Guys, it’s been exactly 4 years since we bought Big Brown. 4 YEARS! Being a home owner, especially to a 100ish year old house, is a weird thing.  We love it. And sometimes we hate it. But mostly we love it.
I’ve told the story of our first visit to Big Brown a million times and at least twice on this blog, but I’m going to tell it again. It was September of 2010. Ray and I were not married, engaged, or even dating. We were “just friends” who sent hundreds of texts messages to each other during the work day and spent every single afternoon and evening together eating dinner, watching movies, and hanging out. Ray’s apartment had reached the max level of disgusting and it was time for him to find a new place. One afternoon Ray asked me to go with him to look at a house. Here’s where it gets weird – Moments before I get to his apartment a drunk driver (going extremely slow) hits our church van which was parked behind Ray’s apartment and an adjacent fence and then pulls over into some bushes. We chat with the police, the driver continues to yell “that’s drunk” over and over, and in about 20 minutes everything is back to normal. Strange, right? After the commotion we headed to Big Brown. It looked like a ginger bread house and we instantly fell in love (with the house). A few months later we also realized we were in love with each other.
Here are some blurry iphone pics taken during that initial meeting with the realator:  Big Brown is forever a work in progress. Over the last 4 years we’ve painted, repainted, scraped wallpaper, cried over leaky roofs, added furniture, taken away furniture, added cats, taken away cats, and the list goes on. We have soooo many ideas and dreams for Big Brown and we can’t wait to see them come to fruition.