It all starts back a little over a year ago. Brandon and I started playing with the idea of moving out to the country. Although I couldn't fathom the thought of getting the house "show" ready and actually keeping it that way for any possible moment when the realtor could call to come bring a potential buyer by, we have always liked the idea of raising our three boys on a farm with lots of places to roam, a creek, and animals, and a garden, and chores. We started going to see a few places here and there. We saw a couple that we liked, but nothing felt right. I called off the search when I was about three months from delivering Baby #3. I just didn't feel like it was the right time. Moving forward a year later.. Just after Christmas and after getting an email from my FIL, we found out about a house that was for sale on a beautiful piece of property. We decided to go check it out. As we walked through the old, deserted home, in much need of some TLC, many people saw a home with zero value (and told us so), but I saw potential- a house that was screaming to be painted white, a possible stone fire place, some barn lights to install, a pergola instead of the falling down "sunroom", an old claw foot tub converted into a shower, rocking chairs on the front porch, antique painted furniture.... and Brandon saw potential- great land and living close to friends, a cool log cabin room and a long honey-do list, getting chickens and maybe even a goat, a new tractor... We decided to think about this house some more. Being that this home was a foreclosure and almost 200 years old, we knew we would be paying for the land and the farm lifestyle, but we would need a place to live. So we called in 10, maybe 20 people, and started our do diligence. We had inspections on every possible piece of the house that we could come up with. We got some good news on the condition of things, and we got some bad news on the condition of things. There were days when things would go so well, and then you'd be hit with something big. We decided to continue moving forward with things. But we had to let the seller know something in less than two weeks and there was still the not so small issue of selling our current house. Since we hadn't been planning to start up our home search again, we hadn't even started moving down the list I had made for getting the house sell ready. We figured it was a long shot to sell our house quickly and get what we needed in order to buy the farmhouse with enough money left over for the many, many, many 'have to' repairs. But despite all that, we decided on a Wednesday to list our house, started cleaning and preparing on Sunday, and one week later the realtor was there taking pictures and preparing to get it listed. What the heck, we decided we'd just start little fixer up projects that were still needed while we waited for someone to be interested in the house and just see what happens. We put the sign in the front yard on a Monday and we had our first showing on a Saturday and we had a contract on Sunday. Wow! This was beyond amazing and God was written all over it.
We were excited, we were pumped. And then... while still in inspection stage, we discovered termites and mold at the farmhouse. Not a small thing, especially when you have to think about the three most precious little people who will be living there with us. We knew there would be new discoveries along the way. Did I mention this is an almost 200 year old house. But we were at a crossroads and this was our last shot to bail out before closing on this house. We thought about it a lot. We talked about it a lot. We prayed about it a lot. We had a plan to reconcile these issues. But it was adding more money to the long list of bids we had already accumulated; and these weren't cosmetic make the house pretty things, these were just to make the house livable things. After Russ' sermon one Sunday, something had stuck out to Brandon. He said "You know. That sermon today made me think about the house. You know, as long as we continue to love one another through this process. We can get through it; we can make it work."
We made the plunge. We jumped in head first, arms raised. We bought the farmhouse. We bought the beautiful land. We bought our dream of a fixer upper, of chickens, and goats, and a miniature horse, and maybe a cow or two... of blueberry bushes, and fruit trees, and a garden, and a creek.
