This is going to be a long post!

Here’s our new house! It’s located in West Irondequoit on a quaint little street just North of Titus (if you know the area at all). Quite the story behind this one. . . so, when we first started looking at houses back when we listed ours, we took a look at this one. We LOVED it, but it was sort of silly for us to look at it in the first place because it was out of our price range. The reason we loved it so much is that it’s very big. It has 2,200 square feet and on top of that a finished attic and a basement. So, we went away from there sad because we liked it and couldn’t think about owning it. Our realtor called theirs and asked them how low they would go. . . they named a price about $6,000 less than their asking price. Still too much. The owners ended up dropping the price right before Christmas to that price that they had named as their lowest. Bummer. . . still a little too high. Meanwhile, we searched and searched for other houses. We looked at over 30 houses in just a few weeks. Before Christmas break, we hadn’t found anything, and with our closing date quickly advancing, we did a few things. First, I put a prayer request in the basket at church, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before. This whole situation I think is to remind us how God’s timing is perfect timing, and it’s certainly not OUR timing. So anyways, right after I did that, I got a few really nice, encouraging notes from people at church who were praying for us. Also, a good friend of ours was able to set us up with a plan in the meantime–our church owns a house that is used for various reasons. It was going to be open from February (only a few days after our closing) until June! They were going to let us rent it out for all that time if needed. It took us awhile, but we finally realized that it was blessing and that we could accept it graciously instead of being worried that it was being used for the wrong reasons or worried about what other people might think. That was the first thing that God did to show us that he does care about us and that he has a plan. I think because we trusted Him, he made the rest work out. So anyways. . . after that was all settle with the rental house, we weren’t looking at such a frantic pace (good thing, or we may have settled on something we didn’t love). We got a random phone call last Thursday from our realtor saying that the people selling this house that we had loved back in November just dropped the price again. They are behind in their taxes and they needed to get rid of it. . . they dropped it another $10,000! We raced over to the house that night to check it out one more time and make sure we still loved it. . . then we put in an offer that night before anyone else could get to it! We found out the next day that they accepted our offer and that they hadn’t even counter-offered! So all in all, we bought the house for $17,000 less than what it was listed for in the first place! Talk about a blessing. Again, not our timing by any means. Something like that could only be divine timing 🙂 Because they need to get out fast, and we need to get in fast, our closing will be pretty quick. We still may need to stay in the church rental house for a week or two, so it was meant to be that we had that lined up. We’ve also had so many friends who have been such a blessing through this whole process. Thank you all for your help!!

If you’re curious on more info about the house: It’s a big, old house, that I think is adorable from the outside. There is a living room, dining room, kitchen, family room (it was an addition), a sun room off the living room. The basement I think used to be an in-law, so there is a little kitchen, bedroom and bathroom down there. There are three good-sized bedrooms, and another large room in the attic that is completely finished. The backyard is REALLY small, but at least there is a pool back there! Most of the house just needs a little updating, but we’re very used to that by now (especially bathrooms)!

We are really excited about it and hope that lots of people come visit us once we move. There is plenty of space!!