Home Sweet Home: A wish list...

I am really working on being thankful. I have a beautiful, safe, clean, nice home that we have worked hard to make our own. THAT being said... (hehe) it has become apparent (more so to me than the hubs at this point) that our Home Sweet Home is meeting our needs less and less as the days go by. It is 1500sqft. Not a bad size. My parents raised my sister and I in a similar sized house. But we also had a kid friendly 3 acres to play on! Our backyard is not, I repeat, not kid friendly. It is VERY large, but has so many trees that the surface is mostly dirt and rocks, it slopes downward, and you have to go down about 25 steps to get to it from the back deck. Not to mention that our poor puppy was bitten by a snake in sed backyard just last year, and I am paranoid that it is just crawling with the slithering suckers!!!

Our house only has 3 bedrooms, and we need a guest room because we have family that lives out of town. So after another rug rat, we are out of space for sure! That, and I have no where except our dining room to do my crafts. ;(

SO I have compiled a wish list (mostly for my own benefit because hopefully in about a year or two we will be in a position to buy a larger home that will meet our needs for years to come...) for our next home:

Kid friendly backyard
safe room (or room that could be made into a safe room) for storms
4 bedrooms (plus an office or bonus room would be great!)
a 1/2 bathroom for visiting guests, so that I can really decorate a kids bathroom!
large master closet or double closets
cul-de-sac location, or quiet street
in our desired school district
large, bright kitchen
lots of windows
nice entertaining area in backyard
kids in the neighborhood, close to Ava's age
friendly neighbors

I know, I am not asking much, huh??? :) Some of these are MUSTS, some are just wishes. Either way, I have decided that I WILL NOT settle on the next house, because it is the house that I want to stay in until Cole and I retire to the Ranch (his dad owns a cattle ranch in northern Arkansas, and Cole has already selected the hill with the beautiful view of the valley that we are going to build our retirement home on...)

And just because I didn't want to leave you without a picture today, and because this picture melts my heart, here is a sweet moment from our trip to the Pumpkin Patch yesterday....