We found it! We found it! We found it!

Oh my goodness, I am so excited.

Yesterday morning, feeling resigned to the fact that we were not ever going to find a house in our price range with all the things that we want -- older home, 5 bedrooms, good neighborhood, a space in which Steve could paint, big backyard, workable kitchen space, high-ish ceilings, aesthetically pleasing architecture, just to name a few of our most critical requirements -- we made an offer on House Number 2 that I described here. It does not meet several of these criteria we wished for, but we loved that it was close to good friends of ours, and we thought we could live there and make it work. Yesterday afternoon my good old buyer's remorse set in, and I started to hope that the bank and the IRS and the seller wouldn't accept our offer. This morning, I thought maybe we should cancel our offer before they accepted it, but Steve thought we ought to find something better first. The chances of that happening were not great. We have been really diligently looking for about a month now with not much success.

This afternoon I walked through a house in south Orem -- yes, Orem, and it was a lovely neighborhood -- and then decided to do one more drive-around in the Tree Streets, just east of BYU, even though we had been all over that neighborhood and had not seen anything promising. I was really not feeling the house we had made an offer on, and was getting quite discouraged.

Well.

I saw this most beautiful house with a For Sale By Owner sign that I had not seen before. I called the owner and it was in our price range! Below it, even. The owner told me the house had an old-style sized garage, and my heart sank just a little, because that would mean it was small, and our van wouldn't fit inside. I loved the outside of the house so much, I was willing to park outside for the rest of my life and scrape ice and snow off the windshield. But I didn't think Steve would go for it. Plus, I was very afraid the 60's did not produce any homes with high ceilings, and Steve wouldn't go for that, either. Too bad, because this house is just so pretty.

We came back together later this afternoon and met the owners for a tour inside. The stars are so in alignment! I felt like shouting hallelujah when I walked in the front door, and saw the high ceilings! And the garage? It's enormous! The owner had meant "old-sized garage" as an attractive feature, not a detriment! A room for Stephen to do his artwork? Check.

This house has absolutely everything we were hoping for with this home purchase, with the sole exception of a big backyard. BUT, we are extremely close to a big city park and extremely close to the mountains behind us, so we can live with a smallish backyard. The house also provides: a gorgeous, gorgeous view of the city and BYU and Utah Lake and even down south pretty much all the way to Nephi; beautiful windows; a great deck; some bedrooms upstairs next to the master because I like to be able to hear my babies at night; a terraced garden area in which we can plant vegetables; a black-lighted play place under the stairs; a great basement with windows that also look out to Utah Lake; a fantastic location; a short, short walk to Steve's work; a big kitchen with unbelievable cupboard space and cool frosted glass cabinet doors; cool 60's-era aesthetics; AND we won't be house-poor. Hooray, hooray, hooray. I am so happy.

We, of course, made a call first thing to our realtor to cancel that little contract we had written up on House #2. We told the owners of this one of our intention to make an offer, and I think we're going to get it! Please wish us luck that everything will go smoothly. If it does, big 4th of July party at our house, with a clear shot at the fireworks show. You're all invited.

If we get this under contract, I will email anyone who wants to see it a picture of the outside that Steve took on his phone. I really hope we get this under contract.

Yay.