When 2 people meet and get to know one another, they seek out what they have in common.  15 years ago when I went out on my first with my husband, we both talked about how much we would love to live with a log cabin or an old farmhouse with a wrap-around-porch it would have to be on an acreage with trees and a creek.  That common love, powered by the love for each other, was the dream that we began to work for.
    Here were are goals to get to the dream

1. Get the kids raised and out of the house.
2. Retire (him, I still work from home)
3. update the house and get it ready for sale
4. find the perfect place 
5. sell our home and buy the perfect place
6. live happily every after. 

Numbers 1-3 are done.  Yahoo!  I won't go into the details about updating our current home, this isn't what the blog is about.  

      Back in January, we reached were we could take on #4.  We made a list of things we "must have" to purchase a property.  Must have:  Land, not just a nice lot, 5 or more acres:  a log cabin or an old farmhouse, condition is negotiable; A wrap around porch or a house where one could easily be added;  The home had to be in Iowa, South Western Wisconsin or Northern Illinois; It had to be within our budget, Had to be on a gravel road.
     We figured that it would take a year or better to find the perfect place like that because, while we have expensive taste, we had a small budget.  I searched craigslist, realtor.com, zillow, etc.  Each time I would find a house that looked like it would fit into our must haves, I would show Dave and we would look it over. We found a lot of great places, but most of the time, they were scrubbed from our list because of taxes.  The price may be great, but when taxes were $4500/year, that would add on over $300 a month to the mortgage payment. Yikes!
     One day I was on craigslist and came across a property just a few miles from my parents in north central Iowa.  It had 20 acres, a creek, big old farmhouse, with in budget, taxes were low, on a gravel road, but no porch.  Still, this was almost too good to be true.  We called and made plans to look at the house.