Marriage Monday - Parent Dances

Me and daddy. He's so cute. Our dance together was "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys.

My dad loves the Beach Boys. I will always think of him when I hear any song by that group. The Beach Boys remind me of cruising around town in my dad's old hot rods. (My dad has always had some sort of antique vehicle and we went to the Hot Rod Nationals in Columbus, Ohio a few times when I was growing up. Super fun vacation for a kid. I mean, it really was.)

I also love that song because it's at the end of Love Actually and that part always makes me cry. The words are true and it just makes me think of how lucky I am to have a loving family and how my life wouldn't be as good without them. So it seemed perfectly appropriate.

Philip and his mom danced to a song that I don't know or remember. :( Someone told me it was very heartfelt, though. Also I feel bad because I was talking to people the whole time and didn't get to watch them. But their pics turned out cute!

Other Marriage Monday news:

We've begun a house search. My heart has been aching for a house for over a year now. I've been checking listings consistently for months. We were pre-approved in April for an amount that we feel comfortable with. We need to get pre-approved again though to make sure we're still good with the bank. We were putting off actually looking at houses until we felt financially safe enough to look and actually potentially fall in love with a house. So then we found this house in Carlock...

Last weekend we talked to Philip's parents about it a lot and it got us excited. After talking together a little about it, we decided it wouldn't hurt just to look at it and work on getting back to the bank in the meantime. We didn't want it to pass us by. So I contacted an acquaintance of mine that is a realtor and on Wednesday, we saw the house. We generally liked it. We would only have little things to change and update. It has an amazing yard and a pool. It's on the edge of town and has a creek behind it. The living rooms and bedrooms are tiny, though, and it doesn't have a basement. Generally the upstairs felt like an apartment and most of the living space felt cramped.

On the 4th of July, we were in Towanda for the parade and to hang out at my aunt's house. We were walking back from the flea market and saw a house for sale on my aunt's street. I knew right away that it was going to be out of our price range, but all day we talked about it and I got excited about it. On Wednesday our realtor mentioned that house to us and we decided it wouldn't be a bad idea just to see it. So on Saturday we went to see it, along with another house in Bloomington.

The one in Bloomington is move-in ready with lots of nice finishes and has an amazing porch on the back, but the rooms are pretty small and the yard is tiny. The one in Towanda needs quite a bit of work (mostly all aesthetic), but the rooms are awesome sizes and the yard is a perfect size. We both agreed that the house in Towanda feels like one that we can make our own and just live in forever.

If the bank approves us again for the same amount, we will likely put an offer in on the house in Towanda if it's still available. I hope to get back to the bank really soon, in the next week or so. It's exciting and scary... it's hard not to talk and think about it all the time. We'll see!