I’ve been wondering when the perfect time to post this blog would be. As I write it now, it’s 6 months away from our goal month of May 2022 to buy our first house!
Words cannot describe my excitement to settle down. Is that weird? I’ve been living on my own for a long time, in several different cities and states. On one hand, I feel totally like I’ve done everything that I could think of to do, see, travel, experience. There are some destinations on my list still, sure. But I’d like nothing more than to have a place where I feel grounded to come home to.
We currently live and rent in the Denver area, and looooove love love it. Seriously it’s the best place in the world. We are huge outdoors people and fully take advantage of the mountains. We snowboard as much as we possibly can, usually every weekend during the season. Brandon rides 4 wheelers, and I also grew up riding them, so we like to take day trips to some gorgeous trails that are only at most a few hours away.
My dogs have spent countless hours exploring sand dunes and mountain trails, ridges, and creeks. We have white water rafted, stayed in the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. I have seen a MOOSE WITH MY OWN EYES.
I’ve gotten drunk downtown at 3AM and I’ve fallen asleep at 9PM curled up on Brandon’s chest. We have bar hopped pretty much every suburban downtown. Taken cooking classes. Yoga classes. We have lived our lives fully! We both have grown so much in the time spent in Colorado. Professionally, personally, and in our relationship. But we are ready for the next thing. And the next thing is our first house and starting a family.
Although we are obsessed with our Colorado life, we also want to be close to our family. We met in Colorado almost 5 years ago. I’m from Chicago and Brandon is from outside of Philly, so “going home” has always looked different for each of us. That is, until going home meant back to Colorado. While I love my family dearly, they all live far apart from each other, and Illinois isn’t a very tempting place to move back to.
Brandon’s family is all in the same area, and his family is HUGE. Picture east coast Italian family, even though he’s not Italian. But tons of cousins, food everywhere, and tons of memories made together every day. The choice for us is easy, that’s where we want to settle and (fingers crossed) start our own family. So Pennsylvania it is for our first home!
Ever since we started planning for our move, budgeting, saving, scouring real estate sites, it’s been sooo hard to focus on how I want the apartment to look. I want to plan out how our HOUSE (!!!) is going to look. I want to paint things. Walls, floors, ceilings, WHATEVER I WANT! I’m so excited to have full creative freedom and a budget to make our house a home.
I want everyone that comes over to feel at home, happy, cozy, energized, fed, and loved. Knowing that this is the house I’ll come home to with Brandon when we get back from our wedding. When we start to hear the little footsteps of our babies. And the fire alarms that must be sensitive to only our cooking LOL. Bonfires in the backyard with family and friends. Beach days in Ocean City.
It feels like 6 months to the exhale. 6 months until I’m home to a place that we plan to unpack, and stay.