For all of you out there reading this, please bear with me. I am new to the blogging world somewhat. I tend to type a LOT! I just wanted to start a place where I can keep family updates so that our newest addition will one day be able to read it (if he even cares).
We will start from the beginning. Sometime in the middle of 2012, Weston and I decided that we should start thinking about expanding our family. We had been together for 6 years at the time of the discussion. We were not getting any younger. From the talk of a new baby, came the talk of a new house. Two humans and two Siberian Huskies can fill up a 1300 square foot house very quickly. We were running out of room. I was becoming anxious about the amount of space we had left. As much as I love our cute first house, I knew it was time to take the next step. We started looking at houses. We originally looked on southeast side of Decatur. I grew up on this side of town, love the area, and wanted to still stay close to my parents (they lived three blocks away from our first house). The problem we kept running into was that all the houses needed lots of work done to them. Plus they were not good prices for the amount of space. We would've had to go outside our price range.
So then we started looking on the internet at Priceville and the southwest side of Decatur (specially in the Oak Lea neighborhood). Once again we just couldn't find that "perfect" house. One day, Weston sent me a link to a brand new neighborhood called Princeton Place. It was pretty far out there, approx 15 minutes from my parents house, but it would mean we would be able to build our own house. A brand new house that we could create that would have all the features that we really wanted..what else could a girl really want? We contacted Kim Hallmark, the realtor, in the middle of November. We went with her to visit the neighborhood. At the time, they had only built 8 houses. They were in the process of building one that we were able to walk through. We met the builder, Danny Hill. I just got this really good feeling about him. I still was hesitant about moving far away from my parents, esp after baby talk. We kept looking, but I kept going back to that neighborhood. I couldn't get it out of my mind. Finally I told Weston that I wanted to move there. We met with Danny and Kim in December to put money down on our lot. The next week, we met with Danny again to tell him the plan that we liked. We all agreed that we would not start the process of building until Weston and I gave the go-ahead. Danny had said that it would take about 4-6 months to build the house, so we wanted to start the process of selling our house first. The housing market was still hurting, so we knew it might take awhile.
We spent the month of December painting the house. We painted the inside and outside. We had some shrub work done. We even rented a storage unit to get all of the extras out of the house. It was a hectic December! Not the most memorable holidays for sure :) January 11th, we met with Kim to put the house on the market. Of course a couple of weeks later, we would find out we were pregnant!!
Word of advice to all: might not be the best idea to sell a house, be in tax season, and get pregnant all at the same time. I was on an emotional roller coaster those first couple of months. Not to mention, gained quiet a bit of weight in the first trimester.
The building process has been a lot of fun, but also stressful. I love seeing it all come together. At the same time, with not being a visual person, it has been super hard trying to choose everything. I can't see the kitchen cabinets, floors, paint, and counter tops in my head, so I am hoping we choose everything correctly. We went full out picking out everything for the house as soon as tax season was over. Weston was leaving for a backpacking trip in July, so he wanted everything picked out before then. It turned out to not be a bad plan. Now it is June when I am typing this and we have everything chosen for the house. We just have to wait for it to be finished.
Activity on our first house was slow at first. Those winter months during tax season, it just dragged. It wasn't bad though since I was so busy with work that I didn't mind not having to keep the house clean. It picked up a lot in March. We ended up getting our first offer (well technically it was our second since our first was from our builder, Danny, that was 25,000 lower than asking price) at the end of March. It was for 10,000 less than what we were asking and they asked us to pay closing. We would've ended up coming out of pocket if we did that. We asked them to pay closing, but never heard back from them. On April 19th, we went camping with Angeleck and Jason. While we were gone, a man came to look at our house. When we got home, he came back for a second look while I was here. He was really nice. He was from FL and was looking for a house in this area because his Mom lives in Hsv and sis lives in Decatur. He was going to use it as an investment property. He came back again to look in the middle of May. Kim told me that he was going to choose between two houses. Then she said he put an offer on the other house. I was so disappointed and discouraged. I thought we were going to end up having to rent the first house and live in the second. I DID NOT want to rent. I just didn't want to have to deal with renters. I was starting to get depressed about it all, but kept faith that God would take care of us. Weston would have to remind me of that every now and then :) FINALLY on May 21st (our anniversary and the day we found out the sex of our baby), we got an offer on the house!!! Bart, the guy from FL, decided to buy both houses that he liked. It was a great offer. Actually it was for the amount that I bought the house for originally, so we wouldn't have to take anything out of pocket. We would even get something back. Plus by him offering the same amount as I paid, I wasn't penalized with my original loan on the house. ALSO, and this is the best part, he was buying this as an investment property, so he said we could rent it from him for the month of July while our house was being finished. We closed on June 25th, 2013. God really is amazing!!! He always takes care of you and blesses you!!! Prayers answered.
Now on to the story of how baby Tanner came into the picture...
