House Hunting

You want to know a sure fire way to drive me crazy... HOUSE HUNTING!  UGH!  Welcome to the Kulow weekends.  I spend the week watching the MLS listings and then if I see ones that look like good potentials I email them to Michael and then he looks at them and then if he likes ones that I have sent him then I send them to our Realtor and we spend our weekends looking at houses. 
Don't get me wrong I like the idea of us owning our own home.  I like the idea of finding a place to call ours and not have to worry about painting the walls or planting things in the backyard - because it is ours...  But the process is enough to drive me to the loony bin! 
This past weekend I was expressing my frustrations to Michael about this process and I said something to the effect of, "Why can't we take one thing from this house and one thing from this house and another from this house and put it all together on this house's lot?"  Michael just looked at me and said, "Well that is called building a house!"  Well I know that but sakes alive I find one or two things about each house that I like and then there is usually one or two deal breakers in the same house!  Phew!  It is just plain exhausting. 
We did find a house last week that we really liked.  It was listed on Wednesday and due to the price, the lot and the pictures we scheduled a showing with our Realtor for the next day.  We saw it, liked it and made an offer on it!  I was thinking that our house hunting process was coming to an end... nope - they countered back and we went back to the house yesterday and decided that for the amount of "home improvement" things that they did that were half ass we were concerned about what was unseen that was done in the same poor manner.  So we are back to square one! 
We got home yesterday after looking at four homes and rather than feeling defeated I just had to say, "There is a home out there for us!  It might not be for a few more months but we can keep looking and it will come up."  Michael felt bad for saying we were pulling the plug on the house we made an offer on but I know that he wants a house just as much as I do and we will find it - someday!
So until then we are thankful that we have the home that we are living in now.  We have been blessed that in the three years that we have lived here the landlord has not increased our rent and she is really been flexible with us and all the work that has needed to be done on the house.