Day 14

It's our 14th day in contract and we have had pretty smooth sailing so far. Not because it was easy, but because when presented with a roadblock, God simply moved it out of our way and made our path straight again. It's amazing seeing and experiencing first hand the power of prayer.
There were 2 big road blocks that could have killed the entire process in a heartbeat.
1) The appraisal.
We agreed with the seller upon a specific price in the contract agreement. The agreement states that the amount to be loaned to us is dependent on the appraised value of the home. In other words, the bank will not give us more money than they say the home is worth. For them it's a risk they won't take.
So if the home appraised for higher than our offer amount, the bank would have no problem loaning us the funds, but may make the seller think twice and want to renegotiate. If it appraises for less, then the bank will only give us that amount and if we want to take the risk, the remainder of the amount agreed is on us, which could be anywhere from $1000 to $15,000. This could kill our deal.
We asked for our friends and family to pray with us that the house would appraise for what we offered so to avoid any of these further complications.
A few days later, the appraisal was in. It had appraised for EXACTLY the amount we prayed for. Praise God! That was amazing.

Then came 2) FHA loan requirements
FHA is pretty stickler about the terms by which they give out loans. One of those terms is that the house in question has to be listed for a certain period of time to be considered for this type of loan. Due to the situation that this round is technically a For Sale By Owner and that it was not listed in order to save the seller the 3% listing fee, our house on Opal Crest does not meet this criteria at this stage. If the Underwriter says that this cannot qualify because it doesn't meet this contingency, the deal is over. No loan. No house.
Again we gathered our friends and family in prayer.
The next day we heard back from the underwriter.
Because of our unique situation, and that we were in contract already when the house was listed in April, and because of all the garbage we've had to go through to even try to buy this home, the underwriter decided that she was totally fine with our history on this property and that there would be an exception to this rule just for us. :)

I feel like God really wants us here. He keeps manifesting His power by continually breaking down these huge walls and making the impossible happen. I mean, the chances of all of these crazy details happening by chance?? There's no way.
We keep finding that if one thing had happened only slightly differently, we would have no chance. We had to go through a 4 month short sale and losing the home to a foreclosure auction to have even had the opportunity to make a deal by this time of the year. If we hadn't we still might not have known where we were going to be.

It's so crazy, that even though we may have more roadblocks to come, my faith that God has our best at heart reminds me to look at all he's done and not to worry about a thing. He's in control. He's got it. All I have to do is trust.

Urban Farmer Dreamin

I'm surprised that I haven't yet written about the changes over the past week! Ah!
Welllllll, last Wednesday we found out that the owner officially accepted our offer and that we are in escrow! Woo hoo! It was a nerve racking week and a half but finally we got the answer that we wanted. :)
We're getting more and more excited as things progress smoothly, no bumps in the road so far so we hope that trend stays true until the end of this 35 day process.
It's nice being able to have a bit of a glimpse of what our life will be like for the next few years with a specific place in mind. It's been so up in the air for so long, almost like we've been dating different houses and wondering which one could be "The One" and now we might have found the one we get to marry. Haha if that makes sense.
Being able to visualize something instead of the idea of something has made my mind explode with artistic ideas of how to make this house our home. I can't get too ahead of myself though, since the keys are not yet in our hands, but I can daydream a bit right?

So I've always wanted to be an urban farmer. Random right? But ever since I was little and we would run into my best friends mom's garden and eat fresh veggies right out of the ground, I have dreamed of having my own garden full of fresh veggies. Actually, probably since that time when I was really little and buried my moms store bought veggies in the backyard... haha. Anyways, it's been a long time.
I've been on Pinterest a ton looking at different designs for garden structures. Ways to keep the garden safe from cats turning it into their litter box (wood frames with screens?), ways to make it cute and inexpensive (painted a cute color with a fun gate?), ways to make it a place that I can come and relieve stress by purging my garden of weeds and bugs (DIY bug spray)
I love vegatables :)

Anyways, this is our life for the next month. Hoping and waiting and turning in more paperwork, and driving to meet appraisers, home inspectors, etc. We're praying hard that it will all go smoothly and that in 30 days we'll be moving in!

