A house to call home

So we have a house! It's a 3 bedroom 2 bath house, 1600 square feet and built in 2003. The best part is that we got it through the Good Neighbor Next Door Program (GNND). Let me explain really quick. The Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) buys foreclosed homes and then sells them through the GNND program. The BEST part is that the homes are sold for 50% off! Only teachers, firefighters, EMTs and police officers qualify. Finally somebody rewards teachers! We may not get the best pay, but we get homes for 50% off! Anyways, in Charlotte there's anywhere from 10-15 homes per week. Some of them need a ton of work and some need next to nothing. New homes are posted every Friday and you have to make a decision by the next Tuesday. Once you look at a home you tell your Realtor if you want to put a bid on it. The only downside to the program is that anybody that puts a bid on a house goes into a random lottery and a name is drawn for who gets the house. Yes, a random lottery. Anyways, we've been looking for a couple of months and we've placed 6 bids, but finally our name was drawn! We found out this last Wednesday and we'll close in about 1 month and move in about 2 months! I'm so excited! We really lucked out because our house needs nothing to move in, but we're going to make some upgrades such as flooring, paint and lighting just to personalize it a little. It's in a better part of town, next to a huge and nice park, and only 5 minutes from church. We'll have to switch wards and we're sad, but it'll all work out. Anyways, here's a few pictures!

Front of the House

First Bedroom

Second Bathroom

Kitchen

Living Room

Second Bedroom

Second Bedroom Again

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Master Bathroom Again

Long Awaited Update!

First off, sorry it has been sooooo long! We've been extremely busy with visiting family and work and the past few months have just flown by! I can't believe that March is almost over! Well, here's what we've been up to lately!

For Thanksgiving we were able to drive down to Houston and visit my family for Thanksgiving. It was tons of fun and I can't believe how fast my siblings are growing up! Here's some pictures to highlight what we did!

We spent lots of time hanging out and lots of eating! Here's a picture of me, Karissa and Kaylee and then one of Kelcie and Grandma cooking.

We were also able to go swimming! Thank you for heated pools!

It wouldn't be Thanksgiving break without watching BYU football beat Utah! Go Cougars!

Here's some pictures that make me wonder how any of us turned out to be normal! Love you dad!

It was so much fun seeing my family and getting to hang out (as if you can't tell)!

For Christmas, we were able to go to Oregon and spend time with Justin's family. We spent plenty of time relaxing and seeing family. Here's a few pictures, but I'm still missing a few from other family members.

We were able to stay with Justin's dad and they even got a little video game time!

We were also able to Justin's mom and his grandparents!

Other than these two vacations we've just been busy with work. When I say busy I really mean busy! Justin's had a couple of weeks where he would get off of work until somewhere between 10 PM and 1 AM. Needless to say, life's been pretty crazy! We have lots of stuff to look forward to though! I'm looking forward to summer break and not having to worry about the craziness of work and we have been planning a cruise that we're going on with my family in June.

Sorry again for the long delay! I'm going to work on being better about updating!