We Bought a House!

Friends!It has been a CRAZY ride since we last spoke. Derek and I put an offer in on the townhouse we saw and have just moved into it. We both started our new jobs on January 30th and absolutely love them. His is exactly what he wanted to be doing, and mine is completely unexpected and awesome with tons of room for growth. We have been living with my Aunt Leigh and Uncle Bobby for the past month while we waited to get Derek's first paycheck to send to the lending company. Uncle Bobby has been feeding us his gourmet creations every night, and Aunt Leigh and I would chat over a glass of wine after work every so often. We are soooo thankful to everyone who has helped us along on our journey! We honestly don't know where we would be right now without everyone who has helped us move/let us crash with them/lent us money/given us advice etc etc etc. I've never been so grateful in my entire life, and I cannot wait to pay it forward in the future!Derek: He is now a Information Security Analyst at a large insurance company near us. Our friend Alex got him his job because he works in that division too. Derek is loving it and learning so much every day!Me: I am Director of Member Services for an online educational institution that trains medical coders, billers, managers, and auditors. I am in charge of every one of our 800+ members needs, plus every new student we enroll. I have been learning so much too. It is a position that heavily revolves around computers as well as customer service. I feel like it is a great fit for me and I am really excited about the future!Our House!: It is an adorable end unit two story townhouse. 2 bedroom, 2.5 bathrooms, with a large deck. It is in the center of absolutely everything we would ever want to be close to, and directly in the middle of both mine and Derek's new jobs. We got it for a steal, and hope to do a long term type flip with it, because it is drenched in potential! We are still unpacking boxes, and the dogs are still getting used to things but we know it will be a great place for us. We couldn't be happier with it!I am thinking about vlogging (on my YouTube channel), the progress of the house. Would anyone be interested in watching that? I will probably do it just for a video diary type thing anyways.We feel like real live adults now, and it is so scary. Setting up our bills on autopay and our power/gas/garbage/internet accounts was new territory, and we are still not 100% we chose the right plans, but everything is on so I guess thats the important part. We are loving getting paid (duh) but we are so worried about paying all the things we need to, that we don't really want to spend money on anything else. We have a budget but everything is so new we haven't really been able to make good use of it yet. We are learning more about communication and forgiveness every day we are married. It's funny, my best friend tried to tell me when she first got married that marriage was hard. Like REALLY hard. I just laughed and said, yeah yeah whatever. Well, I told her, today, that she was right. Derek and I dated for 4 years, and have now been married for 4 months. I feel like in these 4 months, I have learned more about him than I ever even knew I didn't know those entire 4 years. I'm sure he feels the same about me ;) but WOW is it different. I guess stress can really make things real for a couple. In college we didn't have anything to worry about. Since then, its been job search stress, wedding stress, traveling, house hunting, packing, moving multiple times and on and on. I kind of feel like stress is just part of my soul now. We have learned that we handle it differently as well, and its been difficult to learn how to help each other handle that stress.  It's also really hard to take two separate individuals and mash them together into one marriage and one household. I'm a very very independent person, and I am used to doing things on my own. It is taking quite a lot of effort to rewire my entire being into thinking about not being able to do that anymore.  I will always be independent and stubborn, but I am working on making it easier to live with, for Derek's sake. He's had to learn a lot of being-grown-up things recently too, like how to set up utilities, how to help run a household, what having a real job is like, being totally independent from his parents, etc. It's been quite a change for him, but he's handling it like a champ!Life is a journey, and I'm so thankful to have my awesome hubby as my partner for the long haul! We are ready to make this house a home! :) Love,Jess