The house story

It's driving me nuts that I'm so far behind, but it's kind of nice to reflect back a bit and see a bigger picture than I could at the time.

It's one of my little quirks that I try to finish what I start so I will get caught up, hopefully soon.  :)

So back to July....

Monday, July 16, after weeks of being "pre approved" for a home loan, we were told that the VA loan was no longer an option because the VA does not count the stipend we were to receive from the Army while he's in school as income.  I have to admit, the logic behind that is something I still don't understand.  So, with Clay's school starting in a week, I was slightly concerned (looking back is good to fade things).

We spent a lot of time online and on the phone trying to find a place to rent ASAP for all 8 of us and trying to stay calm for the kids.  I won't lie that letting go of the house we thought was an answer to prayers was hard.  It's hard when you plan to make things go as smoothly as possible and then those plans fall through at the last minute.

We were able to find a lady in the ward who was going to be renting her house out.  It wasn't quite what we had in mind (3 bedrooms & 1 bathroom completed) but we didn't know what else to do, so we told her we would take it, sight unseen.

Saturday, July 21 (the day after Ethan's birthday), we loaded up the two cars and made the about 4 hours to see what the next step was for us.

When we arrived, the sister from the ward had many from the ward there helping her move her things out and move them to a home she was moving to.  It was a crazy way to meet people.  So Clay jumped in and helped with the big furniture as I tried to keep the kids out of the way and see what we had said we would do.

That night we were invited over to a ward member's place for a cookout which was a lot of fun.  Christina was able to meet 2 of the young women in the ward and it was nice to be welcomed in like that.

That night, we picked up a few basics and went back to the house to set up air mattresses, etc.  I was grateful we were finally in Tennessee but I didn't sleep much that night.  I knew that home wasn't right for our family.

Sunday, we went to church and asked the bishop and others if they knew of anything else and spent the afternoon driving around looking at other options.   We were able to find 2 other homes we looked at in Kentucky that we could make work that would be available in a week or so.  So that evening, we went back to the sister in the ward and told her that her home wouldn't work for our family.  She had other people contact her saying they wanted to rent it so we were relieved that we weren't leaving her hanging.

Tuesday, July 24th orientation started at DCOM (Clay's school).  They had childcare for the kids so I could attend a spouses/significant other's orientation.  That afternoon, in a section just for the spouses, etc., they were asking if anyone had any questions and as embarrassing as it was, I raised my hand and said we were still keeping our options open for housing.  One guy in front of me said to talk to him after, he may know of something.  He ended up slipping out and I had to chase him down but he said his landlord had told him of another home he had to rent that was big.  So I called the landlord, who called us back and we went over to look at his place.

Even though the rent is quite a bit more than the other homes we looked at, we told him we would take his over 3000 sq ft home.  It has 4-5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and lots of places for the kids to run, inside and out.  But it wasn't going to be ready for a couple of weeks.

The home we thought we were going to rent, we needed to be out of by Wednesday evening so we were debating what to do.  We called the Relief Society President, who was on vacation, to ask if she knew of anything.  (Have I mentioned how much I don't like asking for help?)  I think the Lord was teaching me a lot of humility at this point.  We were at the mercy of everyone else.

Luckily, her family was finishing a move from one home to another in the area and it was pretty vacant and we could stay there until our place was ready.  We were so grateful to have a place to go to.  There was one room (the master bedroom suite) that had AC so we all slept in the one room--it was huge!!!

We ended up being there for about 3 1/2 weeks (delay after delay at the home we would rent) and were so excited when we could move into our home on August 17th.