And The Plot Thickens...

I knew I had a lump in my throat when I left Chicago, but I figured it was just second-time home buyer jitters, or relocation jitters, or too many Venti Skinny Caramel Lattes back to back.

Or it could have been guilt. The kind of guilt when you say "yes" to a house that you don't love because you feel pressured because you need to get on a plane in 5 hours and this is all you've got to work with. Or the kind of guilt that there are people living on the street in every major city in the land and here I am disapointed over a 3000 square foot house.

I've said all along that we'll "bloom where we're planted", that a home is made of "family" and it doesn't matter what it looks like, we'll be happy wherever we are.

I was wrong.

And man, that pill was downright BITTER to swallow.

I spent my entire plane ride home with a notebook and pen, old school like, jotting down all the postive things I could think of about the house. I didn't get very far.
- Curb appeal
- Great lot
- Cul de sac
- School Bus instead of walking
- Good commute for Marc
- Awesome master suite

And that was it. I refused to write down anything overtly negative, because I was absolutely focused on being positive. So I decided to start making lists of how I was going to decorate each room to make the most of it's attributes. Except that every time I tried to think about it, I'd start to break down in tears. And I am SO not a crier.

Compared to what we saw on our trip, it was clearly the best option. But when I thought about it - how many houses did we exclude from our "final list" because they didn't fit our wish list? And if we were tossing our wish list out the window for this house, shouldn't we compare it with all of THOSE houses? Apples to apples, you know? Or even our OWN house - how did it compare to what we live in right NOW?

Because I'm not ripping my family away from everything we know and love for a "better life" that requires us to live in a WORSE house. And line item by line item, when I compared our current house to that house, it came up short. For eight LONG years, I've spent winters cooped up with children WISHING and DREAMING of the day when I wouldn't have these teeny tiny rooms. And though they are laid out differently, when you look at dimensions, we would have the same sized rooms or SMALLER than we have in our current house.

So after much ruminating (aka crying and blubbering), when we were faced with a counteroffer, we chose to walk away.

This is a HUGE gamble. But heck, you only get to live this life once, right? I'd hate to play it safe and be kicking myself for years to come. Let's just hope that by playing it not so safe, I don't end up kicking myself for years to come.

HOUSE HUNTERS Trip Two is on for Friday. Saint Jude and I are about to become very good friends...