Miraculous Timing

As we were doing our taxes this year Eric and I were paging through paperwork looking for documentation regarding the purchase of our home. It brought back memories of just how amazing our home selling process was. And how faithful God was to us.

We had our house listed for awhile when they extended the "first time home buyers" tax credit to "long time" homeowners--people who had owned their home for at least 5 years. We knew getting that was a total longshot since the tax credit expired on April 30 and we wouldn't reach 5 years of owning our home until April 28. So we'd literally have to sell our house and find the new one and close within those two days. Highly unlikely, right? Yes, we had pretty much figured that would never happen.

And then along came March. By this point we'd had the house on the market for 9 months and were growing weary of the entire process. But then, finally, we received and accepted our first offer. And with a leap of faith we put the closing on April 29th...which would give us about a month to find a house to move into and get the tax credit. And on March 29th we finalized our offer on the house we now live in...giving us a month to move out and into our new house. Neatly clinching our tax credit but a mere one day margin.

I remember we were in total awe at the time because it just seemed so unreal. That was absolutely no way we could have orchestrated that, it was a God thing. Going through our taxes and seeing the corresponding dates...April 28, 2005 we purchased our first home and April 29, 2010 we sold it. The home we purchased was actually listed on the same day as our first home...just 5 years later.

The entire journey of selling our home taught me a huge lesson. God's timing is perfect. Throughout those long months of trying to sell our home I certainly envisioned what would be the "right" timing. I saw the house I wanted come and go and couldn't imagine finding another home I would love. But we did. And we would not change the way things happened.

Our home how we first saw it. It looks a little bit different now...but not a lot! We hope to "beautify" the front a bit more this summer. Hopefully with Eric being done with school we'll have a bit more time!

I've surprised myself a bit with this pregnancy. As much as I want to "control" when baby makes an appearance I know that I can't. And I don't need to. God's timing is so much better than mine. He's proven that to me time and time again. I get it :-) And every time I feel myself wanting to snatch back the "control" (as if I really have any!) I just remind myself that I don't need it. Every time I think I know how to do something the best way, God shows me that His way is much, much better.

Here We Go Again

We had decided last fall to call off the house search. We knew we were expecting Elaina and knew that looking for a house/trying to sell our house would be too much to deal with while I was pregnant. Not to mention we were hoping to use the chance to pay off some debt and fix up our house a bit. The goal was to start looking for a house a year from now before we try for our fourth (and last!) baby. At that point we will have outgrown this house twice over and will really be out of nooks and crannies in which to squeeze our children.

Just becuase our plan was to look a year from now doesn't mean that we didn't keep checking the MLS once in awhile to see what was new in the neighborhood, keep up with current prices, etc. A few days before Elaina was born I discovered a house that intrigued me, the first one in our price range with nearly everything we wanted. But seeing as how I was going to deliver at any moment, I passed it by wishing it had shown up the previous fall when we were looking. Once Elaina was born, looking at houses was the furthest thing from our mind. Until this week...

I came across this same house again. And as I tripped over the same toy for the tenth time in one hour I came to the conclusion that I didn't want to wait another year to look for a new house. I wanted to look now. This house was in our price range, why were we waiting?

We decided to launch the home search yet again. And this time we are bound and determined to actually get a new house. Please, Lord, please, let this be the time...

We loved the house. There was so much potential. It was big enough for our family to grow into (yes, actually room to grow) and really didn't need much work. Just a lot of updating. There were some terrible paint jobs. The entire house is hardwood, so worst case scenario it would need a bit of refinishing. It had so much character. Unfortunately (there is always something for us) it is in short sale. Which adds complications. And this is an awful market. Awful. But we're going with faith and we're going to list our house for sale anyway and hope that someone wants to buy it fast enough that we can get this house before it goes into foreclosure, or someone else buys it out from underneath us. We're trying very hard not to get too attached to the idea of this house because we have bad luck with houses. But maybe this time, this will be the one...

Please keep us in prayer as we begin this process (again!). We are frantically finishing up a few projects that we have left and are starting to pack up toys and junk that can be stored in the anticipation of upcoming showings. We're praying that if we're not in the Lord's will that He will make that clear. He has a good track record where we're concerned. Everytime we venture toward a house, the Lord slams the door. And each time that has happened we are eventually glad that it did and we anticipate what the Lord has for us. But we really, really hope that this is what the Lord has for us.

I'm tired of kids in my closet!

August Happenings

I've been woefully bad at updating. Looking back at this last month it seems like there should've been plenty to write about and yet nothing had struck me as particularly blog-worthy at the time.

We've been hoping for some house news, but unfortunately the kind we have is not the kind we were hoping to share. The home we made an offer on didn't play out. At. All. They counter offered without lowering their price one penny, and on top of that they added 5 or 6 more conditions. It felt like we were negotiating with them so that they could do us the favor of letting us buy their house from them. In this market that was absolutely ridiculous and so we passed.

