Our plan has always been to get engaged, get married, buy a house, have babies and live happily ever after.

To this day, we’ve accomplished the first three things and are pretty blissfully happy. After the wedding, we set our next goal on buying a house in the spring of 2013. We’ve saved and planned and dreamed of this home.

We love the space we live in now. Keith bought it when we were first dating, and it was his “bachelor pad” til I moved in the following summer. And while it was plenty big enough for us in the beginning, over the past few months we’ve rapidly outgrown it. We knew we wanted to sell the condo, and move to the suburbs. We were anxious for a house with two bathrooms and enough bedrooms for the babies we hope to have. We especially wanted a yard for Gunner, who at almost 4 years old, was definitely a “city” dog.

I think we went into the process thinking that we were prepared. But honestly, we had NO idea what we were getting ourselves into. And we kind of did things backwards in that we started househunting and fell in love with something before we had even listed our place to sell. Needless to say, we didn’t get that house and we were devastatd. Then it happened again. And again. You’d think we’d have learned our lesson the first time — don’t fall in love with something that you realistically can’t have!

Finally, this past week our place went on the market. It took days and hours to get it ready! We staged our home to highlight it’s selling features and moved all our extra crap into storage. Then we scrubbed and scrubbed til it shone!

We had our first open house on Saturday and four hours later we received a call from our realtor that we were getting an offer! Holy $%&@! How did that happen so fast?! Being on such a high we were convinced that this was going to be so easy. Ha, oh how much we did not know. The potential buyer had a 75lb lab mix. Our condo association does not allow pets over 30lbs without approval, and we instantly got 3 no’s. We were devastated. How dare our neighbors stand in the way of us selling our home?!? (Unrealistic viewpoint #22)

An hour goes by …. and my realtor calls. The potential buyer refuses to give up and asks that the association meet her dog before making a decision. So there I am, three glasses of wine in, banging on our neighbors doors asking them to reconsider. And they agreed!! Hallelujah!

That was yesterday. Today we finally receive the official offer from the buyer. Another low point. The offer was much, much less than what we had expected — especially from a buyer who it seemed would do anything to buy our place! Hrmph. To the negotiating table we go!

In the meantime while all of this was going on, we had fallen in love yet again with another house. Having this potential buyer meant we had a good shot of our offer being approved — but it slipped through the cracks as well. Because we weren’t able to get the association to approve the dog immediately, we weren’t able to put our place “under agreement”, and we missed the deadline for the ranch on Hobson. I think that Keith is more devastated than I am. I’m trying to save my energy now since I realize how long this road is going to be, and how many more bumps and turns and ups and downs we’ll face. But I have faith. We’ll get there. This process is all about timing, and we are just trusting that the right buyer will come along at the right time. And the house we end up buying will be our dream house, because it will have been worth all the stress, waiting and aggravation!

Stay tuned as we continue on this exciting journey