I've been consumed lately - consumed with trying to fall in love again. It's actually been a little like E-Harmony, or online dating now that I think about it. Sit at my computer, click on 'Internet Explorer' and start surfing the web for the one of my dreams. Big and handsome, that's what I'm looking for!

No I haven't dumped DH! After 27 + years, we're still stuck on each other. I'm actually trying to find the house of my dreams, the one I've been waiting for. About the time you read this we'll be deep in the heart of Texas, sweatin' to death househunting. After spending a year looking at one lake with one realtor, we widened the search. This week we're looking at five lakes, with three different realtors, and twenty-eight homes in all. Excuse me for just a minute while I tend to this tic in my eye, these shaking hands, this throbbing head, and this befumbled brain! Even I am challenged to keep this trip organized.

DH and I planned this trip three weeks ago. Many hours since then have been spent at lakehouse.com. I didn't even know the website existed til about three weeks ago. What a find!

Here's how OCDish people buy a house: DH and I sat down and came up with twenty things we want in a home, rated them for importance (on water was #1), then we made a Excel spreadsheet, three homes per page. Then we checked out realtors on the web, and contacted a few. They set up appointments, then we flew down for a week. As we walk through each home, we'll fill in the checklist, make notes on the back, and at the end of each day refer back to the lists as we eliminate and concentrate. Very possibly this will involve a bottle of wine!

We've moved across the country a few times. Usually we were the 'three day wonder', as realtors referred to us. We'd go in, see twenty homes a day, at the end of day two we picked one, and on day three we bought it. This time, we'd like to be a bit less pushed, and sane! One thing that won't change is that if you like home B more than home A, you cross off A. Because we're traveling over 1000 miles to see these homes, and it's expensive to do so, we have to keep them straight in our brains, so we can go back home and pick two or three to bid on. If we can't come to a meeting of the minds with the owners of the first home, hopefully we'll have the next one to move on to rather than jumping back on a plane for another looksee. We're also taking a metal tape measure, camera and video camera for when it comes down to those second looks and deciding on the final two or three, and of course the very favorite that we hope to buy. Our son and DIL are lending us their video camera, and we can take home the little discs. They can apparently be loaded into our DVD player and we can see each home without being there. Isn't technology wonderful?!

I expect no matter how hard we try to do this all right, the one we end up with will hold a few surprises. I've been amazed how hard we've looked and what we still missed! We just don't want to get overwhelmed and neglect noticing there's no garage, or water, or that sort of thing.

It won't just be a week of work though. We're also going for a fun week of seeing our kids. Dan has a new truck, Janae has a new job, Sarah and Chris and their gang have a new place to live, the grandbabies are probably more beautiful than they were last time we saw them, and I'm sure they could all use a bit of spoiling. We get to go to their fun church on Saturday night, and I expect we'll slip in a serving or two of Marble Slab, or as our SIL, Chris calls it: 'slabbage'. We're tickled our kids are playing a part in picking out this house. Dan is actually touring homes with us for two days, and we've shown all of them what we're looking at, getting their votes input. We want a place that will feel like home to all of us, a place they look forward to coming for holidays, vacations, and just hanging out. I'm trusting that my mom, sister and friends (maybe even blogger friends?) will like wherever we pick, because we plan to have them there as soon as possible, watching sunsets off that dock.

Here are a few photos of the outside of our favorites so far, but who knows what we'll end up with. When we do, I'll post them to share with you. Everyone likes to tour homes, right? Right, even thirty-three of them in 102 degree heat!