Our next home!

As most of you know, we spent 4 days in Georgia looking for a new house to buy while waiting for a final offer from the company that just hired my husband.  It was a great trip, and we were able to find a house that I think is going to be perfect for our family.  We love the area (north of Atlanta) and were really excited when our real estate agent took us up on "the mountain" the very first day to give us a view of the area!  Who knew Atlanta had mountains ya'll?!?!  Here's the Gang checking out our new home.....

The kids loved the mountain, and we look forward to spending some time exploring it more!

We spent 3 full days touring homes for sale, hitting an average of about 10 per day!  It was rather exhausting, but it paid off.  We saw some very interesting things while shopping for our new home, but probably the MOST interesting was this cool skull the boys found in the woods behind one of the houses....

We're fairly certain it's a deer skull, but if anyone knows what it is for sure, please let me know!

The kids were troopers, and they hung in there all 3 days.  We decided to extend our stay by one more day after the 3rd day.  We were feeling a sense of urgency to get something nailed down before we left so that we could get Sophie registered for school as soon as possible.  The last full day we were there was New Year's Eve, and our agent was kind enough to show us just a few more houses to help us make our final decision!  We were able to leave both Matthew & Noah back at the hotel that day with Allie, and splitting up the group for a short period of time was good for us all ;D

By the end of that final day, we knew what we wanted to do, and we decided to make an offer on a house.  After going through negotiations for a couple of days, we finally got the call today that our offer had been accepted and we now have a place to call home!  While I didn't get a chance to get pictures of the inside of the house, I was able to snap some of the outside, and I wanted to post them so you all can see our new home!

This first picture is of the backyard and the woods behind the house.....

While it's not the farm that Emily was hoping we might be able to buy (!), it is a really nice lot for a neighborhood and will give the kids lots of room to roam and explore!  In fact, the lot is so spacious, and we got such a great deal on the house, that we decided to put in our very own pool!!!!

The house sits up on a hill, and this is a picture of the front....

It's not as big as the house we live in now....in fact, it's about half the size....but we plan to finish the daylight basement by adding 2 bedrooms, a bathroom and a t.v. area.  That will make it comfortable for our family without breaking the bank!  Our goal in buying this next house was to shop below our means instead of at our means!  We're not only going to greatly reduce our mortgage, but we're also paying off all our remaining debt beyond our mortgage!  So, while we may be a little bit more squeezed in our living space, in the long run, we believe this is a time to make certain sacrifices and begin to live more frugally.

The house is about 5 years old and is in really great shape.  The landscaping is fabulous and the interior has some great features.  We plan to re-carpet as we love the sculpted, stain-resistant carpeting we put in our current house, but that's about all we need to do before move in!  I'm sure we will be painting rooms, but hubby is so handy when it comes to painting ;D

This last shot is of the garage side of the house.  We were thrilled to find a house with a driveway that has an extended pad and will allow us to park all 4 of our vehicles without too much headache and shuffling!

We plan to put in a shed to house yard equipment, and that will free up some garage space.  A swingset, pool, trampoline and basketball hoop will complete our exterior additions!  We are thankful to have the space to be able to have them all.  Since we are a very "outdoorsy" family, it will be nice to have such a wonderful yard :D

Well, that's it for the tour!  We are still planning to head back down to Atlanta to begin our lives there at the end of next week, so I'll be able to get some pictures of the inside of the house then.  I can't remember if I posted that our house here in Kansas finally sold yesterday!  I'm on such a roller coaster right now, and I can't remember which things I tweeted, facebooked or blogged ;D

We are so thankful for all your thoughts and prayers throughout this process!  While we were never worried because we knew God had an amazing plan if we could just stick with Him, the last few months have been stressful and trying to say the least!  But now that the BIG questions have finally been answered, I'm beginning to feel a sense of excitement about the next phase of our lives.  And we were very excited to learn that Georgia has free in-state tuition for residents that have been in the state for at least a year and carry a 3.5 GPA!  FREE state schools for the Gang.......woo hoo!!!!