Surprise! We found a house!

What a big week for Tim and I! First, we are officially activated with the Adoption Support Center! Yeah! The bios are complete and I've paid the advertising fee (the higher amount...ugh!) When calling to pay as usual with my credit card, I discovered I couldn't use my card for this part of the fees. Hopefully the communication I've had with the agency will help them make changesto make things more clear to other couples who may be confused by the advertising fee and use of credit cards.

Other big news this week....we signed a contract on a house! Yikes! I was mentally prepared to spend a few weeks looking around and then we found a house we really liked. It's been owned for by a couple who are teachers. They've lived there for 40 out of the 45 years they've been married. They've raised 3 children there including an adopted daughter. It's about 1900 sq. ft on the main level with another 1200 ft in the basement. It has 3 bedrooms/2.5 baths. The master bedroom was an addition in the 80s and is now a big room with a very nice bathroom and not 1 or 2 but 3 closets including a walk in closet! The basement has an office space for Tim and a great workshop that'll give him no excuses for avoiding those honey do jobs. :-) It has new carpet and a new roof. It's in a quiet neighborhood about a mile from Tim's work and is next to the Monon Trail. It's in Nora on the north side of Indianapolis which has some great little shops and an organic grocery store that we really like. I visited the school about 6 weeks ago when I was checking out the area and really, really liked it. I met teachers there who were students in the same school once upon a time. When people come back to teach in the school where they were taught, I think it says alot about the school. They do school wide looping in 2nd and 3rd where children have the same teacher for 2 years in a row. They do the same with 4th and 5th. This can be so good for kids. I looped from 2nd to 3rd one year and the growth I saw was amazing from my students. Overall, it just felt like the right place for us to be AND we got a good deal on it paying much less than we were thinking we were going to pay for a house. Yeah!!! We close May 8 and take possession around May 16 depending on when the current owners can get everything moved to Seattle. Then the painting and cleaning begins! Anyone want to come visit the end of May? :-)