Am I officially a grown up now?

Big things are happening in real life which is why I haven't been around the old blog lately. We've just begun the home buying process, and since this will be my first home purchase ever it's a very BIG deal. Until about three days ago I was pretty sure we couldn't even afford to buy a house, as my last delve into the whole confusing mess was sometime early last year, but then I started to do a little research. It is most definitely a buyer's market now, and I hadn't paid much attention at all to the $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers that was put into place by the stimulus bill passed earlier this year, but hey, cool, we qualify. How about that? Plus, we're currently paying waaay too much in rent and actually buying a house and paying the mortgage/insurance/property taxes every month would be CHEAPER than renting this too small apartment. Now that's crazy.

So we're looking for a cute, little place with lots of character (and I mean real character, not the real estate code word "character" which means "old and needs a lot of work") just across the border in Wisconsin where money goes a lot further in a house. Look for updates as the home search begins...