We started this journey to Rome last summer of 2011!  We had just moved out a 1600 sq foot apartment to downsize to a 1100 sq foot apartment to begin saving for our dream home.  The plan was to stick around in this apartment for two years.  Well, that thought only lasted for a few months. I found myself roaming around the nearby homesite called Fairwood in Maryland. They currently have three builders on the site and a few just around the corner.  I took the liberty to visit the homes at Stuart Kret, Ryan Homes, K&P, K. Kononvian and a few others.  I narrowed down the search to three builders and strategically showed my husband all three homes.  We loved each of them, but I knew one would be a perfect fit for us and I had to do some more research. Now that my husband is involved, we noticed one of the floor plans called the Rome at Ryan Homes was 45K less and had the most square footage compared to their signature series and the other contenders in the neighborhood. The floor plan seemed to best fit our needs; however, we needed to see the home and closest model was an hours drive away. My husband (God bless his heart) left work for an extended lunch break.  Okay, he owns an construction company which allowed him to leave since business was slow that day.  Anyway, we arrived to the model and fell in love with the home and knew this was the perfect fit based on our needs. We raced back to the community to let the agent know that we were interested and wanted to put a contract on the home.  We provided the necessary paperwork and picked out our preliminary selections; however, we were not ready.  She told us nicely to complete our taxes and put a contract on the home at the beginning of the year. This visit took place in September of 2011 which gave us a sense of what selections we could put in the home without surpassing our proposed budget.  Let me say that again, our proposed budget.  We put the contract on the home on February 9, 2012 and it is now May 3, 2012.  We are hopeful and prayerful that our loan officer will give us a call this week to give us our resounding YES, OF COURSE, your loan has been approved.  We were inititally told that we would have a projected move in date for July and now it looks like September. At this rate I could care less as long as we get to build our dream home. We chose the Rome and fully loaded the home like a Rose Royce.  It is smashing!  We have all our selections picked out, met with CTI, Guardian and M&R and I must admit the blessing in this process is that I have been given the opportunity to critique some of our selections.  Yay!  We picked elevation C with the partial stone veneer front on Lot 28 in a cul-da-sac which is reversed on the blueprints.  We have a nice size lot that offers yard space for our dogs, a tree view with cows--yes, cows and a pond view with a walking trail.  The geese love it there and I love watching them.  It's a coincidence that we picked out a lot with the same day we chose for our wedding day--February 28, 2000.   So hang in here with us and pray with us to get that exciting YES phone call this week.  Thank you for taking the time to read about the beginning of our journey.