We chose a house! It was hard to make the decisions...to rent or buy, which area to live and which commute to drive, two story or one story (there are no basements), 4 or 5 bedrooms, older house or brand new, bigger or smaller, upstairs loft or not, and so on.
In the end, we chose a brand new house that will be finished in August. It's one story, which we feel will be better to air condition in Arizona heat. For this next phase of our lives, it won't be an enormous, empty, sad two-story house when all our kids aren't around. I also like the idea of a one-story house for health reasons, since in the past we’ve had back and knee problems, and I’m planning ahead for more inevitable problems as we age. Is it weird to buy our old-person house now? It’ll be an easy home to quickly clean. There's a separate apartment that connects to the house, so we'll have another family room area to hang out in since we won't have a basement or upper level, and an extra kitchen and washer/dryer. It will be a good option for adult kids rotating through and for guests, and for an office when Dan works from home. There are 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms (that includes the apartment side). The backyard will get amazing sunset views every night. It has an enormous RV garage that's so tall and deep for fitting everything in. We're most excited about the garage, because with no storage rooms and basements, we didn't know where to put all our stuff. Dan can park his trailer and machine in there too, plus all his other recreation items and his workshop stuff. There are hiking trails right up the street, and our neighborhood has Pickleball courts, parks, a splash pad, and lots of sidewalks and walking paths. We have no neighbors right behind us, which we like since homes are soooooo close together in Arizona. The yard has tall side walls, and since other houses are also one level, we’re not staring into their houses and yards on the sides. We'll have to finish the backyard at some point. We’re farther from the city and stores but we’re already used to that here, and it's not a bad thing to live away from a city and its issues.
Here's a very interesting thing: yesterday when we got the contract to sign, we noticed the start date of construction was January 17th, the day Dan lost his job. It's like a place was being prepared for us in a location far away on a day and in a year when everything felt like it was falling apart. Maybe the opposite happened...maybe everything was just shifting and coming together perfectly for us when it sure didn't feel like it along the way. Off we go to Arizona, a totally foreign place to us, to find out why.
