lots

We close on our house in Texas tomorrow! 
It's very exciting, but a little strange,
it feels like it makes this move completely final.

I don't know, I think sometimes I imagine myself just here on an extended vacation.

And yesterday, my friend Allison sent me a photo of the daffodils I planted last year in the front.  They are beautiful this year-so much thicker and with more flowers than last year.

I guess I just am hoping that the new owners will love the house as much as we did.
  

But, now comes the fun part:
getting started on our house here!

We've looked at lots of, um, lots.  A surprising majority of them happened to be literally right next to a train track. (How are there so many train tracks in Utah?) 
So those were crossed off the list right away.

It took some looking, but after a while we narrowed it down to the general area that we want to live, thinking both about Kent's possible commute times as well as thinking about opportunities we might have in the future for different jobs, etc.

At this point, we have two separate lots that we are looking at, and we like them both for different reasons.

   

Lot 1:  We like this one because it is in a very nice, well established neighborhood.  As we drove to the lot, people in their yards waved at us.  The lot is north-facing, which is definitely not ideal, but it's a corner lot, so we're hoping we can build the house west-facing instead.  Across the street is a beautiful section of horse pastures and orchards and a nice view of the sunset.  Just a couple of miles away (but far enough that you would never get any traffic or noise from it) is a big shopping area with Target, Costco, Lowe's, Walmart, Khols, and lots of restaurants, which would be so nice.  The schools have very high reviews.

 Lot 2:  I love the view from this one.  I like the open fields, the mountains, the countryside feeling.  But if anyone ever developed the empty lots around it, our view would be completely gone.  This one is closer to Salt Lake, but farther from Kent's work.  It's closer to a train track (about 1.5 miles away) so we would definitely be hearing that.  It also has good schools, but it's quite a bit farther from any shopping.

We are leaning towards the first lot, but we still need to visit the Church ward there because that can make or break the location for us.  I'm hoping we end up liking it because I'm so anxious to get this all started!