Bought new house - hopefully its a good thing

We have been going back and forth for over a year - trying to decide if we should buy a new house and if so, in which area. We had agreed that it makes more sense for us to be in the south due to proximity to my work. We had also agreed that if we move, it wouldn't be just for the school, but also for a better life style - so the house should have a nice back yard and we should really like it. So, the choices mainly were Evergreen, Almaden and Los Gatos. Evergreen was our primary consideration since it had newer houses that one would easily like - however the hesitation there was that the high school was not that good. So, we would be in a similar boat 10 years later. Also, we had the impression that most of the houses in Almaden were old. So we were only checking out houses in Evergreen. However, after seeing Kamal-Vandana's new house as well as few other open houses in Almaden, we kinda started liking Almaden. Gaurav had run into an agent in one of the open houses and he was good at following up. So, we started seeing houses in Almaden. 2-3 weeks of open houses and we liked a house that we were willing to put an offer on.

Made the official offer on 7/31/2011. Then went back-and-forth on the terms/price and entered into official contract on 8/4/2011.

We had planned a 2 week vacation to NY/Toronto in the last 2 weeks. So, we were bit stressed with all the inspections, removal of contingencies and loan process that was ahead of us..

But by God's grace, everything fell in place. We enjoyed our 2 weeks of break and then ended up closing on 9/7/2011.

We did the "Ghado mukvano" ceremony on 9/8 and then moved in on 9/9/2011.

The next 2-3 weeks were spent in unpacking and setting up the new place. We were also tryin to rent out our old place ASAP at the same time. Fortunately, we found renters who were willing to start renting on 9/21/2011. So, it all worked out well.

We also tried to enroll Kavya in the neighborhood Greystone Elementary School for KG, however, since we were late in enrollment, all spaces in Greystone as well as other nearby good schools were full and they were offering us Allen Steinback as a fall-back school which we didn't like. So, while we had withdrawn Kavya's admission to Stratford, we had to re-enroll her. **Sigh** Felt bad spending the money for private school after spending so much on the house.. We were upset for few days, but then moved on. On the positive side a consolation was that she was building a stronger base that will help her in the long run.

That's what has been keeping us busy for past couple of months and hence the decrease in blogging activity.

Hopefully, Kavya will get into the neighborhood school latest by 1st grade and we will all live happily ever after in this new house :) If not ever after, at least for another 16 years (till Ishaan completes high school) Time will tell..