Buying a House is NOT for the Faint at Heart!

Ok, so I knew that going into the whole house hunting process, but geez, today has been a day! Between emails and phone calls not being returned as soon as I would like and finding out that our contract got hung up and therefore never got sent to our mortgage lady, this has been a scary day. Thankfully, I have a wonderful Mom and realtor (Jeff can't talk during most of the day since he's teaching) that keep reminding me that God has this and it's all in His control. Stress has no part of His provision for our lives. I've calmed down A LOT, but that is probably due to the fact that we have finally locked in an interest rate (and a great one at that!) and I've just signed about 35 pages of papers for our loan. Now we just have to get Jeff's signature and MAYBE I can breathe a little bit. We have been packing and packing and packing since last week. We decided that it was time to get rid of several "large" items since we either didn't need them anymore or didn't really have a place for it. I posted an ad on Craigslist Sunday afternoon that we are going to have a moving sale on Saturday. Yesterday, we had someone come look at our pub table I had listed and when we opened our garage, he started to shop! He ended up leaving with 1/2 our stuff and we ended up with $390! It's really neat to see God continue to provide. Especially since our first OB payment is due next Friday! Anyway, we are still set to close on September 12th. We have movers coming to move our heavy items on Friday, the 14th and then we have to be out the 15th. I so cannot wait to get over there and start decorating. Fall is my absolute favorite season and I have some fun fall decorations in mind for our house thanks to Pinterest. Oh, and baby update ~ Everything is great. I'm not feeling sick anymore and not even that tired. I think the whole house thing has really helped. I've had lots of energy to pack and move things into the garage. I will be 12 weeks at our appointment next Friday so I hope I get to hear the baby's heartbeat. Jeff can't take off to go to the appointments with me so I'll be going to most of them alone, but I guess that's the 3rd baby for us! :) The kids are still so excited and Emily had to get in some extra kisses to the baby this morning. I'm thankful they are excited about it and it's been sweet to watch them talk about it.

We Have a HOUSE!!

We have been renting for the last 2.5 years. We moved out of the Danville house because we wanted Preston to be in a good school district and we weren't positive Jeff would have a teaching contract so we took the safe road and started renting. We signed a 3 year lease for many reasons, but 1 being that we knew we wouldn't want to move again really quickly. Since last August, we have been house hunting. We have found a couple that we have fallen in love with along the way and even had an offer on one, but none of them came about. Until this weekend. We met our realtor at a foreclosure on Friday night. The house we met at was one of my favorites even though there were only a couple pictures online. The outside was beautiful and it had the right amount of bedrooms and bathrooms, etc. We walked around and spent about 45 mins at this house. They say when you know, you just know and I so wanted to "know" this was the house. Our realtor (who is a long time friend) told us she wanted us to look at another foreclosure in the neighborhood. It was on my list of houses we wanted to see, but I told her the backyard was bad and we had changed our minds about it. She took us to the house just for kicks and we walked in and KNEW. All 5 of us started oohing and ahhhing the moment we stepped into this house. It had everything I had on my list of desires (before we found out about Shands baby #3). Granite countertops, smooth ceilings, double ovens, hardwood floors, and the list goes on. This house had only been on the market for 17 days and we knew it wouldn't long. We went home and prayed about it, dreamed about it, and talked about it. Jeff was still very reserved about the backyard, but by the next afternoon, he had decided that there were plenty of options to fix it. We went back over there that afternoon and walked the property and it just felt right. There are a couple things that will need to be fixed, but all manageable. The inside is almost spotless. New carpet and fresh paint. Sunday afternoon, we went back over there with Carmen and as she, Jeff, and I stood outside, we all three mentioned how we had a peace about it. We didn't need to look any further because we were home. We went to her office and wrote up an offer. We gave the bank until Friday night to get back with us and I just knew it was going to be the longest week of my life. She called me yesterday afternoon and said they had already responded with a counter offer. We sent them back a counter and Carmen texted me this afternoon and said "We have a deal!!!!!!" We are set to close on September 12th and we couldn't be more excited. This has been a long time coming and it will be nice to finally have a place of our own again. We give all the glory to God and His perfect timing.