Heart in my Throat

Well it's been a week since we gave our offer to the new owner of our house on Opal Crest.
It's been a long week of phone calls, faxing, signing, emailing, negotiating, etc. It's all kind of a blur.
Tuesday: They countered, we countered back.
Wednesday: We heard back that they countered again, we basically accepted their terms, but didn't hear anything back Thursday or Friday.
Saturday: Finally, while we were once again in the middle of nowhere, 4 wheeling on Fordyce trail, my phone rings.

It was our realtor.
He had finally heard back. The owner had been really busy all week to start.
He also just found out that Home Depot charged his credit card anyways for the carpet and paint since the contractor already ordered and cut the carpet.
He thought the deal was off since we would now have to pay for the carpet and paint.
But our realtor told him that as long as we've waited for the house that doesn't he think we would still like to try to work something out??
So he gave him a call and talked. The conversation ended with an agreement that the new owner would find out just how much of the carpet he can cancel, and that whatever was left we would agree to pay for. While it was a bummer, we knew that having carpet already installed would buy us time to save up for the flooring that we really want. It sounded like the guy was still willing to work with us.
Then about an hour or so later, or realtor called again to let us know that the guy was able to move the carpet order to another one of his investment properties and that we would no longer have to pay for that. All we needed to do was wait until Tuesday for him to contact the escrow company and he would have the contract over to us.
Today is Tuesday.
My heart is in my throat as we patiently wait to see if he kept his word.

It's Only Been 3 Days?!?!

What a crazy great weekend. It feels as though too much has happened to have all fit in just 3 days.
Saturday and Sunday we were up at Woodleaf for the annual youth worker staff retreat with our church. It was an awesome weekend full of fellowship, meetings, worship, fishing, frisbee golfing, relaxing, and blackberry picking.

 Sunday was also my 22nd birthday. :) It was a pretty fun day full of surprises from my hubs and friends.
It started out with a surprise necklace made with a beautiful Lapis Lazuli gemstone, created by my very own Angelo Parisi ;)

This is it here :)

(minus the huge omega chain from the 80's, I got a thinner more modern chain to go with it)

 

Next, after lunch, I had found out that my dear friends had stayed up all night baking my favorite confetti cake cupcakes that Angelo had sneekily had Johanna buy the ingredients for. They came over to where I was eating lunch with a tray full of cupcakes with birthday candles and all singing "Happy Birthday" to me :) What a great surprise!

Then, Angelo surprised me with a sweatshirt that I had been wanting that I thought I couldn't even get. Hume Lake Joshua Wilderness Institute Honesty Purity Integrity Sweatshirt! Long name, but thats what it is. His good friend Robby had been working at Hume all summer and I guess Angelo had him sneekily get that for me too! :)

Then, as if that wasn't enough surprises...

When we got home from the retreat, he had his brother sneekily bring over my last surprise present, something I have been talking about getting since we got married 3 years ago.......

 AN ORECK VACCUUM!!!!!

 And yes, the 50's housewife in me was quite excited about this awesome gift! I absolutely LOVE it :)

We then changed out of our grungy camp clothes and headed off to my birthday party with my family. Mom made my favorite: Beef Stew, garlic cheesy bread and chocolate pudding for dessert :) Nom Nom Nom :) It was a fun night full of laughter, conversation, and Settlers of Catan.

Monday morning we woke up with a brand new fresh day to celebrate my birthday with just us two. We had planned to go to the blackberry farm or go on a hike, then head over to my favorite restaurant Ruth's Chris Steakhouse for a dinner of filet mignon, and lobster. It was going to be a great day :)

When we found out that the Blackberry farm was closed we decided to HIKE! Loch Leven Lakes! It's a 9 mile hike round trip with 3 lakes to see at the top of the mountain. Here are some pics of the trip :)

Beautiful Day for a Hike

 

Train Tracks

 

 Me and my love :)

My Handsome Hubs

 

The lake looked too good not to jump in, but boy was it coooold. 

