Indeed, our house has been started! We met with our (new) sales agent a week ago today and met our house's project manager for the first time.  I must say, Fox Ridge has some great employees as they catered to our needs and somehow continued to laugh at my stupid jokes.  The project manager definately seems to know his stuff and appears to be a hardworker (he was drenched with sweat when we got there). We've been told that the average build time for a Fox Ridge home once it gets started is 80 days.  However, because of the dry season we've been having, some of the houses in our neighborhood have been built in as few as 55 days!  This means we can expect to be moving in between August 14th and September 8th.  Excitement abounds. So right now, our house is a big pile of wood.  It's kind of odd thinking how much that pile of wood is going to cost us.  It's also amazing to think that it's going to transformed into a home we'll be living in, creating memories in, raising children in, eating with friends in, crying in, fighting in, breaking things in, and praying in. Ashley and I are looking forward to building this house together and turning it into a home.  In the meantime, we're moving to an apartment.  But that's a whole other story...

So last week, we began the process of building our new home. 

We choose a Fox Ridge community again; they built our current house.  The craftsmanship on our first home was actually really good - we never even had any cracking in the drywall - so I'm hoping/expecting the same level of care on this home.

The agent at the site has been great with us, laughing at my stupid jokes and being genuinely happy and excited for us.  She really helped make the sale for us.  She's been wonderful to work with, and I believe she said we're only the second home she's done completely on her own.We first looked at this community and model probably over a year ago.  We've been casually looking for a new home since before we even got married, but after we saw this community and floorplan we just seemed to keep coming back to it. The house we're getting is a Brookemeade, which has two stories and is aroud 1900 sq ft.  We're hoping the dogs will do alright learning to run up and down the stairs.  We decided that we need the extra space because in a few years we'll be looking to add to our family.  In the meantime, we really want to be able to be an open home to our friends.  One of the things we don't like about our current home is that we can only "comfortably" fit a total of six people in the house.  With the new home, we'll have plenty of room.  We'll also have a guest room, so we're hoping to be able to help out friends if they need a place to stay and such.

We were visiting some friends in the neighborhood last Sunday and decided to run in to the sales center one more time on  a whim.  Turns out they're finishing up Phase 2 of the community and were offering some simply incredible incentives.  We decided that the price was very right and to go ahead and jump in.  In the recent weeks we've looked at already built homes, homes from Centex and Beazer, but there was just a peace about this house that fit our needs (and pocketbooks). The process so far has been really smooth, and Fox Ridge has been great to work with.  They've been able to work with us on the finances, what we have to put down when, etc, in order to make this a smooth transition for us.  Our agent at the community has gone out of her way to make it feel like Fox Ridge really wants us to be their customer. On Sunday we got to pick out our colors and brought a plethora of friends - probably the most people they've ever had come to a color-picking meeting.  We showed our friends around the model like it was our own home... and it felt like home already. One of the best things about buying a home when you're married is the dreaming that gets to take place.  Talking about colors or furniture or how we're going to get everything done in the next few months is nice and all... but the dreaming about having friends stay with us, raising a family, where the kids will sleep... that makes the whole venture priceless.  It's a sweet anticipation dreaming about how many memories will be made in the new home; how many tears will be shed and smiles will be on faces.  It will be good to have a home that Ashley and I made together.