David is always listening.
We’re not even two months into 2022 and so much has already taken plan in my personal life! David proposed on February 5th over breakfast in our apartment and we closed on a house on February 22nd. Suddenly, so much about my life is about to change and I could not be more excited.
After some words of encouragement from our parents, we met with a realtor at the end of January. Expecting the process of finding a home to take upwards of a year given the current market, we had no real concrete plans to buy a house. We had simply been glossing over Zillow for close to a year and wanted to start thinking about what we could afford. Turns out, at the time we met with the realtor, we already could afford a whole ass house. We met our realtor, Fran, on January 20th and made an offer on a house by January 30th. It all happened so fast. The house we now own is on Geneva St in Aurora, Colorado. I toured Geneva alone because David was in Vegas for a bachelor party. We knew it wasn’t the brightest of ideas to see the place solo but we were too interested in the listing to pass it up. In Colorado, houses are on the market for less than a week nowadays. We toured 4 homes before making an offer and not a single one of them was listed longer than 24 hours. Fran made special accommodations for us to get in and see Geneva a day early and it was really the best bones in a house we had seen on the market. The other properties we toured were either falling apart or had been flipped in a matter of months. One of the flipped homes was sold in October of 2021 for $275,000 and was listed at $360,000 in January. We had been looking for something that we could make our own; an investment and a project.
Walking through Geneva, it was obvious that the seller had taken great care of the property. She resided there for 35 years and was moving to Arizona to be closer to family. The place is older and needs some more love but for the length of time they spent in it, I was amazed at its shape. It was the first place I saw that I could see us living in. I called David after the showing and he was walking around a casino floor. It was not ideal conditions to be deliberating on buying a $400,000 house. We told Fran we would take the night to think about it. The next morning she contacted me to say that someone put an offer in $45,000 over asking and the seller was going to move forward with it. I was disappointed but relieved that a decision was made for us. I spent the rest of the weekend thinking about the house and how difficult the buying process ahead of us would be. With how quickly properties were being taken and the costs, it began to feel daunting and impossible.
On Sunday morning I was doing yoga before picking David up from the airport when I got a text from Fran. The offer from Friday fell through and the seller wanted to know if we were interested. I am so fortunate that I got an immediate “I’m in” response from David once he landed. We spent the rest of Sunday coordinating the details of our offer, which we were finalizing at 5:20 with Fran against a 5:30 deadline. Around 6:30, we were eating dinner and zooming with David’s family when we found out our offer was accepted. We screamed, jumped, and celebrated in our kitchen.
The next day, David spent most of the morning with a consistent look of terror on his face as he fully processed the amount of money we had just agreed to fork over. Even now that we’ve fully wrapped up the process, I am still baffled at the fact that you agree to buy a house before you even REALLY know what the numbers will be. David’s big fear at the moment was “are we actually going to be able to afford this?”. A sentiment I shared but I had the benefit of seeing the house. We took an evening walk to talk over the event, finances, and process. During the walk, I mentioned that I kept daydreaming about the kitchen in the new house. We had just gotten the offer on the house accepted while we were in the kitchen of our Denver apartment. We made the decision to focus on moving to Denver in our Houston duplex kitchen. We cook so many meals together and even in the tiniest of places we lived, still had nights where someone was over the stove and the other was lingering nearby on a counter. I explained that no matter where we live, it seems like the kitchen is going to end up being a pretty important place for us; a place where we make big decisions, tell stories and create memories. I got a “mhhhm” in response and thought the boy had written me off! We wrapped up our walk & talk and felt good about the decision to keep moving forward on the house.
The process turned out to be super smooth for us. We responded as quickly as possible to our realty team and ended up feeling really confident with the number of estimates we were getting. Our excitement about owning the house far exceeded the nerves we had. David finally got to see the house on February 3rd, and the seller was home. Her name is Cara and I am so thankful for her. She had every piece of paper related to work that was done on the house over the last 10-15 years. She gave us a binder of information, told us about special moments in the house, and the names of all the neighbors. After finishing the tour with her, I broke down in tears because of rare this type of purchase seemed for today’s market. David was sold on the house and we were both ecstatic to finalize our ownership.
After seeing the house, David asked if I wanted to do pancakes for breakfast on Saturday to celebrate the progress on the house. It didn’t strike me as an unusual event until I saw that he had created a calendar event for himself. I spotted it as we were talking about the following week. “Breakfast with Tay” was nestled in at 9 am on Saturday, February 5th. I’d had a sneaking suspicion for weeks that he was going to propose on Valentine’s day but I know he had also been trying to make it as much of a surprise as possible and we have both, unfortunately, discovered that I am a peaker.
The morning of pancakes, I was quite suspicious so when I made my way into the kitchen I gave him a tight hug and fondled his pockets. Empty. So turns out, I was wrong. His calm demeanor and playfulness fed the decline of my speculation as well. He made pancakes, sausage, potatoes, and we had so many juices! I always try to snap photos of David’s big meals but this was beyond the food; it was his chipperness, both of the cats hanging out with us, and perfect 9 am light coming in through our windows. Even if he wasn’t choosing this morning to propose, it was going to be a lovely breakfast.
We sat down to eat and David slipped on his blue, wool, housecoat. I chuckled to myself because I know that coat makes him feel like he should be in house slippers and carrying around a corncob pipe. We chatted and ate. He asked me what my rose, bud, and thorn for the week was. I can’t even remember what I said but it mostly had to do with the house and our future. When I asked him in return, he shared my same rose and thorn. For his bud, he focused on all of the future we have in front of us; how he had reflected on our partnership and saw so much strength and goodness in it and it made him so excited for the time ahead. As his bud blossomed, he got down on one knee in our kitchen nook and pulled a ring out of his pocket. The ring was his grandmother, Meryl’s engagement ring. I cannot believe he managed to fool me. He was crying and saying the sweetest things anyone has ever said to me and I was gasping, bawling, and laughing. At the moment, It didn’t feel like it was really happening. First, I said “are you joking?”, then I said “yes”, and finally I said, “and you did it in the kitchen! I didn’t think you were listening”.
Note to self: David is always listening.
Since then, we’ve just been focusing on getting into our new house and really soaking up the joy of right now. Every day I find a moment that I’m struck by how lucky I am to be able to go through life with this person and I truly cannot wait to see what the future has in store for us.
