So, you guys, we bought a house and then we moved into it.

I really tried to stay relatively calm about it, and actually talked about it a lot more than I wrote about it. Ryan and I have had some spectacularly bad luck with house buying in the past, and I was a little leery to start thinking about our house as ours until we had the keys. And even then, I was like "you guys sure about this?"

Real quick -- that one time when we were in the process of buying a beautiful house on the Kalamazoo river. And like a week later, there was that giant effing oil spill that made all of Calhoun County smell like a gas station. Anyway the bank was like "haha - nope!" And then there was that other time when we had an accepted offer on a house on another river, and the bank was like "just kidding!"

I wasn't really convinced if it was rivers, houses or really weird karma from a life a hundred lifetimes ago, but house buying adventures just kind of turned into not really my thing.

But moving on -- we bought out house and now we live here. And it twenty-thousand-percent rocks. Minus the green kitchen, but you know, evolution is coming.

So, a quick house tour. And this is as-is. Initially, we intended to do a lot of work before we moved in, but then our close date got pushed out a few times. So, with Christmas coming, and more importantly, our lease ending, I was pretty opposed to being homeless, so we decided to power pack Ry's car hauling trailer and just get in there. So instead, this kind of turned into a fun set of "befores" and I'm looking forward to doing something again when we have some afters in the next six months or so.

On the agenda -- 86 the green kitchen. Destroy carpet. Refinish wood floors. Argue about paint colors. Swap out windows. Spend 8 months discussing tile options. Eat a lot of pizza. Complete bathroom overhaul. Hello new light fixtures. Watch The Money Pit. Probably cry a few times.

So, no big deal or anything. But for now, we moved in, put up the Christmas lights, and called it a day.



Like the song that never ends, this is the question that can't be answered: is it gray, or is it blue?





And that's our first week.

Oh and one last thing -- last night I parked my car in the garage. You guys, I haven't done that since 2006 -- when I lived at home with my family. Merry Christmas to me.

AND! Happy Christmas week!