Sunday, October 20, 2013

New house and healing

Our new house is in a very private 18 acres. It's on the highway but our driveway is 1000 feet long and gains 100 feet in elevation so we are set off the road quite a bit. We can hear the road noise a little but because there is only one access road onto the property and we have an alert system installed there Dean feels very safe. Almost the entire 18 acres is forest which is what we wanted. We have beautiful, breathtaking views of mountains and tree tops. About 7 or 8 of the acres is in usable land for animals and it's all fenced and cross-fenced. We plan to live a more self-sustaining lifestyle which makes Dean very happy and like he's providing for his family again. We'll have 6 or 7 head of cattle, pigs, and chickens for food (as well as a large garden). We'll have ducks to combat the slugs, barn cats to combat the mice/rats, donkey to help carry heavy loads, llamas to protect the animals from coyotes and other predators, and goats to keep the blackberry brambles in check. Since Dean has dreamed of living this lifestyle he is so relaxes and happy here! This has definitely been the best therapy of his life!


Lots of new things going on

I haven't posted in quite some time and wanted to at least check in and give some updates.

God has had a wonderful way of answering prayers for our family! He got us away from the city for Independence Day as described in my last post :)  And then with His perfect timing, He got us into our forever home just in time for my son to start Kindergarten!

In August we were told for the second time that we couldn't qualify for a home loan until our other house was sold. Out of habit, though, we continued to look at homes for sale. One day I found a house 12 miles from the town we lived in that sounded perfect by its description (which wasn't all that odd, lots of houses/properties sound great and then when we see them, we feel like we were tricked). My daughter said "We should go see that house today". I told her we couldn't qualify so what's the point. She said "I don't know, we don't have anything else to do today?? So let's check it out". I knew from the pictures that it was empty so no one lived there. My kids and I drove down to the property, parked in front of the locked gate at the bottom of a very long driveway and walked up to take a look. As soon as we saw it we were in love! We knew this was perfect for what we needed! Unbeknownst to me, Dean had arranged for us to meet with a real estate agent the next day to look at a house up north 40 miles or so. I thought, ok fine...we can't buy it....but if he wants to look then let's do it. When we were looking at that house/shop/property he loved the shop but everything else just wouldn't fit our life or our needs. I told him that I needed to get him out to see the house that the kids and I had seen...even if we couldn't buy it, having him see it would make IT the house/property the one that he'd use to compare all future listings to! So I set up an appointment with the listing agent because there would have been no way Dean could walk up that long driveway! When he saw the place he was instantly in love and convinced just like I had been that this was perfect!!!

I told the agent that we had been told by another lender that we had to sell our current home (which is being rented out) and that didn't make sense to me but what was I going to do? I'd been told that by two lenders :(  She said "That doesn't make sense to me either, you need to talk to my lender, she's a direct lender and she's awesome"! So I thought sure, why not? On Friday I got her lender all of our paperwork for her to run the numbers and see if she could get us preapproved. We prayed all weekend - "God, You can do anything! If this is our forever home we know that You will make it happen. If this is Your will, You can do it all". On Monday, the lender called us and said "You guys are good to go, make an offer". We were ecstatic!!!! So we made an offer, they countered, we countered back, they accepted. So....we bought a house! God set everything up for us! We got a great interest rate, great timber deferred status so the taxes are low, great inspection and appraisal, equity in the home already! The blessings just keep getting better and better.

So we spent September and some of October packing and moving in and unloading boxes and we still aren't done but it's starting to feel like home. It's still weird to think that it happened, it's done, we don't have to keep searching, we're here but we will get there.