Our First House

Most couples start out in an apartment, with crazy neighbors, or in their parent’s house, or a shack (Mom and Dad!). Brock and I started life together in a pretty cottage that was once a garage and is now the perfect place for a young couple. It belongs to the Allens, a couple on a mission in Germany. They converted their garage some years ago and rented it out. I understand from some people in the ward that it was in reasonable shape, but nothing fabulous. Then their son and his wife wanted to live in it and they overhauled it. Now it really is the perfect little place.

We divided the front room into a living room (with black leather couches and the TV), the music room/study (it holds my desk and the piano), and the dining area (that’s just the table). The kitchen is quite spacious. The hall between the kitchen and bedroom has two closets. One holds the washer, dryer, some storage, and our cleaning supplies. The other is just storage. The bedroom holds the queen-sized bed we got from Mom and Dad, Brock’s desk, the filing cabinet, and our dresser. The bathroom has lots of storage space and a huge shower. That’s all the rooms: there aren’t many, but what we have is plenty big. There’s even a little attic.

We also have a yard, which is something of a luxury. There’s a little fifteen-foot square patch of lawn in the back, which Brock has to mow every week or so. Then we have a few little beds for flowers here and there along the walkway. In front of the house is a rose garden, which is taken care of by the main house’s gardeners. Separating our yard from the rose garden is a little picket-fence. Rose gardens and picket-fences—could we be any more cliché?

The rent is better than anything we could have hoped for in the Palo Alto area and that means we get to save more than we had hoped at first. The Allens have said that we can stay as long as we want, so we plan to stay until we don’t fit—meaning kids. That means we have no idea how long we’ll be here, but we’ll have nine months notice before we have to move. No sign of that yet.