 As we were sitting on the rocks in the sun drying off from our swim in the lake, we got a phone call from our realtor Anthony. He finally got in touch with the new owner of the house we had originally been in contract to buy on Opal Crest and said "We have a short window of opportunity here, the new owner is willing to work with us to possibly sell you this house! Can you come down to meet us now??" 
Now, mind you, we are in the middle of nowhere, half way to Lake Tahoe up the freeway, and on top of that we are 3.5 miles away from our car. But regardless, we immediately jump up and say "We're coming now! Cancel dinner, cancel everything we're on our way!"
So thus we start RUNNING down the mountain as fast as we can, jumping over rocks and branches, running over bushes and granite slabs, blowing my whistle to let the bears know we're coming so we don't barrel down the hill and startle them, haha, and what took us 2 and a half hours to climb up, took us an hour and ten minutes to run down.
We made it to the car and I frantically cancelled dinner, and mapped out how long it would take to get down to the house. We made a quick pit stop drive thru for dinner and ran by our apt to change out of lake water smelling clothes and rushed through traffic and made it just in time.

Out of breath and sore to the core from our crazy hike workout (our muscles were feeling what the adrenaline from the run was hiding now, oh boy) we walk up to meet the man who holds the key... to our house... well maybe our house. :)
He gave us a tour (I had totally forgotten what the house looked like since we had seen it nearly 5 months ago) along with modification suggestions to make the home more open and modern. He seemed almost as excited to sell us the house as we were to buy it. Good news, I hope.

Then we got the story that made me realize just how much of God's hand is in this:
The home had been stripped and was all ready for Home Depot to come over and install new carpet, paint the walls, and to make the modifications that would allow the seller to re-sell the home at a higher price. A price, mind you, that would put the home out of our reach.
Monday morning, the new owner wakes up to a phone call from Home Depot "your credit card has been declined"
"What? My credit card is fine. It's never been declined. Try again"
"I'm sorry sir, it's still saying declined"
So he calls his credit card company and finds out that he had a $45 balance that needed to be paid before he can use his card.
"That's weird. That never happens"
So he gets in his car and drives over to pay the bill so that Home Depot can come make the modifications. Once the bill is paid, it's a done deal, no returns or refunds, the modifications are happening.
Now, our realtor had been trying to obtain the contact info for the new owner for weeks now. Monday afternoon, he finally got the new owners phone number. So he immediately gives him a call.
The guy answers the phone as he's driving to pay the bill. If he had gotten the number 10 min later the house would have been gone out of our reach.
"Hold on! I have buyers that are ready to make a deal now."
And that's when he called us.

That night, we signed our official offer to the owner and now we await his answer. He is supposedly talking to his business partners today and will let us know soon! If he accepts, we go into escrow and will move in in 30 days!!!!

Lord Jesus,
If this is your will for us please make it happen soon!
We love you so much!
Jennifer

Faith and Heartache

I wonder if our life is going to change in the next few weeks.

We are once again hoping and praying and working on purchasing another house. We went down to take a look at it last night and it's practically perfect, but I also feel as if I've said that about so many houses, I wonder if this is really the perfect one. God knows.

The house isn't technically on the market yet, as the owner is deciding whether to remodel it to try to get a higher price. I hope not, that would possibly blow our budget and they would probably put in modifications that I wouldn't want. (carpet instead of laminate, paint colors I don't like, porcelain sink instead of stainless, etc.) We would much rather do all those things ourselves.

We could find out as early as the end of the week, or as late as a month from now what the deal is. This waiting game once again has my stomach in knots.
I was kind of hoping I wouldn't love it, because then it would be easy to say "if it happens, it happens" but my heart really does long for it. The open layout perfect for entertaining and having tons of teenagers over, the private bedrooms down the hallway, the big backyard for my kids and dog, the big side yard for my husbands toys, the open kitchen so I can still be a part of the party when I'm the hostess, the good neighborhood that I can feel safe letting my kids play outside, the closeness to our community.... my heart aches thinking that it may never be.

