4,000 Views, Swollen Ankles, and Sale Pending!!!

Just a list of random things I have noticed or experienced this past week(s):

• The blog has had over 4,000 views since the New Year!
• I noticed that more people read my posts if I also post at least one picture... interesting.
• I am thankful to have served in the nursery at church for 2 weeks in a row, because I now remember how to change diapers!  Something I will definitely need to know very soon!
• Easter weekend was a lot of fun to see both my in-laws and parents!
• Had an amazing intense time of learning at Secret Church - google it; you won't be sorry.  I also learned I am still able to stay up until 2am... even at 9 months pregnant!!!
• I began to theorize that perhaps people who approve of foreclosure sales at banks only work on Thursdays - I am sort of being serious too.  Any communication was given on a Thursday, and then the next Thursday, and then the next.
• Yesterday (Monday) was the first day of my last week of teaching for an indefinite amount of time.
• I have heard some positive feedback from one hopeful part-time job for this Fall, just waiting to hear from another one and then make a decision!
• In order to find the Boppy pillow, the infant car seat, and Keegan's diaper bag (all had been put into storage when we were showing the house), meant that Kyle had to empty out the entire shed in the back yard into our living room... and we left it that way all weekend - guilt free!
• I packed most of the hospital stuff and it is sitting by the door... just waiting!
• My ankles are really swollen!!!
• And today 2 houses went into "Sale Pending" status - the house we currently live in and the house we have been wanting for months!

 So, here's the story in a condensed version:

We started working with the college ministry at the beginning of the school year, and we realized that it would be a lot easier to be hospitable to 30+ college students if we actually had a living room!  I mean, we have one, but the 5 pieces of furniture in it only seat 7 with not much room on the floor for many more!  So earlier in the year we went house hunting - mainly looking for fixer-uppers that had large living rooms.

We found the perfect house, for so many reasons, it would be a blog post all of its own!  What was even more perfect was the price!  A foreclosure with exactly the kind of living room/kitchen layout I wanted with plenty of room to spare for all these kids we plan on having (the 2nd coming very soon).

So, in order to buy this "dream house", we had to put ours on the market!  So, we got to work!  I got my pregnant self in a squatting/kneeling position and painted trim and baseboards while Kyle did a bazillion things I can't even remember them all!  We uncluttered every room, put all the baby stuff back into storage that we had just started digging out, and started actually making our bed every morning!  Shocker, I know!

And that is how we lived for a while - making sure the house was "show-ready" every morning by 7:40am, so we could hustle off to work!  Our realtor started working her tail off too networking, promoting, etc!

Some glitches we ran into along the way:

• You cannot make an offer on a foreclosure that is "pending on the sale of your own home"
• You cannot get traditional financing for foreclosures that need repair (this one needs to be reroofed)
• We didn't have $93,000 in our savings account
• We didn't have $15,000 in our savings account to pay for the repairs so that we could put it in escrow and THEN make an offer with traditional financing
• After several realtors toured our home, they advised us to drop our asking price at least $5,000 

And, of course, each glitch had to present itself one at a time, at least a week apart from each other in order to make this process go longer than we had planned!

Now, I am not complaining.  I am actually thankful for all the times we thought "this will never happen", because we learned so much about how much we trust in our "stuff" and plans.  With each hurdle, we had to sit down as a couple and talk and pray and ask ourselves, "How much do we trust God?  How much do we believe that we will truly be fine, and even better off if/when He says NO to this plan?  That if God says NO, then that is really how it should be!"

Huge OUCH!  With each glitch, we got better about not throwing ourselves into "the depths of despair" with our emotions!  And then with each glimmer of "re-hope", we learned to hold the plan more and more loosely.

The final hiccups were:

1. The same week we sat down to finally be able to make an offer on the house we wanted, we learned someone else had already bid on it and had been negotiating back and forth.  Legally, realtors cannot tell you how much someone else has bid on a property, so we were left to a complete guess on what to offer and hope it was higher than the other party's.
2. A week after putting in our offer (again, on a Thursday... I'm telling you my theory is right), the bank notified both parties and asked for a final offer from each one... again, we had to guess as to what we thought complete strangers we've never met might offer.  We had to think about what was more important - getting the house or being wise with our budget/offer.
3. The man interested in buying our house offered us quite a bit below our asking price.  We countered, and then he countered with something even lower than his first offer... So we had to think about what was more important -selling our house or selling it for what we wanted out of it?

We found out over this past weekend that the bank accepted our offer over the other party's!  We also negotiated an amount for ours to sell!  And yesterday (Monday), the buyer for our current home went in to sign the accepted amount an hour before we went in and signed for our accepted offer!

That brings us to our current, extremely exciting and busy timeline:

• We are having this baby next Tuesday - in one week (or less) by C-section!  So I will be the mother of 2 kids - a toddler and a newborn, recovering from surgery, and beginning the process of planning and packing to move!
• We are closing on the foreclosure house to start the reroofing on the 15th.
• We are closing on our current home and have to be out by June 1st!

This is definitely do-able!  I really am not worried about all of it, but the thought of it all is a little overwhelming.

So, tonight, Kyle and I went on a "last date" of sorts.  It has taken a couple of days to get excited about all of this, just because of all we have to coordinate.  But our conversation over dinner of all these changes definitely got both of us pumped about what is to come!  Fortunately, we both thrive on high-pressure, busy happenings, or at least we keep signing up for these type of scenarios in our marriage!  And I know for a fact that I love him more today than I did back in October of 2009 as I walked toward him down that aisle.  He has been tested over and over, and he has proven himself to be so trustworthy and dependable... how blessed am I?!

I also got a pedicure as a last pampering for myself before Keegan is born and we start to live out of boxes and stacks and piles.  The man doing my pedicure was cracking me up!  He was so nice about how bad my feet were, and how swollen my ankles are!  After the Dremmel, cheese grater, and special exfoliants and moisturizers wrapped in plastic and heated in the foot hot tub, and rubbed down with the hot stones and boiling hot steam towel... a sweet lady painted my toes the blue I had picked out for Keegan's arrival!  I wore pink polish when Emersyn was born, so I thought I would keep the coordinating going!  Then she gently put my sandals back on and buckled them for me, since she saw how I had struggled to get them unbuckled with this basketball-shaped baby belly in my way when we first got there!

All of this makes me think of playing Hide-and-Seek with Emersyn.  She counts to ten REALLY FAST, and you better be hidden by then, because "ready or not, here I come!"

Are we ready for a second baby?  Are we ready to relearn all that comes with a newborn?  Will we be able to handle living out of piles and boxes while recovering from surgery and nursing a newborn and chasing a todder?

These are definitely the times in life when I wonder how people who do not hope in the Lord get by?  I'm not judging them, I am truly curious, because without His strength and peace to get us through sometimes... we wouldn't make it through at all!  I know that "God provides for all bills He incurs".  He knows our every need and desire and hurt and fear.  But He doesn't just know about them; He cares about them.  He wants us to give them to Him.  He loves to carry our burdens and carry us through!

Why?!  Because He loves us, and He gets all the glory!  His name is exalted while our burdens are lifted!

He does give us more than we can handle, because that means we need Him!  Jesus did not come for those who are well, but for those who are sick!

So, are we ready?  Of course NOT!  But nothing surprises our Heavenly Father.  So, ready or not, here it all comes!