Exciting News!!!!!!

We have very exciting news to share!!!!!!!

WE ARE BUILDING A NEW HOUSE!!!!! That's right, I said BUILDING a new house!!!!!!!

Praise to the Lord for allowing this all to come together and happen in a way that only He could have ordained.

We are so excited, nervous, joyful, appreciative, anxious, and filled with more excitement!!!!! :)

Basically we never even thought we would OWN a house for a long time to come, let alone BUILD one; but God clearly had others plans in store for us. So the short story goes....Brian decided to apply for a loan based on some encouragement from our realtor, whom he met through a craigs list add, of all things. We had previously been pre-approved for a very small loan amount back 2 years ago during the credit crisis; therefore reapplying for a home loan was last on our list. However, after talking with Susan (our realtor), again, whom he met through a craigs list add, he decided to go ahead a try it. Sure enough we were pre-approved!!!!!!! Well, that was back in March and after a full day of looking at resale properties, most of which in this area and in our price range, are in a subdivision with high HOA fees, small sloped lots, and are either HUD, Bank-owned, or foreclosure properties, we were fairly disappointed. We never thought that we could actually build a house, but again Susan encouraged us to look at that option. So, here we are. We fell in love with a floor plan (4 bedrooms, 2 car garage, & an unfinished walk up 3rd floor (that Brian will hopefully finish and we can use as a school room/rec room)), found a 1/2 acre lot in a great location (5 minutes basically between both my sister's houses) talked about options, upgrades, etc., and then on Wednesday of this week we signed a contract with the builder!!! This is so so so exciting to us and we are thrilled that my parents are just as excited for us and have been a tremendous help in making sure we make the right decisions. My father works in the Mortgage Banking industry, so his knowledge has been so appreciated in helping us to understand all the numbers, terms, conditions, contracts, etc.

Our next step is to have our "on site" meeting with the builder to decide where to place the house, driveway, etc. Did I mention that we are super excited??? The Lord is really blessing us through all of this and we are excited that this area is becoming more of a permanent location for us. :) The girls love it, they love growing up with their cousins (and me with my sisters), it is so nice to have my parents only an hour away, we are building life long friendships which hopefully will only continue to thrive and flourish when we move closer to everyone, and country life is quiet and slow; something Brian and I both enjoy.

So here it is...our land, and a picture of our "proposed" home! :) We are praying that we will be moved in by Ariella's 1st birthday, but if not, that is okay too. We plan on painting before moving in, so hopefully we will close early November and have everything painted and moved in before the holidays hit us! :) Your prayers for us during this process are greatly appreciated as well! I am sure you will start to see LOTS of construction pictures on here once we break ground! :)

This is standing at the back of the lot looking left. This is one of the only mature trees on any of the lots; one of the reasons why we picked this lot. Can't wait to move in so we can plant some more trees!!! :) I like trees!

As you can see across the street, there is a farm house that is already in the subdivision with some horse stables as well. This land used to be old farm land, but now has been turned into a subdivision with 14 lots. There is one other house built, aside from the farm house, and our house will be house #3 with more neighbors to come, I am sure.

This is standing at the back of our lot and looking to the right

This is standing at the back of the lot (road behind) and looking to the right. That large tree you see, is part of our property.

This is standing at the back of the lot, looking toward the front yard, where the driveway will be, near where Brian's truck is and you can also see my father-in-law (barely) standing near the front of the lot.

This is a similar model of our house. Some things will be different though, for example, we are having a front porch added, there will be no fireplace (like you see on the left here), the roof line will be a little different and the colors will be different also. But you get the general idea. :)