House.

On May 29, we will be the proud owners of a modest 1400 square foot home (hey, it's a few hundred more than we have now!), just 2-3 miles from our current place--which means no major upheaval or forfeiting of the many comforts we've grown accustomed to (proximity to work, friends, church, entertainment, playgrounds, etc.). Hurrah!Here my mother's favorite "when it's meant to happen, it'll happen" phrase holds true. After six months, we scrapped the tiresome weekly open houses, took our condo off the market, and found a renter. Meanwhile we got serious about the house hunt again--having recovered from the offer that fell through a few weeks back--and this time WE trumped another buyer as we were able to be more flexible with the closing date. And we didn't have to sell our souls (waive the inspection and other contingencies) to do it...With the condo off the market, we were surprised to get a call from a realtor whose client "really wanted to buy into the building," and wondered if we'd consider re-listing our place if an offer was likely. So, for old time's sake we did a thorough Saturday cleaning, complete with scrambling, stashing, and arguing and showed the place on Sunday--the offer came in that night!All of this happened (the home purchase, the condo sale) quickly, over a long weekend. Add to this a new baby, and you have just a few small life changes converging. It's a bit like the way we came East: graduated, got married, honeymooned, and packed up the moving truck all in a month's time in 1997. We survived that, so surely we'll manage this.

In fact, we're happy to. Very soon we'll have a yard, a driveway, and a basement--woo hoo! Just a few basics that we haven't enjoyed since living at home with our parents. We laugh that city living in small spaces has so reduced our expectations that any home we acquire may as well be the Taj Mahal.