House!

OK, so I had wanted to wait until things were a little more settled, but I can't hold it in any longer. Here's the scoop: we finally found a house. A good one too, but let me back up a step. For the longest time we were looking to buy a house with my mother-in-law. We needed to sell both houses and then move in all together. This was proving very difficult (all the houses in the particular area we were looking in go very quickly), so over the last two weeks we'd been looking at different properties near each other instead. My husband and I thought we'd have the advantage, because we'd already sold our house. Not so. My mother-in-law found a cute house and a buyer within the space of days. She'll be moving out (leaving us homeless unless we find a property) sometime in August. So the pressure was on for my husband and I to find SOMEWHERE to live, but we both didn't want to SETTLE for something. It had to be good. Preferably with no chain, and in a good neighbourhood. With excellent schools. Would we ever find such a property? We had 5 houses lined up for last Saturday. We were really pinning our hopes on two properties that seemed to be everything we were looking for. A phone call midweek destroyed all hope - both properties had already sold. We quickly booked another house to make up the numbers and headed out first thing Saturday morning (with handy sat nav, woohoo). One house was OK inside but in a crap area, another house was small with no redeeming features to it, one house was so depressing and old-fashioned it made me want to cry. And one house was adorable. At the higher end of our budget, but I can really see myself living there. It has a fishpond. And room to expand. And it will probably be ours the first week in August! I can't believe it. I can finally (subject to contracts being signed) send out those 'Moving House' cards I bought absolutely ages ago!