We Are Thankful For Our House

We are so thankful for our awesome house.  Also, our awesome neighborhood.  The story of how we ended up with this house is also an awesome one.  I had been wanting to wait until like August to apply for our pre-approval and start looking so we had a few months with our new salary to see what we could really afford.  Well, Aaron was already sick of the commute so he applied for our pre-approval without really telling me. We got our pre-approval on July 6.  My uncle was our realtor and so we let him know right away to start finding us places to look at.  He was going to go out of town, so we had to wait for him to come back to start looking.  We found a number of places we wanted to look at.  So we went on a Friday night.  We looked at quite a few houses.  We found one we really liked and wanted to put an offer on it, but it was a short sale and already had one offer on it.  There was another house we wanted to see but we couldn't get into see it even though our realtor had told them we were coming.  So that night I told our realtor to reschedule that one and also look to see if there are any houses that aren't short sales that we could look at since we were going out again anyway.  So we went again the next day and we still didn't end up being able to get into the house we had originally wanted to see.  We did end up looking at the house we ended up with and it was bank owned, not short sale.  Also it had just come on the market a few days before.  We had been want a 3 bedroom with an unfinished basement.  This one has 4 bedrooms with an unfinished basement.  It had pretty much everything we wanted plus more!  So we put an offer on it first thing Monday morning.  On July 21, we found out our offer was accepted.  We didn't even have to go back and forth negotiating. The rest of the time until we closed was annoying because it took a lot longer than it should have because of the realtor and bank dragging their feet.  We gave our 1 month notice to our landlord(another blessing!  we were on a month-to-month lease) in hopes we would close and move by the end of August.  We ended up closing the last Monday in August.  We moved Tuesday the 30th.  Talk about cutting it close.  We moved the day before our lease expired.  We are so grateful to be done with that place.  It was only like 900 sq. feet, old, and the landlord was horrible.  We now have over 3000 sq. feet!  Each kid has their own room!  I feel blessed everyday that we were able to get this place.  If we had been able to see the house we wanted to see the first night, we would have never looked at this one.  We could also still be waiting on a decision about one of the short sales we would have put offers on.  Also, this neighborhood is amazing.  The neighbors are all so nice and welcoming.  The ward is awesome.  The neighborhood is so safe.  We absolutely love it here and feel like the Lord knew this is where we would be happiest.