Monday, May 11, 2015

Well, that was unexpected!

Ou life has been a whirlwind the last few weeks months. We started out the year with few goals, mainly consisting of fixing up the house to sell next year, and maybe working towards having another baby.

Then God said, "oh dear children, amazing things are planned for you. Hold on to me, trust me, and we'll go on this adventure together." And my, oh my, has it been quite amazing and crazy so far!

In January, God put such a heavy burden on our hearts for adoption. We both knew that this was what God wanted for us, so we prayed, planning to wait until this Fall to start the process.

February, God said 'Ha! Just kidding, you're not starting the process this Fall, you are starting NOW. SURPRISE!!!!'

March, Josh and I both knew, if we were going to adopt, we needed to sell our house, so we started to get things ready, trying to fix things up... thinking that we'd put our house up for sale mid-April. And, in my mind, thinking we'd have until July or August before we had to move. End of March, someone came to look at the place.

April, now behind on house fixing up due to our crazy life, and feeling a bit down about the overwhelming task that still lay before us to sell the house. Mid-April - our house sold. Ahhhhhh!!!!! Ok, freaked out. Cleaned, scrubbed, made things inspection ready, tried to pack and haul some things out to my sisters house. Oh, and had phone call with adoption agency that said 'well, we need to wait until June to match you with some kids... so don't start your home study yet.' Which, was fine, because now we were moving... and we didn't know where! And, to update the home study to a new house would be something like a $700 fee.

Kayla, breathe. Yes, you wanted to start your home study, like yesterday, and yes, you wanted to be matched and start build a relationship with your kids like a week ago, and you want to know where you'll be living when you sell your house, like now... but...

End of April, Josh and I go look at an old church that was for sale. Yes, let me say that again. Old church.

Slight background story for you before I go on. Josh has always wanted to buy an old school building and fix it up into a home. Last year, at the end of February, when snow was waist deep, we found a school, that was amazing, and we trudged through that snow with three kids and a realtor to go see the place. Talk about the most amazing old building you could imagine. I even found a picture of it, just to show you... 

How awesome! It was a ton of work to fix up, and not exactly livable right away, but the potential was endless! Well, the day we hauled our minions through waist deep snow, to see the old abandoned school house, three other people put in an offer for it that night. Alas, we did not get it.

For the last year, this place has haunted us, literally. We had dreams about how amazing it would be, I'd wake up thinking we had bought it... I think Josh went into a depression for like a month or two because he felt like he lost his dream. Yes, we were nuts, but we both wanted it so bad. Forget that we may have not been thinking about living in super unsafe conditions with 3 small children... but you know, logic is not always our strong point.

Anyway, after scouring the real estate website every day, day and night, for weeks, and having no luck finding anything we'd want to live in, I came across this old church.

Can I just also pause for a moment and say that my realtor was FREAKING OUT because she sold our house so fast, and she knew we had no place to go once we closed on our house? She's awesome, and I totally appreciated her concern, because I was too stressed out to be concerned, so she just did it for both of us ;) And, I just kept having this odd peace that everything was going to work out perfectly... even though I had no idea how. Oh, but then when she found out about this church, I think she just got doubly concerned and probably about had a heart attack... we're good at doing that to people ;)

Anyway, back to the story...

Now, a year ago, I would have been giddy and excited to find such a place at an amazing price... but guys, lets face it. I was stressed out! I didn't even want to show it to Josh at first, because all I could think about was work... and did I mention I've been planning a huge vendor/fair for like 4 months while all this other stuff was going on? More work did not exactly sound appealing. So I did some digging, made sure this place was actually livable with 3 children, and safe. That there was a kitchen, and bathrooms... and not creepy... Anyway, so I swallowed my big ol' chunk of 'what the heck am I thinking' and called up my husband to look at the place online.

He LOVED it! Oh the potential, oh the ideas... oh the work ;) So we went to look at it. And I got to say, it really was not bad at all. Everything was in remarkably good condition, the carpet was actually decent (besides the weird orange color), the rooms were actual bedroom sizes, and the best part? It had a huge basement the kids could ride their bikes in. Ok, if you live in Minnesota, where the winters are 9 months, and the temps get to -40 degrees, you may know just how awesome that is.

So, we put an offer in on it...

May 3rd, offer accepted... we just bought a church!

We just bought a church...

We just bought a church y'all!

Oh holy crap, still not sure what we're thinking, but I do think it's going to be amazing.

Oh, and then May 9th, biggest vendor fair EVER, and crazy crazy crazy AHHHH! I'll talk about that another time.

ANYWAY... so, want to hear a few cool numbers and dates?

May 28th we close on our house... which is only like 17 days from now... which I'm just ignoring that fact because HOLY CRUD MUFFINS that's way too soon and my house is a chaotic MESS.

Ahem.

June 10th, we close on our new church home. And, super cool crazy God timing? We're going to get to start our home study, and be matched with our kids at pretty much the exact same time as we buy the new place! AKA - we don't have to jump through extra hoops, and we don't have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to change the address, AND we're going to have a big enough house to hold all these kiddos in! HOW AMAZING!

I'll share with you more of our plans for our new home as things get close. I'm thinking of having a section on this blog called 'This Old Church' instead of my husbands favorite TV show, This Old House...  but guys. Seriously? God is pretty gosh darn amazing!


Now... off to hide behind my computer or phone and pretend I don't have to pack my entire house up and move in two weeks  have a meeting about how the vendor fair went and what we can do better next time... and pick up boxes on the way home...

2 comments:

  1. Wow, that is a lot of AWESOME!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Holy crap!! That's so cool! I can't wait to see what the church looks like! What a cool place to live!

    ReplyDelete

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