House Hunting, House Selling and House Buying

Whew! Our lives have been in a real estate whirlwind lately! After seven months of house hunting and having our house on the market, we have finally sold our house in O’Fallon, IL and have purchased a new home here in Colorado! We close this Friday and we’re SO excited! I will be so relieved to be out of this tiny apartment and back in a home!

I think the three best things will be:

1. Having counter space again in the kitchen

2. Sleeping on a real bed! (We left our furniture in our house in O’Fallon so we’ve been on an air mattress for seven months!!)

3. Having a yard for our dogs. We’ve actually never had a fenced yard for the dogs before and we are both so thrilled to have that! Especially after having to walk them out on the leash every time they need to go out in the apartment.

We really found a wonderful home to move into and feel that in many ways it was meant to be! The short version of the story is... Aaron is the one who found the home when it had only been on the market for four days and he and I were very on the ball about seeing it right away. We were only the 2^nd people to see it and the people who saw it just before us were putting an offer in as we were looking at it. We had a great realtor who kept us well informed and we were able to offer just a little higher than the other people and get our offer in right at the end of the business day with a midnight deadline, so we barely got the offer in and it was accepted! Our realtor actually brought the offer to my work for me to sign in order to get it in on time! It was very well priced and we feel very blessed to have found this home after looking for so long. This is the second home we made an offer on, but the fifth home we wanted. After so much disappointment in our house hunting experience, we felt quite beaten and frustrated, so it was interesting how it all worked out so well. Our home in IL also sold only a couple of weeks before we officially purchased this new one, so the timing was perfect too. Heavenly Father must laugh at us so often for getting frustrated and discouraged at things not going according to our plans when He knows He has a better plan in mind for us the whole time.

The woman we’re buying the home from is extremely nice and has had us over to show us how everything works and introduced us to the neighbors and everything. We’re very excited for our new adventure to start next weekend in our new home and in a new ward!

Here is a picture of our new home! (Don't worry, I'll post more pictures once we're settled)