in the works

Obviously if you've read any of my posts lately you will know that our house is up for sale.  

So far we've had two showings.  Showings are great because we know somebody is interested in our little house (and have probably scoped it out online) but they can also be really inconvenient.  

I slept in late this morning and woke up to my phone ringing.  I didn't get it before it went to voicemail and it was a realtor asking to show our house around 2:30 this afternoon.  I was pretty excited but also dreaded the thought of having to get up and clean my butt off when I thought I had a day of leisure ahead of me.

I swept the floors in the kitchen and outside our front door, 

windexed the mirrors, windows, and half of the surfaces in the house,

 straightened the toys, 

folded the clothes, 

scrubbed the sinks,

and organized all of the miscellaneous items that were sitting out,

took a shower,

dressed the girls,

and got the heck outta dodge.

It's really amazing that even when the house is "clean" it takes a while to get it perfect.

Where are we moving, you ask?

Well, that is the part that is uncertain.

Originally the obvious choice was to look at houses and find one to move into.  

Our criteria has been: a lot more square footage, a finished* basement, a yard, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, etc.  The basics for a growing family of four.  

A little over a month ago we were pretty certain we had found the perfect house.  It was everything we wanted and more.  Even the decorating seemed perfect, except for a few minor details.  We loved the backyard - it had a great deck and it was a nice size, plus it had a play place that they were going to leave behind.  The basement was really cool - first off, it was finished, with an entertainment wall built-in, it had a little room under the stairs that I thought Haven could make into a fort and put a lot of her toys into, and they also had a chalkboard wall to draw on.  The exterior was so beautiful, it even had a turret up the front of it and one of the bedrooms had a really cool bump-out because of it.  The kitchen had beautiful tile floors and rich brown granite countertops.  And one of the coolest benefits was that it was about 1 minute away from my mom and grandma's houses.

We were sold after only 15 minutes of looking at it.  We made an offer right away that I thought was pretty dang good, especially in this market.  It just seemed like a no-brainer.  They counter-offered and we even went up a little bit with our offer.  A day or so later we learned they received another offer that was "the perfect offer".  We had a chance to counter offer one more time.  We made another offer, even allowing them time to build their new house before moving out, but we were apparently still outbid because they declined.  You would think I would've been devastated, but for some reason I wasn't.  I was  a little bummed and even confused, but not devastated like I would have thought.  Maybe that was God calming me and saying "Hey, there are better things to come."

So we've shopped around some more, but nothing has jumped out at us in the same way.  We will continue to look, but I'm starting to think we need to go in another direction.  A friend of ours mentioned buying a lot and building, so we've begun to consider that.  We've been warned it's a big undertaking, but we're also up for the challenge to get exactly what we want and need.

Please keep us in your prayers.  We want to make the best decision for our family.  The next house we buy will probably be about a 10-15 year house, so needless to say we want to like it and be comfortable there.  I have total faith that God will provide us with the perfect place to raise our girls.

*this is one we are willing to compromise on, but ideally we want it finished.