GREAT NEWS!!

We put in an offer on a house today and got it!!!
For those that are following the saga - you know we made an offer on a house earlier - I still won't say which one until Sunday though - but it was not accepted. The seller countered by knocking almost nothing off the original price and to top it off, we had a concern about an obvious broken window that was allowing water to leak in the house - we stipulated it should be fixed and they totally blew us off saying the house was as is, take it or leave it and acted like it was no big deal - we don't know how long it's been broken and letting water in - there could be a mess behind the wall under that window for all we know, so with sad faces, we left it.

We turned to the other two houses on our list and were about to make an offer on one of them when I called the realtor in a panic and said, don't put in the offer. I am not ready to do this. I realized I didn't really like the other houses, they were just better than what else we had seen, but weren't the house for us.
DH and I talked and he mentioned one house we had seen that was my absolute favorite but he wasn't sure of because it was only 3 bedrooms (and Karen, so you know - the picture of the master bath is from this house!). We looked more closely at it - it was in the right area, wonderful neighborhood, nice kitchen, 3 bedrooms plus an office in the basement WITH built-in shelves, fireplace, low taxes for the area and as Karen saw a fabulous master bathroom! The only issue he had with it was it was 3 rooms and it would force the girls to share. I countered that if the worst thing our kids face as kids is sharing a room so we could get into a great neighborhood, well, doesn't that mean we are doing pretty well?

We thought about it and today I went back to see it with my mom. She fell in love, I was more in love, the kids were in love.
We put in an offer. They countered, we countered, they countered, we countered, they countered, we countered, they countered, we accepted.
HOLY COW! I am still in shock. We have a house! A house! A real house!! I can't even believe it!!!!!

If all goes well we close on January 31!! I am so excited!! =)

Pictures are here!