Being a Grown Up

Nothing has made me feel like a grown up more than looking at houses and doing wedding registries. Don't get me wrong, both things are fun, but before, when I would "house shop" I was looking more at what color the house was, is it in a pretty neighborhood or by the ocean, does it have a "princess tower" on it? Now I'm looking at if the kitchen is big enough, if I can open the oven and dishwasher at the same time (one of my biggest pet peeves of living in an apartment) and if the house will be big enough raise children in down the road. School districts have suddenly become a big interest to me, one for potential children, and two, for re-sell value down the road. I've found myself reading the newspaper at work more frequently, and the shootings and random stabbings that occur stick out to me more now, and I wonder to myself if this is really a safe city to raise kids in. I kind of miss the more carefree days of college life where my biggest worries were trying to finish that paper in two hours or making rent.

Now doing the wedding registry yesterday at Bed Bath and Beyond was fun. It was suggested that we put twice as many items on our registry as people we're inviting which would mean we'd have to have about 400 items on our registry....we barely made it pass 80. We've asked for some things that we haven't been able to afford before like a $300 mixer, as well as upgrades to things that desperately need to be upgraded, like our mis-matched measuring cups that we've collected throughout college. I think we got a lot of things in a wide range of prices for everyone to choose from, and we're also going to register at Target, Lowes, and probably have a Word document of things that we want that can't really be on a registry, like things from ThinkGeek for me, or NewEgg for Keegan. While we were walking through the store with our little scanner, we were discussing how we were going to decorate our new house and how we liked some of the wall art that BB&B had. I said that the wall art didn't really mesh well with our current style of artwork and Keegan suggested that we may have to "grow up" and stray away from our decorating style of signed band t-shirts and posters. I think I'm going to have to disagree with that; we're just going to have to figure out how to do it in a more "classy, grown up way". I love my band posters, and have worked too had to get them signed by my favorite bands to just roll them up and put them in a closet :p

  We've asked to see a few houses next Saturday and I'm really excited about one in particular.  

4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1,922 total square feet, built this year (hence the no grass) in a brand new subdivision in the school district we want. Hardwood floors, granite counter tops custom wood cabinets, the works. The lot is only 1 acre so it might be hard for Keegan to build his shop in the back, but who knows how long we'll be in this house. My dream house is honestly one like my parents, 3 floors, wide open floor plan, but apparently they don't build houses with more than one floor or basements here in Mississippi (which I don't understand with their frequent tornadoes, but ya know,) so this one will have to do. I just don't want to get my hopes up just in case something is really wrong once we step inside, but I'm excited to see this house.

Many many changes are happening, but they're all good ones. I'm excited about life again so hopefully this momentum will continue and more good things will come.

P.S. I can't seem to NOT write posts that aren't novels. I'm sorry.