Why we bought the house?

I have been living in some form of an apartment since I was 25 years old. When my wife, Chelsea, and I first met, I lived with three to four guys in a three bedroom apartment. When Chelsea got pregnant I moved in with her into one bedroom efficiency. Before my daughter, Danni, was born we moved into a two bed room apartment.

There was a problem in the two bed room apartment. Our next door neighbors were pilots. They used the apartment next to as a resting spot between flights. They lived somewhere else. The problem occurred is that they both smoked cigars. They smoked cigars in this apartment because their wives would not let them smoke at home.

None of that was a problem until we turned on our air or heat, depending on the weather, that is when the smoke came billowing in. It got so bad that Danni, Chelsea, and I had to sleep with a humidifier and had developed health problems. We complained to our apartment and they did nothing. We got a doctor involved and they offered to move us to another apartment. We signed a six month lease and when we did I uttered those words that would come back to haunt. “We will never have to live in an apartment again. We will find a house and move.”

Those six months flew by. Two months before we were to move out we had to give notice. We gave the notice and started looking for houses. How this all came about is a lengthy story for another time (see lining up future guest blog posts). The most important part of this story is why I bought this particular house.

We had looked at several properties and actually made two different offers. We had less than two weeks to move when we found this house. This particular house was a foreclosure. It was a fixer upper and wasn’t in the hot neighborhood. Chelsea and I had discussed this before and it came down did we want more house in a so-so neighborhood that we could turn into a rental property later or small house in the great neighborhood.

We came to the decision to do the more house because hopefully in years to come I move up in my job and make more money. We had a couple things we wanted. We wanted a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, and a backyard. This house had all that. We walked in to the house and saw the laminate floors and vaulted ceilings. It had a nice size backyard and a two car garage.

We took Danni on the house search because even though she is two, we wanted her to feel part of the process. Good thing to because she is the one that sold me on the house not the realtor.

Danni was running around the backyard and the front yard just having the best time a two year old could have. She came over and gave me hug while Chelsea and I were deciding if we wanted to make an offer. Then she looked up at me and uttered the famous words, “Daddy I love grasses!” and she was off running around again.

Fast forward to the other night, I was outside doing some yard work. Danni was running around the tree in the front yard singing “ring around the dosey”. I was breaking branches and enjoying her musical styling.

She came over and gave me a hug and said, “Daddy, um, I love house and grasses, um thank you.”

For more from Buck, visit him at Daddy Diaries, where he blogs all of the latest updates in his life.

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