Improv Adventures: The House Story

I promised a house story so I need to deliver. I'll try to keep it short and keep to the main details! I just think it's pretty cool how it all worked out!!

Our dream has been to live out in the country. Both of us grew up on acreages/hobby farms so it is in our blood. We had such interesting criteria though so we really doubted that we would ever find what we were looking for!

Realtor.com quickly became my good friend over the last year as I searched for the "must haves" that we were looking for. At least 1 acre of land, a house that wasn't falling over (in at least decent shape but we weren't afraid of a fixer upper), and somewhat close to my husband's job and our church (we were hoping for no longer than a 20 minute drive). Our acre of land was the biggest "must have" that we wanted to wait for but we quickly found out how hard acreages were to come by!

Our first day home with Connor was chaos so we started getting serious about looking and trimmed back our small must have list. We decided to rule out acreages since they were so hard to find. That same week, our new home was put on the market.

We looked at 1-2 houses and had tentatively decided to build in a new development and wait another 5 years for land when I spotted this house on Realtor.com. When Connor was a week old, I went on my first outing to drive by this house. It.was.perfect. The land and proximity to town was seriously even better than what we were hoping for. It was 2.5 acres and only 3 miles out of town. We had always dreamed of having a ravine and woods in our backyard and this place had it all. It was above and beyond our "must have" list!

We scheduled the earliest possible showing and decided that if the house was even halfway decent, we would act on this house right away. To make a long story short, we acted on it right away and made an offer within the hour.

BUT, there was another offer the same day! The beginning of our long journey of buying and selling started that day as we eagerly waited to see if the sellers would accept our offer instead of the other offer. They accepted ours but we had to get our house sold ASAP since it was a popular house and any other offer would be entertained until we sold our house.

We had our offer accepted but they told us we needed to have our old house on the market the next day. Scrambling, we moved furniture, purged our basement that was filled to the brim with storage, and SOMEHOW got our house sell ready by the next day.

The next 7 weeks were SO stressful...we had a new baby, I started getting really sick at least once a week, we were all adjusting to life with 5 of us, and we tried to keep our house spotless through 17 home showings. It was hard and there were many times that we wanted to forget the acreage and stay put because it didn't seem worth it.

Our new house had multiple showings and no other offers. It is so cool how God worked it all. Our contract for the offer was going to be up on September 30th so we needed to sell our house before then. With no offers in sight and my sickness becoming increasingly more intense, I scheduled my surgery and gave up on the house. It was September 24th and I had gotten to the point that I didn't care about the house...I just wanted to get better and have something be "normal" once again.

The next day, we got an offer. Our one and only offer and we jumped on that offer!! The papers were signed by the night and we decided on a closing date-October 29th. Until this point, I hadn't let myself be excited about actually owning an acreage. It seemed so out of reach! Every week that our house didn't sell, I doubted that it would work out...and yet it did. I'm so grateful.

I still remember the first night we stayed here. The quietness, the stillness, the peace that we hadn't experienced in 3+ months. It WAS worth it but I don't know how we got through it at moments. I hope we don't have to move for a very long time :)