Since then we've gone over our finances again. And again. And just realized that with some of our upcoming expenses this year, we really need to have extra money. Which we finally do...as long as we are living here in our pitiful starter home.

So we've decided that unless something shows up in our super-low price range in the next month, we shall just camp it out here for another year or more. Pay down more debt and work on beautifying our house even more. By the time we're finished we will be doing someone a favor of allowing them to buy our home. hehe.

We went to visit Eric's family in PA at the beginning of August. It was a very long trip (for us) and we were very glad to get home. We all caught colds (except Hannah) right in the middle of the visit and that made the whole trip very tiring. We had to cut it short because of the illness, and it just felt like it took forever to get home! It was a good visit, though, despite dealing with Hannah's typical attitude adjustment. She always becomes sassy when we visit family...we're not entirely sure why that is. Ultimately it was a good visit and we had a good time.

Our most recent news is that our firstborn, our kitty Aurora, met with an unfortunate accident. While I was at a woman's event she and Eric had an altercation. I'm still not completely clear on the specifics, but there was an exchange of biting and kicking that led to Aurora's hip being broken. It was all an unfortunate accident...and for the next three weeks Aurora is confined to a cage in the hopes that she'll heal. It never fails to break my heart!

To make up for lack of updates, I have a couple cute pictures from this last month.

Walking along Lake Michigan on our way out to Pennsylvania

Hannah did SO well in the car on the trip

One of the few times they shared nicely

One of my favorite pics of Grace. Oh how I wish it hadn't been such a "spur of the moment" shot which led to her head being cut off!!

A House (hopefully)!

We casually restarted our house search this month. There isn't much in our preferred area that meets our specifications, so by house "search" we really mean waiting with sheer boredom for new houses to come on the market, and when they don't, going over the houses that are already on the market over and over, just in case we missed one that might appeal.

Our intention was to take a gamble and list our house in September even if we hadn't found something. We lowered our target price range, which also meant we lowered our expectations.

We decided to go look at a house only a block from our current residence. We hadn't previously been interested because it seemed too small (not to mention we weren't keen on living THAT close to our current home), but it was the right price and seemed to have most of the things we wanted. We liked it more than we thought we would, and made an offer last night! We have yet to hear back and even if they do accept it we still have to sell our house so we really have no guarantee that we'll get it. It is one of those lovely things in life that is completely in God's hands. There is nothing we can do to make this work in our timing. It is a good practice in faith :-)

In the meantime we are leaving to visit Eric's family in PA this weekend. We will most likely leave with the house situation still up in the air, which we hate to do, but there isn't much we can do about that. We are crazy people! As if we didn't have enough going on packing for a week-long trip, but then we had to throw in buying a house on top of it!

Please keep us in your prayers in the coming months. We need every one we can get!

Christmastime

It seems like the last month has gone by in a blink. Busyness will do that, I suppose. Christmas is just 5 days away. Fortunately we are pretty much ready!

It has been lots of fun shopping this year. I love it when you find exactly what you are looking for, and feel like you are really getting your loved ones something they will like and enjoy. And it is even better if it is something they won't expect. And even better than that is if it is something they like, something unexpected, and something on SALE!

Of course there is always the downside to that...I received an email yesterday informing me that my gift for Eric was out of stock and it would not arrive by Christmas. So that left me in a lurch, scrambling desperately to figure something else out for Eric in time for Christmas. His Christmas gift will become his birthday gift, I guess. That's one benefit of a January birthday.

On top of all the Christmas hustle, we noticed that a home we've been watching for some time went down in price. We decided to go and look at it. We have no idea why we were so compelled to go look at it because we both knew it was most likely impossible that we'd ever be able to afford such a house. But we fell in love...it is the perfect house, perfect neighborhood...it needs some cosmetic updates, but after the overhaul we did of our current home, a few cosmetic things is trivial.

Unfortunately the home is in short sale (what happens sometimes prior to it foreclosing) so because of that we cannot place a contingency on the sale of our home, and also cannot "close" the deal until the actual sales papers are signed. Typically when you make an offer on a home, the seller accepts your offer and then it is legally binding and to back out there is a penalty. Not so in this case. It remains open until the actual closing. So if the seller receives a better offer, we could potentially lose the house. So we really have no idea if we'll get the house, or sell ours, and at this point we don't even have an accepted offer from the seller, although we're in negotiations. So tons of prayer would be appreciated! We really want this house to work out, but if it doesn't then obviously God has something different in mind for us. All we can do now is wait, and pray, and wait, and pray...you get the picture.

This weekend we are going to try and "complete" our home. We want to refinish the floors and finish putting some trim around some windows. Things that we've been wanting to do for some time now. Not what we'd like to be doing at Christmas, but we're hoping that there will be some interest in our home starting in January, so we'd like it to be finished by that time.

Well, the clutter is calling for me to clean it up, so I had better get to that. I'll leave you with a picture of the girls at Christmas. In our opinion, there isn't much more precious than that.