Our House, Our Home

I know, I know.....it has taken me almost a year to post a new entry.  I attribute that to a crazy teaching job which was life consuming and time consuming.  BUT it is the summer and now I find myself with some free time.   I thought by now I would be sunbathing everyday, watching FRIENDS reruns, and pretending to exercise and get in shape for our upcoming vacation, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case.  For the past week my life has been consumed with looking for a new place for us to live.  I have spent countless hours on this dang computer and my phone searching for any house in our price range, North San Antonio, and accepts dogs.  You would think with the millions of homes in this town that this would not be a hard thing to find, at least that's what I thought until I spent the entire first day of summer browsing trulia, zillow, realty.com, hotpads, etc.  In all this searching and driving and calling and emailing I have really become grateful for the house that we live in now.  It is by no means fancy, big, or paradise BUT it is the first house where AJ and I made a home.  We have spent a lot of time in this house making it our home and now we are about to leave it.  I NEVER thought I would say this, especially about this house, but I am going to miss it.  Ever since we moved in to this house I have complained about many things-first the hand washing of all dishes since the dishwasher doesn't work, leaky lines in the washing machine valves (which are fixed now), running toilet, no space in the master bathroom, and ultimately the shady neighbors across the street.  However, now I am beginning to see that his rental wasn't all bad.  It has more than enough space for us, it looks nice on the outside, and is a lot nicer than most rentals on the inside. 

Since we are moving in three weeks, realtors came by to take pictures of the inside to post on all of those realty search engines mentioned previously.  Of course I cleaned relentlessly since our house was going to be all over the internet, so I thought I would take some pictures of it too since it is rarely ever this clean :)

 This house with its many flaws was still our first home, which means it will forever be a part of us.

 Now we are in the waiting game, waiting on an application for a new house to be approved.  I do believe they have any and all information that they could ever possibly want to know about AJ and I (don't tell my dad...he would totally freak at this!).  It is crazy how much people want to know about you in order for them to rent their property to you.  I thought that the process for renting would be close to the same as it is in College Station.......ha.  So now we wait...we pray...and we wait.  We have about 7 days to find a place and sign the lease before we leave the country!!!