Our House

in the middle of our street

Although it's still several months away, I'm getting excited for our house to be finished.  Here is an update.  This is the concrete pad for our house, finally poured.  So something is happening.  That's good.  We did find out this week that because of all the rain, our house, originally scheduled to be done in April, now won't be done until June.  Blame it on El Niño.  :(   The kids and I weren't planning to move in until after school gets out (Memorial Day) anyway, so we think we can still make this change of plans work for us.

Slightly different view of our very exciting slab.  It's only exciting to us.

Here's our house a few weeks earlier.  So progress is being made.

Our street is finally paved, and part of it shows up on google maps now.   It's a real street!  Scott and I both like the location of our development.  It's in a little valley with hills on both sides.  You can see one side of the hills here beneath the clouds.

Here are the hills on the other side.  

This picture was taken last summer, before our street was a street.

Here's that look down the street now.  Notice the hills are green now.

And more houses.

Here is a picture of the interior of the model house for our floorpan.    Our house will look different of course, but this is the same floor plan.  We got mid tone flooring (lighter than this), cream countertops, and slightly lighter cabinets.  Our walls will be a little lighter too.

A little dining area.  Our dining table will have to squeeze in here.  

I think we can make it work.  I won't have to walk far to get back to the fridge.

And a living room area next to the kitchen.  There are two levels and most of the bedrooms are upstairs.  There is a guest bedroom and den downstairs.  And a loft space plus three bedrooms upstairs.

And this is the backyard from the model home - the same size as our yard will be.

It's tiny, but think of how little yard work we will have to do! And there is a community park half a block from the house (part of the complex) and a walking/biking path also half a block away.  So I'm sure we will take advantage of those to offset our small space.  And we won't go broke watering the lawn.  :)  The back yard will be dirt when we move in, so I need to figure out if we want a concrete pad poured (yes), where to put grass and landscaping.   But its not huge, so we should be able to figure it out.

We also have this side yard - we're thinking about having a garden in this space.  We'll see.

When Scott got his job offer in NorCal we both felt like it was the job he should take, although we knew the housing market there would be quite challenging.   We had to make compromises of course.  We could have had a small older house with a larger yard or a newer bigger house with a small yard.  We chose the second option.  And although Scott has to commute 40 miles to work - there is a train that goes right to his office (with WiFi and he can work on the train if needed) and being out of Silicon Valley a little way allows us to not live in a 1 bedroom hovel.  So that's a bonus.  Scott and I are actually really excited about our new town.  We visited it lots when we lived in Monterey (45 minutes from Monterey/beaches/Santa Cruz is a plus for me).  It's out in the country surrounded by hills, mountains, farmland, open space, which I love.  But still just a short 30 minute drive back into San Jose.  So I'm happy.  

I got fortune cookies for our Chinese New Year dinner a few days ago and this was my fortune.  So things are definitely going to work out.  The fortune cookie said so.