our little miracle

I wanted to blog about this for our family records.

We made a choice 2 years ago to buy a motor home before we bought or built a bigger home.

We felt that it would be more important to make great family memories before our kids started heading out for college and missions.

We didn't regret the choice, but we have been very crowded in our home for several years now.

We just planned on waiting a few more years, and we were trying to be patient.

A few days before Christmas Dave and I (Mariah was also with us) were going to Wal-Mart and we suddenly had this idea to go down a street and peek at a house that was for sale.  (Our good friends who had recently moved to that street were telling Dave about this house that was on a short-sale).

There was a phone number on the sign so we called it, and the realtor said he could be there in 5 minutes.

We have planned on building a home for many years - Dave already had designed the floor plan, and we knew EXACTLY what we wanted.

We walked through the house, and though it was an older home it really had EVERYTHING we had ever thought our family would need.

The realtor suggested that we make a really low offer because with a short-sale house you don't lose earnest money by making an offer, and because it could slow down the foreclosure process that was imminent.

We brought our kids through on Christmas Eve and made an offer (a ridiculously low offer) that evening.

We felt so strongly that we were supposed to be in that house.  
We also felt that somehow everything would work out perfectly.

We didn't hear anything back for a few months, which was great.

We had time to get our house ready to put on the market - painting, organizing, de-cluttering, new carpet, etc.

In those months we honestly didn't expect the bank to ever accept our offer.

One thing happened in our favor though - the bank that owned the mortgage sold it with a whole bunch of others.

Because of that the bank was pretty anxious to get rid of our house (that had been vacant for over a year now), and they were very willing to take a much lower payoff.

We heard back from them the end of April - THEY ACCEPTED OUR (ridiculously low) OFFER!

The only stipulation was that we needed to close in 45 days.

We quickly put our house on the market.

We knew we would never get the money we would need to pay a realtor 6% so we listed it ourselves.

Typical selling time in our area is 3 months, but we had friends with the same (almost exact) floor plan as us who had their home on the market for 3 years.

After 10 days with not even a single showing we were starting to panic.

We kept trying to remember how much we felt that things would work out the right way.

It's hard to have faith in things like that though, especially since we have had frustrating financial things happen in our past.

We decided to change our focus to finding a renter.

The thought of that made me really nervous though - so many horror stories.

We had a lot of people interested in renting, and started having a lot more people coming through the house.

About 3 weeks into this whole process we had a young couple come through our house, and they loved it.

They were ready to put earnest money down right on the spot.

We had signed papers by the end of the week.

Any time a snag would come up we were able to resolve it.

We still ended up having to pay an extra month of mortgage, but I still can't believe how smoothly everything went.

We still feel that this house is a huge blessing for us, and that for whatever reason Heavenly Father wanted us to be here.

We went back to our old house to help the new owners figure out a few things.

It was crazy how small it felt.

I don't know how we fit 11 people in that house for so long.

We're so grateful!

As promised - some (many) pictures of our new home.

We still have a lot of work and big plans for decorating and changing things, but we LOVE the extra room!

We went from 2400 square feet to nearly 4700 square feet, and we actually have empty spaces!!

MAIN FLOOR

entry way - really needs some decorating

Living room - no furniture yet.  The plan is to put a baby grand in here

family room right next to the kitchen
my husband's wish was that we would all have a place to sit at family night!

kitchen - my favorite room in the house
it really is nice and spacious
we painted walls and cupboards to make everything feel brighter, and I LOVE IT!!

my huge laundry room with space for the kids to put ALL their stuff out of sight

main floor bathroom

UPSTAIRS

Bedroom 1 - Corina and Elli's room

doubles as our guest room

Corina and Elli's bathroom
One of the biggest selling points of this house was all of the bathrooms connected to bedrooms -
with 7 daughters 5 bathrooms is heaven!

Bedroom 2 - Anna, Lea & Landon's room
(Akayla is sleeping in there until she leaves for college in about a month)

Anna, Lea & Landon's bathroom

Master bedroom
This room is in serious need of decorating!
It is completely boring and plain.
We have some ideas, but I would love input from anyone who would like to share!

Master bathroom

1 of the closets in the master bedroom - the other one is filled with craft stuff

DOWNSTAIRS

cold storage room - needs shelves

other side of the cold storage room

downstairs bedroom - Adri & Mariah's room

their room has the biggest walk-in closet (besides the master closet)

Adri & Mariah's bathroom

play area - Dave plans to make this area a really fun place for the kids
I'm excited about the shelves and organization area for all the toys,
but they're just excited to have their own place!

Tanner's "area"
As soon as Dave has the time Tanner will get walls and a door for his room!

theater room/media area/game room
Still not sure what we're going to do with this space.
I like it open, but Dave wants it closed off like our old theater room (only bigger)

I just noticed there are no pictures of the outside.
I guess that will be another post.
The yard at this place is what is taking all the extra time and effort.
It may take awhile, but it will be so worth it!!

good things:
Rachel Portman radio on Pandora
playing the piano
great family discussions!