here are some thoughts, ideas, and things I've gotten done these past few days:

1. Time off shows how much you love something.  When you read any number of social networking sites, you can see which teachers and students really do love school.  I can't count how many people keep talking about how much they miss school and really wish the weather would clear up quicker.  There are also a fair number of people spouting how much they are happy there isn't any school and how they wish the snow and ice would stay for a long time.  It's just funny to me how an abundance of time will show you people's true feelings about life.
2. The irony of this blog.  This blog, in case you haven't noticed already, is called "The Horner House".  If you don't know Haley and me, we don't currently own a "home"...we rent an apartment. We took steps during the break to move from apartment to home living.  We've been waiting for approval from the seller's bank to move forward and that came during the past couple of days.  Hopefully the rest of the home buying process will move along as quickly.
3. Bills, bills, bills.  I hate paying the bills.  I really hate the fact that after a long day at work I have to come home and calculate out how much I owe some company for the amenities of living.  We've done a good job of limiting our spending, but it's a pain that will never really go away.  I've taken a little bit of time to get current on some of our bigger bills and make sure we're budgeting for them.  The best part is that there's no headache!
4. I'm not a tech-savvy as I like to think I am.  One of the major uses of my time this week has been discovering new websites and new blogs to read about.  There are some people on this earth that are way more knowledgeable about technology and the internet.  I've sat at their feet the past few days and have come up with a few minor changes that I'm making to make my life a little bit easier on the whole.  

That's how I've spent my last few days at home, trapped by the snow.  It may sound boring, but this list combined with good programming on cable TV has made this enjoyable as can be.