Oh God,
You know the desires of our heart...
I pray that you would bless us with this.
Love you.

House Hunting: Year 3, Month 7, Rnd 13

The past 2 weeks have such a whirlwind. You know how there are those periods of time when there is so much that happens it feels like when you look back at the beginning of it all it feels like it was 100 years ago? Yeah, its like that.

Backtracking a bit, back in January Angelo and I decided to seriously start looking at buying houses again. It was a big deal for us deciding to get back on that horse.
I had just gotten to the point where after trying to buy a home in Roseville for 3 years, I had accepted that maybe God wasn't going to give us one, and I was okay with that. Then, of course, God being God, decided to say "Okay now that you've learned contentment, time to try again." and thus we were thrown back into the home buying process, this time, He was directing us toward Elk Grove.

It's really hard to buy a home right now, since the whole credit crunch a few years ago, they want so much more proof of income and paperwork showing that you have good credit, zero debt, and so on and so forth. The first few months were spent jumping through the hoops to show all the proof they needed for us to qualify for a home loan. Then on top of all that, most homes for sale are short sales or foreclosures which are infamous for taking months and months to close, if they close at all.

Then began the search.

We started looking at houses on March 19th and boy, we were in for a surprise. We went out and looked at 3-5 houses, then deciding which of those was our favorite, we decided to put in our first offer.

The house had gone on the market that morning at 8am. We had our offer into the listing agent by 3pm and were excited as we thought about how lucky we were to get our offer in on the first day! Well, we were excited, until we found out that our offer was not the first, but the TWELFTH offer they had gotten that day. Whoa...

We still prayed and hoped, then a few days later, we found out that they had chosen a different offer.
We did this 5 more times over the next month. Offer in, offer denied. Hope come. Hope lost.
We smiled, we cried, we got excited, we got upset, and ultimately we got super frustrated.
This led to endless nights of intense conversations about where we felt God was leading us. We had thought He had made it so clear that this is what He wanted, having brought our hearts to a place where we were willing to look outside our box of what we thought we wanted in Roseville and start pursuing this seemingly "open door" in Elk Grove.

After a ton of prayer and seeking wise council, we pulled our hearts back in and realized that if it's meant to happen, God will make it happen. We can try as hard as we want, and look at real estate websites every minute we have to  make sure we don't miss any, but ultimately, it's out of our hands.

The next day, we got a call from our realtor that our offer had finally been accepted on house #7. It was a huge praise. We had finally gotten a bit of confirmation that we were heading the direction God wanted us.

The next 4 months we hoped and waited as the bank went through the short sale process appraising, trying to qualify for various government programs, and conversing with the sellers attorney on the short sale.

The next thing we know, we find out that the house had been foreclosed on and was sold at auction to a cash investor for $30k less than our offer. That was 2 weeks ago.
We were totally shocked and once again were thrown into the unknown. Unless the cash investor would like to sell us the house for our original offer, we were going to have to start over, again.

My attitude at first was very positive. After 4 months of hearing nothing, it was nice to get a yes or no. "God has something better. We prayed that if this wasn't the one that he would take it away. So maybe this was an answer to prayer. I'm totally okay because I know God has my best at heart and will lead us to that" But I knew that there would be a point when it would really sink in and I would probably have a breakdown.

It came. Friday night as I looked at the real estate websites once again for new listings I felt hopeful still, but as I clicked the link to send a listing to my realtor for viewing, my heart knew that this was our reality, starting over.
I cried so hard. Thank goodness for my wonderful husband who held me as I let myself finally grieve over the loss of what we thought might have been our home. I had so much emotion bottled up that being able to get it out, then brush off my face and stand tall ready to move forward, it felt so good.

