Moving On....

About 2 years ago we made the decision to sell our house. It was a great house, on a quite street, in a lovely neighborhood, with a great back yard. It wasn't that we didn't like it there, we loved it! But Garry's work had been less then steady for the previous year or more and we just felt like we were pressed too tight. We decided it would be best to try to sell before we got ourselves into a hole we couldn't climb out of. So we put that little sign out in the front yard and I spent the next two weeks cleaning like a crazy woman and trying to think of places to go so that strangers could browse and snoop through my house. Oh and in our spare time we went searching for another suitable place for our little family.

And then in what seemed to be perfect divine timing we found a place we thought would work and got an offer on our house the same week. We even waited until the offer we made (which was a little far fetched) was accepted before we took the offer being made to us. We were convinced. This is what we were supposed to do. The house we decided to buy was not in the area we would've preferred but it seemed that  that's where God wanted us and it was a great property so we started packing boxes.

  (No children were stored in boxes for a harmful length of time at any point during this process!)

Perhaps you noticed that I used the word 'seemed' several times in this paragraph. Here's why. Just two, yes, ONE, TWO! weeks before settlement the agreement fell through for the place we thought we were buying. Talk about scrambling!!! We felt sure that we should go through with the sale of our place but 2 weeks is not enough time to find another and get paperwork done.

 We decided to look for a rental but we wanted to stay within our school district. We figured renting would be less than ideal and quite temporary so we didn't want to put our kids through multiple school changes. I spent about 10 minutes online searching for rentals till I figured out our mission was IMPOSSIBLE. We were looking at 1 bedroom apartments for rent for almost as much as the mortgage we were trying to get out from under. A kind friend heard about our situation and offered to send and e-mail to spread the word with some friends (she's one of those people who knows everyone :o) to see if anyone knew of anything. Through that email we found this house.

There were several divine interventions going on with this deal too! This house was empty and had not been advertised to the public yet. (Typically it would be advertised for 2 months before it was empty.) Within a week of our deal falling through we had looked at this one (the only one we looked at) and put a down payment on it. It was never even advertised to the public. The only catch was that we needed to commit to staying here a year or paying a early termination fee. We decided it was worth it.

So in November of 2009 we moved in. It's certainly not the perfect house. It's over a hundred years old and it wouldn't take you long to figure that out if you stopped in. The kitchen boasts cabinets from the 1950's (I'm guessing) and a monstrous u.g.l.y. propane heater. We lived here less than one day before I decided that the kitchen light simply had to be replaced with one that actually shed some light. The front door has a window pain held "securely" in place by duct tape. The bedroom that 3 of my children share is about 7" x 12". And I tell people we have 4 seasons here, Mice, Spiders, Ants and Stinkbugs! Not to mention the centipedes, ladybugs, mildew and other miscellaneous critters. But all in all it has worked out amazingly well. The kids have a great yard to play in. Garry can park his truck here. And we've got a great "easy access" location. And with a good supply of purging and decluttering (and a bit of storage in the in laws basement) we've squeezed in here rather comfortably.

(The one thing this place does have is l.o.t.s of great photo shoot opps!)

Sorry, that got pretty long winded but that brings us to just few months ago, April 2011. Garry and I were discussing the fact that we had planned to only be here a few months and here we were, still here after almost a year and a half. Of course part of that conversation was the fact that we had not been able to save like we had hoped in that time to buy another place. During that conversation I said these words to my husband, "I think we need to just stay here, be content, be thankful that it's working as well as it is and try to keep saving until God makes it clear that he wants us somewhere else."

Not 2 weeks later we got a call. Not just any call, a call from our land lord. Our place is an estate, owned by many siblings together, and apparently someone from the family wants to live here. They were kind enough to give us double the required notice of 2 months. But 4 months to find a place for a family of 7 (allowing time in that for paperwork) didn't seem all that generous at the time. We're back to spending 'free time' searching real estate websites and date nights looking at houses. Yeah! (please hear the sarcasm!) Being able to stay here just one more year would have had so many advantages but there is no way we could say that God didn't make it clear!!

So our list of criteria looked something like this:

*room for a family of 7
*a lot big enough for 4 boys with lots of energy and a place to park a truck and trailer
*somewhere where there are not noise/ parking restriction against the truck (this eliminates developments)
* preferably something not leaning obviously to one side or missing pertinent parts
*something  within our limited budget

Should be No problem right?? (sarcasm sneaking in there again!) So I wavered back and forth between knowing in my heart that God had this under control and he was going to do something amazing for us and the there-is-no-way-in-the-world-this-could-possibly-workout-worry. Most of the time I really was in the first category though. I was even kind of excited deep down inside to see how God was gonna "Work all things together for good!" on this one!

I've kept you long enough for today...stay tuned for the next exciting episode of "The Miller's Moving Mayhem?"