Hey there, internets

It's been a minute. I'm writing this in Vacaville, California. My wife is pregnant with the second child - a boy this time! And my little girl has progressed all the way up to walking around the house and saying precious things like, "shoes", "twooooooo?", and "daddy".
Oh, and I'm buying a house back home in Silsbee, Texas. Weird how life changes in just a few dozen months, huh?

Here's how the whole house-buying thing went down.

We realized that there's a free $8000 floating around for first-time homebuyers, so we decided to start looking. In the course of looking an awesome house came up for sale really close to my mom. Of course, the owner was asking way too much for our budget. So we looked some more and found a really good house in town with a pool, hot tub, nice-looking, cheap, plenty big, etc. We made an offer and didn't get that house because they decided to sell to a "safer" buyer.
Disappointed with all the remaining houses, we pretty much decided to cut our losses and wait for something better to come onto the market. In the mean time we would save up some more cash for down payments and such.
Then the owner of the first house came back into the picture. Guess he talked with a realtor and they weren't going to put the house on the market for nearly what he originally offered. So we found a reasonable middle ground and the rest is history.... hopefully.

We close in 10 days. The wife and baby are going to be there beginning sometime in August (I think) and stay until #2 comes along. I'm going to try and find a way to get back home more.
The current project is only allowing one trip home per month. It's been working out okay because the wife and baby are here too. It'll be more difficult when they are not here with me. I miss them severely when they're gone. Who knew I was such a family man?

Til the next time, internets.