The following Monday we drove out to look at the house I had emailed to my realtor. It was near perfect, with only minor compromises, but it was all made up for by the fantastic neighborhood. So we decided once again to try to put in our offer. So Tuesday morning, we submitted offer #8.

We sent messages out to all of our family and friends and posted on our prayer forums on Facebook asking them to pray that God would give us wisdom and discernment and that he would bring us to the home he wanted us to be in. Whether it is this, or somewhere else.

We got our answer Friday morning. Somewhere else. Once again, our offer was rejected.

We still continue to pray that God will lead us to where he wants us to be. Unfortunately this story doesn't have a happy ending yet, but we feel more at peace every time we get the "not yet" answer to our prayer as we learn to trust in Him more every day.

I have learned so much about patience, perseverance, the power of prayer one-on-one and when others come along side us in prayer, I have learned more about my husband, about God and about myself as we trudge through this trial. At times it hurts, but we still have faith that one day, he will answer our prayer. I wouldn't trade all the pain for anything. We have learned so much and that, my friends, is a bit of the goodness that God always promises.

So today, there are currently no homes on the market that are a good fit for our family or budget, so we wait.

Will we still be able to move in to our home we were in contract on by Aug 31?
Will the investor even want to sell us the house?
Will we have a home before our lease is up in Roseville in December?
Will we be in Elk Grove or does God have somewhere else in mind?
Will the next time be the last time we put in an offer?
Will we know the answer to these questions soon?

Well, God knows. Maybe he'll let us in on it soon :)

Come What May

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

I've gotten pretty good at this patience thing over the past few months. At the beginning of March, Angelo and I began our search for our new home. 6 weeks went by and we had lost 6 houses. Offers in, offers denied. The emotional roller coaster of finding "the one" then putting our offers in and waiting for the response was exhausting. For me, it was once the offer was in and we had to wait for the reply that I would stress out. For Angelo, it was when we found out that we didn't get it. It was hard trying to find God's will in it all and we were constantly on edge. Our emotions were a mess and we were at each others throats from all the frustration. It was no fun at all.

After weeks of almost every emotion in the book, we finally broke down thinking that our apartment was lookin pretty good (being that it is free of all this emotional constipation) and prayed that God would bring us to where He wanted us to be, regardless of whether that was in a house or not, all emotions aside. We talked with my awesome dad who also gave the both of us a new perspective on it. The truth was, this is God's money, this is God's house. If he wants to spend his money on a house and bless us with the opportunity to live in it, that was up to him. All we had to do was trust that no matter what happened, that we were in his will. This thought gave me so much peace, and for the first time I was able to wait patiently and peacefully for the verdict on the last house we put an offer in on. After nearly a week with no reply, I had come to the point where I would be okay with whatever was to happen, house or no house.

We we're on our way to Bible study, ready to share with the group again that there was no reply and to ask for more prayer, when we got a phone call from our realtor. I could barely hear him in the noise of the car when I heard a muffled "I'm so excited for you guys".... "wait.... excited for what? I didn't hear you" Then came the words that we had been wanting to hear so badly "They accepted your offer!"
I screamed and the smile on my face hurt my cheeks it was so big. We weren't through the woods yet, but this was the best news we had gotten yet.

It's been 6 weeks since, and being that it is a short sale its, moving along surely at a snails pace. I've been amazed at how much at peace I have been through the process. Come what may, I know I'll be fine and I'll be where God wants me.
Every week or so we get news that the papers are moving and that the answer is still "yes" until we hear otherwise.
Next step, hearing the banks response to the offer. Will they accept? I hope so, but there are no promises. Then comes the loan process and all the hoops to jump through that comes with that, and then escrow, and putting in our notice at the apt, then appliance shopping, then moving, then painting... We're taking each step one at a time. :)

Through it all Angelo and I have gotten closer and I wouldn't trade the stressful process for anything. We have learned a ton. Who knows, maybe third year, round 2, house 7 is a charm, or maybe it's just another opportunity to learn more about each other, money management, patience, endurance, and God's character.

Either way, Come what may.

Romans 8:28 - And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose