We met with our home designer yesterday (after an initial site visit), and I am SO excited. I am really pleased with all his ideas -- even just the sketches he was drawing out as we were talking were SO much better than anything I had envisioned (or seen in stock plans). Can't wait to show you guys the preliminaries!!!

The only disappointment was that we probably won't be able to keep the same style we want (a fairly traditional old-farmhouse type of look) and have our master suite on the first floor -- it would end up being basically a giant ranch with a tiny little second floor. He did offer to design it both ways, but we decided to just switch it to the second floor, which I think will be fine -- we are going to keep it as separate as possible from the kids' rooms. It will also eliminate any worries about being on a different floor from our youngest (who will probably only be 2 or 2 1/2 when we move in).