Our NEW Forever HOME – Part 1

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Our NEW Forever Home, I don’t even know where to begin. Let me start with the story and how it all came to be!

I have to begin somewhere, and I guess I will start at the beginning.

If you have been following along we sold our house in April HERE. We went on a road trip for about two months and after that we have been living at the KOA in Lynden, WA. It honestly was all things that were said that we would never do… selling our house without having one, James said no living on the road, and what we lived in a camper! Well, we were led by our heavenly father and it was all for a reason that we didn’t know at the time.

When first looking and dreaming of what’s next for us, we always loved and felt at home with land and animals…but I always have dreamed of living on the water. So naturally I looked at houses on the water and found ones I loved and in our budget. Then one day I found this amazing house that had plenty of room for us to grow, a little stable and a pool. Honestly I am not sure how it even showed up in my search it wasn’t in the area or on waterfront like I had put in. I shared it with the family and they all told me how they loved it and no one wanted to live on water and the crazy thing it was in the area that we just all felt at HOME. I knew it must be meant to be. It was on the market for sooo long, just over budget by a bit.

We sold our house in April, and the week after we went to go look at this house. It was nice… just wasn’t for us. We liked a few things in it… the size of the house was amazing but the rooms seemed smaller than our old house and while we loved the pool and the stable – the property was deceiving and wasn’t what we wanted at all. We would not have actually owned our drive, or stable or even part of our front yard. It was in an easement – but we wanted to be able to have more acreage and the possibility to own more. We were shocked that this wasn’t the house. But we knew the right one would come.

After this we were shocked but then knew that this house drew us to the area and that in time we would find the forever house we were searching for. We packed up our home and got ready for our adventure. Before we left we found this amazing house – it was WAY out of budget, and as we said to nice and fancy for us… but we LOVED it. We had two houses to look at the weekend but we cancelled the amazing house and went and looked at one that was more cozy and had other things we were looking for. We looked at the other house, it was very high priced for what it was – needed new windows, new roof, lots of things to fix even massive wires all out… and just not great for the crazy price… it wasn’t meant to be and we left on the road for our adventure.

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I know, I know lets get to the good stuff!
While on the road, we kept watching houses and had our realtor on the hunt and even showed us one via facetime! The one we kept coming back to was the amazing one…my friend Leslie My100YearOldHome from the beginning told us that that was the one, and we deserve something nice…. and after awhile we agreed but it was still way over budget.

Almost two months on the road, we kept watching this amazing house… it dropped once in price, and then twice was it meant to be?

We got back in mid June, got to camp and the next day we went to look at the AMAZING house. I do have to say it was still OVER budget. But what can hurt in seeing it right??

James and I decided NOT to let the kids come inside and see the house, being homeless for two months – honestly any house would be amazing to them and we knew it was still over budget and didn’t want them to get excited if it wasn’t going to work out.

We looked at the house and it was literally EVERYTHING we wanted and MORE, the things that we have on our list that there wasn’t – there was so much potential to add! BUT it was over budget. James asked if we wanted to go drive by other houses – I said no this is the one.

This is the photo we took as we were leaving the house. Thinking of all the possibilities… if they would even go lower and accept our offer.

That night we wrote our letter to the sellers. We put in our highest offer and wrote our story and what we loved about this house – and I meant every word. If I were ever to design a house, this house would be it – it checks every box and just what I have dreamed of but never imagined having. It is a bit out dated – but honestly I am so glad!! We could put all our finishing touches.

We wrote the offer, sent the letter – did something crazy and did no inspection after I found out they had other offers and we felt good about what it was… they had two days to get back to us. Honestly we didn’t have much hope after finding out about the other offers and ours was less….we kept praying that if this was the house for us that they would accept it.

That same day they came back asking a question.
Then later that day they came back with a counter – asking for a little more money and a longer move out.
We countered that day with the same amount, and some things we thought would be helpful.
They had 3 days to go over the offer.

I went back to our old town that next day with Zoe, and we got the call. Our offer was NOT ACCEPTED. I drove in tears all the way to drop off Zoe at her friends. I talked to James, and we were at our max budget… what they wanted wasn’t much more in the grand scheme of things…and we could afford it. He called our lender.

Our lender is amazing, and he knew it was silly to lose it over being so close. We were APPROVED!! We had already declined the counter, but we told our realtor we would accept it and the sellers said YES!! So we watched it on Zillow and Redfin switch to PENDING!!!! Meanwhile, I told my few friends we didn’t get it and the kids… We decided with how close and stressful things are we weren’t going to tell anyone that we actually got it!

That weekend we did take the kids and showed them – these are the photos you see above!

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO HERE!

Stay tuned for PART 2!!