7 years!

That's how long we've been in our "new" house! I was reading posts from when we first moved in. We are still working on our yard. Its been a really really long and expensive project. Its not perfect by any means, but at least we have a flat area and "grass" (clovers mostly) that the kids can run around in. We acquired my parents old play structure, and bought a trampoline a few years back. The swings get played with every day that the sun is shining. Carter loves swinging so much!
And the trampoline gets nearly daily use still! It was such a good investment!

Anyways, the yard is a mostly completed mess. The soil is thick, sticky, horrible clay so plants and grass don't always grow very well in it (but the weeds sure love it.) The weeds every spring are so overwhelming. Our neighbor next door has been building his house himself for 6 years. And its still not finished. Super nice guy, but good heavens im not sure that house will ever be completed! And since he's not done, his yard isnt done so its all weeds. He weed eats it every so often, but i think it still spreads. Doesn't help that we have a field in our backyard as well.

Looking back, we talk about things we wish we'd done differently when building our house. Like installing the granite instead of the formica. We ended up spending nearly as much as granite would have been on making it look "fancy" with fancy edging. The backsplashes are all coming off now, and Derek has has to fix both bathrooms. The kitchen and laundry are also in need of fixing, but its a long process and we cant use the counters for a week.

Our carpet is a disaster. They didn't stretch it properly when it was installed, so its getting lines of lumps all over. I just want to replace it all with Pergo, but again, lots of $$$.  This is a problem in every single room. And it frustrates me to no end.

Another thing I would have done differently, is making the kids bedrooms about a foot bigger. Their rooms are pretty small.
And I would have also added on a bonus room. The kids are getting older, they need a place they can go hang out with their friends thats not in the main living area where we all have to be. Im still holding out hope that we can make this happen, but by the time we can, the kids will be grown and moved out.
These are things we didn't think about when building.

I got tired of the paint color that was in every single room. The kids rooms have been painted a few times each, but the rest of the house color was really wearing on me. It was a yellowish color. So I finally painted the main areas- kitchen, dining, living room and hallways. I'm SOOOO glad I did! It was a lot of work, but it was well worth it!

Another thing I would have done, made the dining area just a bit bigger. Its fine how it is, but I just like more space around my chairs and the rest of the stuff around it.
And a half bath would've been nice. I didn't want to have to clean 3 bathrooms, so we didn't add that to the plan. But for some reason, we all seem to have to use the bathrooms at the same time! 😂😂

Things I LOVE about our house-
The kitchen. I still love it. Its big, its so much bigger than our old kitchen, and I have so much room to keep everything!
The laundry room. I will not take for granted having my laundry inside the house as opposed to the garage. And having a utility sink has been life changing on so many levels! ;)
Our hallway. It has soooo much storage and I LOVE that!!!! You know me, i love organizing! In the original house plans, that storage area was supposed to be a stairway to a daylight basement. We didn't need a basement so we took out the stairs from the plan, leaving a nice big hallway and wonderful storage closets in its place!
Our big living room. Looking back, our old house had such a small living room. It had toys all over too. We kept the toys out there since the kids bedrooms were upstairs and I didn't want Avery climbing the stairs and tumbling down them. Now all the kids toys are in their rooms, and the living room is wide and open.
The big lot. The kids need that room to run. Carter would have never survived in our old yard! He loves to run, kick balls, swing, spend his time out there in the sun. I'm glad we get to have a garden (although the garden beds are being used by a certain 4 year old as a construction site....) Our house faces the opposite direction as our old house, so in the summer, our afternoons and evenings we get to spend out in the backyard and on the deck where its shaded from the hot summer sun by the house.

Dont get me wrong, I dearly loved our old house, and I still think about our time in that house. So many wonderful memories. Our first home. We brought home 2 of our 3 kids to that house. The yard was easy to take care of since it was so tiny. The house was easy to clean because it was smaller. And I just thought it was a cute house, and a nice layout. It was nice and bright. And perfect for a young couple just starting out.

In the end, i'm so grateful for the house we are in now. We are so blessed to be where we are! And i'm so grateful for the house we started our life together in. Yes, we were so blessed there as well.