We bought a house!

Neither Diego nor I ever thought we'd be homeowners.  First of all we weren't mentally or financially prepared for such a thing.  How do people ever save up enough for a 20% down payment?...  But somewhere in December, we both starting thinking, "We should buy a house". So by Christmas we were working on mortgages and by New Years we were looking at houses.   (Note to others who may be looking: We qualified for WAY more than we could afford to pay back so be careful and know your limits before you make these decisions!)  We probably saw at least 80 houses and thought we might get 2 of them but in talking with our Realtor we never even made offers.  You see since we were getting a FHA loan (for first time home buyers) we used our tax return as the 3.5% down payment and had nothing left for closing costs.  And those other houses would still need money for repairs.  The house we ended up buying Diego saved from my discard pile.  Turns out, it is right down the street from where he lived when I met and married him. We paid list price for it but they paid for closing cost and for the refrigerator and the blinds throughout the house.

It's got 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and an office.  Turns out some people in our ward used to own this house and the first Sunday in church she came over and asked me about the trees in the backyard (which were just sticks when we moved in March).  I told her, very confusedly, that they were fine and she proceeded to tell me that they were fruit trees.  We inherited fruit trees!!!  We have a peach tree, a plum tree and an apricot tree!  Anyway.  We purposefully bought a house that didn't have really anything in the way of repairs but it's been an adjustment getting used to all the stuff we have to buy to maintain it!  Diego always said we'd hire some neighborhood boy to mow our lawn, but he has taken full ownership on it!  Our back yard has grass.  There are holes in our block wall back there and we get irrigation from our backyard neighbors (who happens to be the Elders Quorum President and the one who told us what the holes were for).  Anyway.  This is turned into quite the lengthy post on our home purchase.  I'll end with this.  That gravel in front yard, it's 90% gone (thanks to the Ricks) and we need to get the sprinkler system fixed and updated but after that we are gonna try for grass when some of this heat dies down.  Wish us luck!!!