Our new house before it gets some love from Green King. :)

Open House and First Day

Thursday night, August 2nd, we had Meet the Teacher Night at the kids school. It didn't start until 6:30, but at 5:45, my impatient self couldn't take it anymore and we drove up to the school. Obviously I'm not the only impatient one because there were lots of other kids and parents there. They finally put the list of classes out so we jumped out of the car and walked (very quickly) up to the front. We are very blessed with a school full of wonderful teachers, but as a perk for teachers, Jeff gets to request who our kids have. You have to list your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice and there is still no guarantee as to who your kids will get. Preston got Mrs. Kim Wood. We have heard nothing but wonderful things about her and look forward to a wonderful year. Emily got Mrs. Lori Bowles. We have also heard wonderful things about her. We would have requested Mrs. Leslie (Preston's K teacher), but she also teaches pre-first and we weren't sure if she would be teaching that again. Mrs. Lori is very sweet and I know Emily is going to LOVE her. We took a few pics and then joined friends for a late dinner. Today was the first day of school. The kids were both very excited and couldn't wait to get to school. Preston had been very adamant about us not taking him to class. He told me "I've got this." While we were waiting for the doors to open, he turned to me and told me that I could take him to his class as long as I didn't take any pictures. :) My sweet boy! They both had GREAT days and were bouncing off the walls last night! I thought school was supposed to wear you out, but they seemed to have extra energy. They couldn't wait to go back today. I think this is going to be a fantastic year and can't wait to see all the growth!

ATL Day 3

It's so hard to remember what happened on day 3 now that our life has been turned upside down a bit. Shoot, I can't even remember what the actual date was now! Oh yeah, day 3 was my birthday. We went to the Coca Cola Museum and spent the morning there. It was a lot of fun, but our favorite part was the tasting part. We got to taste soda's from around the country. Most were horrible, but there were a couple that we liked. Toward the back was a section where you went up to a computer screen and could flavor your favorite Coke products. For example, you could pick coke and then flavor it with raspberry, lime, vanilla, orange, etc. The possibilities were almost endless. All of us really enjoyed that. When we exited, we all got our own glass bottle of coke that we got to keep. The kids were a bit disappointed that they didn't get to drink it, but we were all pretty "coked out" for the day. After that excitement, we went to the fountain of rings. It's located where the olympics were held. It's basically exactly what it says... a fountain of rings. The kids got to run in and out of the water with a million other kids. They had a lot of fun and Jeff and I enjoyed people watching. We went back to the hotel and got ready to go to the American Girl store and dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Emily was completely overwhelmed with everything at the AG store and ended up picking out new pj's and a carrier for her doll, Belle. She also picked out the big doll that she is going to get for her birthday. She had her pick of any doll in the store and she picked Emily. We went to Cheesecake Factory afterward and ate until our hearts were content. One funny thing was that since the restaurant was right outside the mall, we parked our car near AG and walked inside the mall to the restaurant. We made sure to ask the hostess if they would lock the mall doors since we had parked pretty far away. She said they wouldn't lock the doors to the mall entrance, but they would lock the store doors. SO, after our bellies were FULL, we walked to the mall doors and of course, they were locked. We walked what seemed like forever in the ATL heat and finally got back to our car. By the time we got back to the hotel, we were DONE. We were able to go to the pool and let the kids play in the water until after 10pm. It was a wonderful birthday spent with my favorite 3 people.

Day 3 Pics

More Pics Day 3

I really should learn how to add more pictures to 1 post....

I love this man!! And notice that nice birthday present in the background?! :-)

Shands Family of 5

Well, everything is confirmed and we are set to have baby #3 on or around March 8th, 2013! We got to have an ultrasound first thing at the doctor on Friday and got our first picture of this little one. There isn't much to see in the picture, but when I looked at that screen and saw its little heart beating ever so fast, my heart skipped a beat. We can't hear the heartbeat until after the 1st trimester, but the tech measured the heartbeat and it was 160 bmp. Perfect. We made it "official" yesterday by putting up pictures that my friend, Elizabeth Lee took for us. We are overwhelmed with the amount of support by all of our family and friends and look forward to sharing this blessing with everyone.