We bought a HOUSE!!!

We've tried before but we were inexperienced and fumbling so the seller got tired of us and sold to someone else. Hey, we got our earnest money back, so it all ended well, but we had a little taste of the possibilities and from then on planned someday to own our home.
Fast-forward a few years and a lot of learning from our mistakes. We are renting a lovely little acre about 30 miles from Bend and we love living out here. Quiet, peaceful, private and open. We tried like everything to buy this place, but it was a mobile to start with and though it's had a lot of work done to it, it's still a mobile, and one that is a year too old to get a loan for. So, e have to give up this place. We applied for a USDA rural loan and GOT IT!!! We got the news the night of Feb 12th, our anniversary of the first day we met. That night we looked at listings online - for hours. We had no real firm idea of what we wanted, so we put together a list, a mish-mash of what seemed nice. Our real estate broker was a little miffed at being overwhelmed with no clue as to what we wanted.
In the end, we put in an offer on a house we had seen before. By before, I mean we had looked at it over a year ago while I was still pregnant, peeking in windows only.
We had no hope of getting it, mind you, we just liked to look at houses. Always have, we did that on a couple of weekend drives while dating. Weird, I know.
We looked again by ourselves in the spring when the baby was a few months old, then this summer we drove by one more time. Each time the price had dropped.
We saw a house on the corner of our street that was perfect for us, we worked up the nerve to call a realtor to look and were told "We're sorry, there was an offer put in this morning by a serious buyer. But we can show you some other houses!"
Why not? We looked at 4 houses that day, one of them being the house we had peeked at so often. Oh, it was most definitely our house.
Over the next month we waited to hear back about the loan, but the woman supposed to be taking care of it was sick. She let a little pneumonia get in the way. (just kidding, she was great) We heard back, got over zealous in searching the listings and ended up asking if we could see The House one more time. We made the offer that afternoon.
I told Mike they would reject our offer and counter with $5000 more and he argued with me. You couldn't know that, he says.
His grandfather passed away during our wait to hear from the seller and Mike took the older two boys to California to attend the funeral. On his way down there he got the call we had been waiting for - the seller countered with $5000 more. Being the only one here, I signed the papers accepting the counter offer.I also ran around the house taking pictures of things the listing didn't show so that I could bombard friends and family with them.
In the end, the asking price had dropped over $130,000 from the original. We are so excited to get this place, it's 2048 sq feet, 2 story, 4 bed, 2 bath with a balcony on 1.02 acres with an attached double car garage and an un-attached double car garage. The land needs groomed some, fenced, and the balcony needs replaced, but the house inside has new carpet, linoleum, and paint.

Oh - SO HAPPY!