That Really Exciting Thing I Haven't Blogged About Yet

So yeah, I've recently blogged about the advantages to having a big head.  I've listed 25 useless facts about myself.  I have, however, not even noticed the majorly exciting news that I've been looking forward to for years.  So, here goes.

The Hobbit comes out on December 14.  I am beyond excited for this movie, and the previews look fantastic.  I'll be attending a midnight showing somewhere.  This is the second of two movies this year that I was incredibly excited for (the first being The Dark Knight Rises).  That one did not disappoint, and I don't expect this one to either.  And there are two more Hobbit moves coming out.  Ah, the excitement!

Okay, so I am really excited for that movie, but... admittedly, that's actually not the purpose for this post.  Something else even more exciting is coming up.  Something most of you already probably know about, and have seen pictures of.  But, alas.

Megan and I are closing on our house on December 21.  It is up in Forest Lake, Minnesota, a little further away than we had originally been looking, but that's okay.  The area is nice, and feels a little bit less like it's near a massive city.  It's on a short little cul-de-sac street, with .97 acres, with lots of trees in the back.  The inside was completely remodeled - kitchen, bathrooms, carpet and tile.  All new appliances (though we'll need to buy a washer and dryer).  We'll have to fence a bit of the back in, to give our dog Pixel a good area to run around.  It has 5 bedrooms, which is more than we were looking for, but we're coming up with uses for them, including one which will become my office and hobby room.  It really is almost perfect for us, we think.  The only downsides are that it is a little farther away, and that the garage is detached, but those are small things.  We're super excited to close and start moving in!  We have until the end of February, when our lease is up on the apartment.  Plenty of time.

The house hunting process was interesting.  We ended up meeting our realtor a total of 6 times, visiting 23 different houses.  We had some houses we were quite excited to see, that ended up falling quite short of our expectations in real life.  And others that surprised us.  We visited 4 houses twice, and seriously considered one of them, before expanding our search to include the Forest Lake area, where we found the house we're ultimately buying.  I enjoyed looking through the different houses and seeing the different layouts, and imagining myself living in each of them.  Some of them you could disquality quickly, while others I really liked as soon as I walked in.  We went in some that were pristine, and others where there were dirty dishes stacked up in the kitchen, and Playboy magazines sitting on shelves.  At the start, I had hopes that we'd only look at a few houses before making a decision, but that ended up not happening, which is quite alright, as I think we're ending up with a really nice house at a good price ($185,000).  That, combined with our down payment, and we should be able to pay it off within 15 years (that's the hope, anyway, but only time will tell).