To Live and to Love: October 2009

I don't believe I have ever been so sick in my life as I have been these last couple weeks. I feel completely useless and like a horrible wife and mother. If having morning sickness every day for the last 9 weeks wasn't enough. . ..right when I should have been getting relief from that I caught some sort of Gastro.. bla. .bla . .flu, bronchitis and a severe sinus pressure headache (5 days and counting on the headache). I have literally been in bed for 2 weeks now. Missing soccer games, taking Makayla to school, birthday parties, get togethers with friends and family. Let me tell you I am SOOO sick of being sick!!
Thank God for my Husband, In-Laws and Parents who have each taken turns caring for me and the kids! I am not sure what I would do without them!

It is time to move on! Ok, I know I am not the best a writing, but I do have a lot to say. . . . . bare with me.

Michael and I have learned a lot about ourselves these last couple years. One thing is for sure, our timing is not God's timing. This we know! Patience, well that really isn't a strong suit for either of us! And, the stress of making decisions that affect the whole family have really hit us hard this year. We have always planned for the future and ALWAYS had our kids future in mind while doing so, but we are actually IN the future now. Makayla started kindergarten this year!! There are so many things to consider in all areas of our lives with just that one little change. Finding a permanent place to live has just been one of them.

After a year and a half of waiting on "RaNor Estates" and the hopes and dreams of building a house of our dreams on just a little bit of land we have turned a new direction. Just recently (since Julyish) Michael has been really watching a bunch of Short Sales (houses that are marked well below value to avoid foreclosure). We found one that we thought we wanted. It was a nice house set on 25 acres with literally a million dollar view. Again after much waiting and stress and all the fun of dealing with a short sale, we ended up back at square 1 after two months of time waisted. Long story Short, the house went back to the bank, they didn't think our offer was good enough and now the bank is going to have to list the house again and try to sell it. So!!

Funny thing, since we made an offer on a house Michael's dad (Lynn) had mentioned to a mutual friend that we were hoping to move and that we were going to rent out our house. Well this friend was more than interested and actually came over to see it the following Saturday and left with every intention to buy our house, not rent it!! WOW! That's awesome!! But. . . . where are we going to live???

While were actually still waiting for this house on the hill to go back on the Market so we could make another offer and hope they would accept, Michael found another house that he wanted to go look at. I tried to be excited but really am just fed up with the whole thing and want a HOME. I want to just find that "somewhere" that we are suppose to be for the next 25+ years. So after he got off work we went to take a look at it. This house had been listed for quite a while with a Realtor with no luck and now they were trying For Sale by Owner. Michael found their add on Craigslist. Well when we got there, we got out of the car and the couple standing in the doorway started laughing. . . . . why are they laughing at us. . . . The guy looks at Michael and says, "you don't know who I am do you?". "Well no, I don't", Michael says. Turns out the owner of the house grew up across the street from Michael for about 18 years of their lives. They hadn't seen eachother for about 15 or more! We eventually made it into the house and I started walking around checking everything out while Michael and Brian caught up on the last 20 years. I was sold before we even went up to look at the bedrooms. This was a house sitting on 4.5 acres (usable acres) that had the room to entertain and bedrooms for everyone, big kitchen and so much potential!! 3 hours later we finally left! Michael was still so excited about finding a lost friend that I actually had to take him home and show him all the pictures I took to get him to remember the house. LOL We decided that if he could give up the million dollar view of the other house that this was where we were suppose to be. We submitted an offer the next day which they accepted and on Wednesday of this week we opened escrow!! We are both very excited!!

While all of that was going on, the "friend" who wanted to buy our house was able to come up with the down payment and we also signed offer papers for that on Wednesday of this last week too. WOW!! So much going on! Now we sit and wait and hope that this wasn't all just too good to be true!

These are pictures of the house we just sold. You should go to my older post and see how much this has changed since we bought it just a year ago! (http://mbdoty.blogspot.com/2009/04/work-in-progress.html)

And here is the house we just bought!!!!

Of course we have already made a list of first things to do. This house was built in 2007 but the owners ran out of money, so it was never landscaped, needs a deck, patio, driveway etc. We are making our priority list and the best thing is, we have the next many, many years to work on it.

Below: Looking out back, we call it the meadow. The first day we went to walk around we saw 3 deer, it was really cool.

Looking up towards the back of the house, you can see where the deck needs to go. The area to the right is fenced off as a goat area, no animals are there now.