The number one reason I love my apartment

Sometimes Ben likes to tease me and tell me that we will still be living in an apartment by the time I am 40.  It really isn't funny.

When Ben got his residency in Georgia we looked and looked for a house to rent but we weren't very lucky.  No one really wants to rent their house to you when you are doing everything over the internet/phone.  So we put some money down on an apartment.  We hadn't looked at the place in person, we just looked at some very nice pictures on line.

When we arrived in Georgia Ben, myself, and Brad (Ben's dad) went to go and look at the apartment we had put money down on.  When we stepped inside the apartment, I hated it.  It didn't look ANYTHING like the pictures online.  It was so dark, there was no closet space, the paint job was TERRIBLE, and outside there wasn't any grass but a huge muddy mess.  I told Ben and Brad that I did not want to move into this place and wanted to look around for another place to live.

They reluctantly agreed and we spent the rest of the day calling and driving around to different apartment complexes trying to find a place we liked and that would let us move in the next day.  We weren't having much luck and I was getting REALLY frustrated.  Not to mention my in-laws were here to help us move in and we were just driving around in circles, wasting precious moving time. 

We stopped to get lunch and after lunch we somehow miraculously found Austin Chase apartments.  They were nice, they felt homey, they were clean, and the best thing about the apartment complex was the "backyard". 

I didn't fully appreciate the "backyard" until it started warming up, but now we spend most of our day outside in our "backyard".  Of course my kids are scared of the woods and are convinced there are monsters in there.  That is okay because we are safe from the monsters as long as we don't go inside the woods. 

Plus there are a million other things they can do in our "backyard" that don't involve monsters.  There are sticks and twigs galore that Reese and Benson love to play with.  They make collections with acorns, pine cones, and rocks.  They dig in the dirt.  We play baseball, soccer, and catch.  They can run around and get all their energy out.  We LOVE playing in our "backyard". 

And all the while Tanner is happy and content to sit in his Bumbo or swing while we run around getting our exercise and some fresh air.

So if I have to live an apartment until I am 40, I guess I am okay with it as long as I can have a "backyard" as great as the one I have now.