Home Sweet soon-to-be Home

The last two weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind for us. From selling our condo, to starting our search for a new home, to leaving our kids for the first time on our trip to California, to coming home and searching some more... it feels like this amount of activity should have been spread out over several months, not just a few days!

With my parents still here for a few days after we returned from our anniversary trip, John and I were able to go together to look at 16 different homes. We quickly narrowed it down to three that we liked the best and revisited those yesterday afternoon. One of them stood out to us, head-and-shoulders above the others, and we were in solid agreement that it was our desire for this be our next home. We took a walk with our whole family around the neighborhood, we spent a lot of time praying throughout the day, and we asked some of our friends and family to pray as we made this decision. And then we made an offer. Several times this morning we went back and forth with the sellers, and they finally accepted it, so... the house is ours!!!

It's still sinking in, and it will probably take packing and moving in to truly feel real, but in this moment we are very pleased and praising God for so many things: that my parents were here and could watch the kids while we looked (and their joy and willingness to do so!), the relatively fast sale of our condo enabling us to do this, finding a house in such a short amount of time, a real estate agent who has been so fantastic in every aspect of this process so far, the fact that we love a house that's actually in our price range, a closing date that works perfectly with the sale of our condo, and the fact that the sellers chose to work with us over another comparable offer we were told was on the table as of last night.

And it goes beyond that for me, in thanking God for the ability to upgrade to a beautiful home on one income, for a husband who has a tremendous amount of financial sense so we are in the position to make this move, for a relatively short 9-mile commute to John's office (though we've been so spoiled by being just one mile away for the last four years), for the excitement of making new friends with our neighbors and seeing what is in store for those relationships.

In looking back at how this has all played out, we can see that God's hand has certainly been in it all, and He is SOOOO good! As one dear friend put it, it is a sweet victory of God's provision!