Our New House

Well, we are officially "Home Owners". We purchased our first home ever and we love it. We decided in June that we should at least start looking to see what was out there since the prices here in Bakersfield had finally come down to a "reasonable" level and while the interest rates were still good. We looked at a few houses here and there, but tried to stay in our ward boundaries (we really love the people in the Meadows Ward and tried to stay over near them). When ever we found a house that we thought we liked we would talk to our realtor about making an offer. He would come back and tell us that the sellers had just accepted an offer yesterday or that morning. One house that we were in this guy came in as we were looking at it and told us that his offer had just been accepted that morning. So we went on looking and feeling sorry for ourselves that we were having difficulty finding a house in the ward. That Saturday we decided to look around the Stake boundaries "just to see" what we could find. We drove through this GREAT neighborhood with beautiful homes and saw one for sale. We wrote down the info thinking to ourselves that there was NO-WAY we would be able to afford the neighborhood. We had our realtor Tony set up an appointment for Monday evening. Well the house was awesome and in our price range. Our friend Stacie also found one in her neighborhood (Meadows Ward) that we rushed over to look at. Now we had a dilemma as to which one to make an offer on. The one in the old ward was actually at a higher price, while this one was further away from our friends. So we made and offer on this one on Tuesday. Tony called us Wednesday to say the offer was accepted and we entered a 30 day escrow. It was very fast and almost scary. So now we are living the American Dream of Home Ownership!!!

The house has 3 bedrooms plus an office, 2 baths, and a 2 car garage on a 1/4 acre lot.

This is the image from Google Maps Street View

That is my flag that my parents gave me when I earned my Eagle Scout. It was flown over the US Capitol Building in Washington DC. I made the flag pole that is now its home.

We kept joking with our realtor Tony that we would only be able to afford to entertain friends by way of spaghetti barbecues. This is the gift basket/house warming gift he gave us. Note the spaghetti and BBQ sauce.

Looking in the front door.

Formal dining area/entrance (we plan to put the full size grand piano there as soon as we have LOTS of money just sitting around)

Living room

Great backyard. There is already a lemon tree that has lemons on it (supposedly very sweet tasting ones) and I planted another two citrus trees: eureka lemon tree (common grocery store ones) and a navel orange tree (the really good flavored ones).

More of the backyard.

Our kitchen.

We have LOTS of snails. I counted 80+ in an area that was 10 ft x 10 ft. According to the internet these are the edible snails (garden full of food storage?). Apparently they were introduced to CA by an Italian immigrant for use as escargot. There are several recipes online too. Let us know when you plan to come visit and we can serve you up some lemony escargot.

Always the fashionable one.

Mowing my OWN grass finally!!! (I was raised on a sod and tree farm)

Several guys at work and myself decided to do some beard art. I was told I looked like the Pringles guy.

Our yellow rose bush for our Texan mothers.

These are our sad tomato plants. We only got 4 tomatoes off them. They were doing good until we took over. I still think it must be bugs eating the roots.