Homes, Con't.

This is the first house we owned. Well, actually the bank owned it and we just paid interest on the mortgage every month. When we first looked at this house, interest rates were 14.5 %. I can't remember what we actually ended up paying--maybe 12 and thought we were really lucky a couple of years later when we refinanced to 10%. One month our electric bill was $479. We have never had a house with electric heat since. We did like living in a house after years of apartments. It had an unfinished basement with a wood stove. One year the power went out for a week and we stayed warm. I loved the security of that. I had a swing next to the washer and dryer. It was a great way to keep the baby off the cold floor. The bigger kids rode their tricycles or roller skated down there. We lived in a branch that had members from Vermont, Connecticut and New York and we lived two houses away from the church! We lived on a beautiful winding road that was full of woods and a couple of farms. We moved in December and many of the houses had candles in every window every night. By the way, this house was in Pittsfield, Massachussetts. Many of the houses were old. Anything under 100 years old was considered a newer house. It was fun to smell the wood smoke that came from many fireplaces all winter. Molly and Kelsie were born while we lived in this house. The house had three bedrooms. We used the dining room as a family room and the living room didn't have any furniture for a long time. It had horrible colors of paint, carpet and wallpaper, but it actually looked pretty nice by the time we moved out. It was fun to lay in bed and listen to the leaves on the trees. We also had azaleas and rhododendrons that were beautiful every spring.