Fun and exciting times!

I actually have something happening in our lives to write about! We have officially begun the hunt for a house, which is exciting and frightening all at once. We have been sort of half-ass-edly beginning the process, looking into affordable housing, vaguely investigating mortgage options, and occasionally randomly perusing home listings, but things kicked into a much higher gear this week.

A few weeks ago, we went out on our first "shopping trip" with a wonderful Realtor (apparently that MUST be capitalized!) Peter met at a housing seminar. Since then, we've looked at houses in two different towns, as well as condos here in Boulder.

It's pretty amazing to see the difference in what we can get in our price range, based on the locations. In Boulder, we can afford older condos with two bedrooms, two baths (our minimum requirements) in less than 1000 square feet, usually not in great locations in Boulder. Twenty to thirty minutes outside of Boulder (i.e., the next towns over), we can get a four bedroom, two bathroom house with a bigger yard than practically any in Nevada. With trees. And grass. And usually a fireplace and/or wet bar (those seem remarkably common in the houses we've seen).

I will try to record some of our house-hunting trips here, especially the funny ones, wherein you get to see the obsessively staged house with the fresh-baked cookies artfully arranged for us, the house with a creature spotted in the crawl space, and the several houses where owners were surprised by our arrival (yay awkwardness!). Stay tuned!