Three Years Ago...

I said "I do" to a tall, handsome, Irishman. He was just (barely) out of college, I was getting situated with my job, and we moved into a small (almost closet-sized) apartment in Murrysville. Those of you that visited us there, know that we weren't exaggerating - in fact, the apartment was actually a storage closet prior to being converted into an apartment!

Thankfully, we were only in that apartment for 2 months before we moved into a 2-bedroom, fairly spacious apartment in another building of the same complex. We could actually fit a bed set into the bedroom (before only a mattress would fit), a couch into the living room (before we only had a few chairs), and enjoyed a separate dining area from the kitchen (before it was all in one 'room').

 

Two years ago, we were fully settled into our 2-bedroom apartment, and had bought our first car together. Robbie was finishing his first year of teaching, I was very settled in my job and tackling a Masters degree in the evenings. Around our first anniversary, we still had not received our wedding pictures and discovered much to our dismay that our photographer had conveniently gone bankrupt. 

Unsure if we would ever get our wedding pictures back, we had a friend come out and take some updated pictures of us together in the Oakland area. The pictures were great (see the left picture below), and thankfully after some legal involvement were able to retrieve our original wedding pictures as well (see the right picture below).

One year ago, we decided that the time was right to look for a house, and after I completed my Masters degree in March, we spent the entire month of April searching for just the right place in time to qualify for the homebuyer's tax credit. Robbie was now in seminary part-time taking evening classes, so I really wonder how we squeezed in seeing so many houses in such a short amount of time.

As Robbie will tell you, my first impression of our house was not a good one - everything was old, dirty and in some instances just plain gross, and I had a really hard time seeing beyond the filth and work it would take to make it feel like a home. Thankfully (and providentially), there really weren't any other houses that were really drawing me, and our time was running out. We took a second trip to the house with my parents this time and decided that there was a lot of good in the house under all of the "bad", and it would just be a work in progress for the next few months.

Well, as you may have seen from the series of blog posts, this project has lasted a lot longer than a few months :) . But on the whole it has been a good experience and made us appreciate what we have now more fully (it also makes me want to stay here a very long time --- so we don't have to go through that again!).

Now that we have been married three years and owned our house for almost one year, I am finally feeling quite settled. Although we have things we will continue to work on with the house, both inside and out, the vast majority of the house is furnished, unpacked, and settled into like it should be. Now I am looking forward to enjoying a summer here without having to be stuck inside painting and cleaning! I am looking forward to spending more time at our house with family and friends - so please, come over and join us sometime! If you're in the neighborhood, come see if we are there - we'd be glad to have you.  :)