So it’s time to celebrate the 25th anniversary of my 25th birthday. About a week from now, Pepper will hit another prime-number milestone birthday. Both of us struggle with gifts to give one another (and what to ask each other for), so we decided to celebrate this milestone with a slightly bigger gift than usual.
We bought a house.
Well, okay, technically it’s a townhouse, meaning we don’t have to do anything outside. With all three kids living in the same city in Utah while they attend college, we agree it’s important we visit them as often as we can, before they graduate and scatter wherever their jobs and families take them. It’s tricky to spend a lot of time in their apartments, since they’re cramped and have roommates everywhere. Staying at short-term rentals for Thanksgiving and Christmas worked well, but it’s a hassle and frankly kind of expensive for what you get. Why not just buy a little townhouse where we can stay when we visit, and have the kids come over and join us?
Unfortunately, the housing market is kind of nightmarish right now, so “little townhouse” doesn’t really work. We were hoping for something with a bedroom or two and a nice family room where we could all gather. From what I can tell, such a thing doesn’t exist. In this area, you can either buy a dumpy college apartment (complete with student tenants locked into contracts that don’t expire for another six months), or a huge single-family home on a postage-stamp lawn. I finally tracked down a few townhouses, and although they were all larger than we’d intended, we felt like we had to take what was on offer. After a few failed attempts to buy something, we landed this one. The whole process was lightning-quick– at least by real-estate standards– and we went from offer to closing in about three weeks.
Now we have a nice “little” place near the kids! There’s a decent kitchen…
… and Alex has already settled into the front room.
We celebrated my birthday by driving from Montana to Utah, then hung out with the gang. For Pepper’s birthday, we’re going to drive back up to Montana. Fair’s fair… if we had to drive on my birthday, we should certainly drive on hers as well.
All in all, it’s been kind of a crazy few weeks, and I admit there were a couple of times I said to myself, are we really doing this? But I think The Villa (as we call it, because it’s part of a development called Tuscan Villas) is going to prove to be a lot of fun and a great way to spend some quality family time together.