Adventures in homebuying

I DO NOT recommend bring your twin toddlers along when you are looking for a home.

1. Your daughter will need to pee, in a model home that has locks on the toilets.
2. Your son will want to jump on the model home's cardboard bed.
3. Both kids will try to eat the rubber grapes so nicely displayed on the model dining room table.
4. You'll walk into a foreclosure that is so freaking nasty you won't leave the foyer AND you will hold your kids the whole time in fear of disease.
5. You'll walk into a smelly house and your daughter will say "why you say this house stinky mama?" So much for under the breath muttering.
6. The dead gopher in a pool looks like poop to a 2 year old.

On #4, we walked into a house that looked beautiful from the front. Unfortunately the previous owner decided to graffiti XXX rated drawings on the walls, burn the newel post, drip something nasty and black all over the floors, and knock holes in the wall with a hammer. This place was so disgusting we held the kids the whole time, and after seeing the downstairs from the foyer, we ran away as quickly as we could. Another house smelled like someone had peed all over the carpets and locked the house up for a year. There were dead cockroaches all over the kitchen counters too. Lovely. My favorite house is the one that had the marijuana smoking lounge in the converted garage, and the kitchen had been remodeled.....but apparently the owners didn't actually use the kitchen to cook, they had taken out the countertop range and put in shelves..... oy.