Today we bought a house. Today we sold a house. It was a pretty good day.

The process of actually selling our house got more complicated than I could have ever imagined. After getting not one, but two offers in a 4-hour period, we ended up countering them both. Much to our surprise they both came back with a resounding, “We’ll take it!” This meant it was up to us to have to pick which offer to accept. Do you know how hard that is? Two great, enthusiastic buyers willing to do just about anything we ask of them just so they can become the future owners of the most high maintenance kitchen ever constructed. Little do they know of the floor, counter and appliance polishing that awaits them.

Our agent emailed us not only copies of their acceptances and counter offers (one actually nudged their bid $250 over asking price to sweeten the deal a bit), but she also attached their carefully crafted letters in which they laid out their case as to why they should be the new owners of this house. Seriously. So we did what any other red-blooded American would do – we sent it out to committee. We emailed the letters to friends, family and anyone who would read them and asked them all to vote for their favorite. The results came back unanimous. We had a winner.

As for our attempts at purchasing our little slice of heaven, we got the news that our latest counter offer had been accepted. Booyah!

We promptly scheduled another showing of our (almost) new home so that Steve could take an endless array of photos of boring things like window casings and eave overhangs. All things he will use in planning the infinite repairs and upgrades. A word to my father: consider yourself warned; you are about to be bombarded with remodeling questions.

And our new neighbors? Oh, just the most famous of all salad dressing dynasties!

(Yes, that actually says Hidden Valley Ranch. Try not to be too jealous.)