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This is long but I rarely write in my journal and I wanted to remember it and share our experience.  My testimony has grown tremendously, my faith is stronger than ever and I have felt the Lord's hand in our lives so much over the last couple of months.

So I will start from the beginning. When we moved to Denver we were hoping to only be in our apartment for a short time, but our lease wasn't up until February, not to mention we were having a baby in June. With that in mind I still couldn't help but look at houses. I wanted to see what was out there in our price range.  I looked for months and really liked a few of the houses I had found online.  We talked about it and after having gone through a few rough patches with our apartment complex decided it was time to take our "house hunt" a little more serious.

My cousin had their friend Mark who is a realtor give us a call. He is in their ward and used to be in ours so we trusted him and even though we knew our lease wasn't up until February, we wanted to get the ball rolling. He emailed us listings and the very first one we had our house. It was listed among 30 or so Highlands Ranch listings which were newer, but had smaller yards and for some reason Erik said "Let's go drive by this house".

It was Saturday of Labor day weekend. We drove passed the house, Erik got out and peeked in the windows (no one was living in it at the time) peeked around to the backyard and came running back to the car.  "You've got to come see this". I peeked into the backyard and my jaw fell to the ground. It was huge, backs up to a trail which goes to a park and there was a playhouse to top it all off.

A big yard may not seem like that big of a deal to most of you, but big yards are very hard to come by around these parts.  When we were going through our list of must haves for a home a big yard was at the tippy top of both of our lists.  All the houses we looked at online or that he emailed to us were a 10th of an acre. Our lot is almost a half an acre.

We quickly called Mark and asked if he could get some info on it for us. Houses are sold in literally a few days here more often than not and we didn't want to take any chances of losing it. We knew it was unique and we wouldn't find anything like this again. We kept talking about how amazing it was and how perfect it would be for us. We could tell it had just been gutted, a brand new roof and windows. Not to mention the yard and location!

All weekend it was all we could talk and think about. I didn't get any sleep a few nights just thinking about living in this house that we hadn't even stepped inside of yet. We kept saying "if by Tuesday there are no offers we have to put one in."

Monday was Labor Day so Tuesday was the first chance we had of going inside. We pulled up and we just knew it was our house.  We went inside and I can honestly say if felt like we were home. Barf?  We walked around and continued to feel the spirit telling us it was right.  Mark told us to go home, pray about it and let him know what we wanted to do ASAP. Almost 20 people had been to see the house already that weekend, no offers yet, but he assured us that a lot of them would come back to this house wanting to put an offer in, so we needed to work fast.

We went home and talked about it. I said the prayer at dinner and asked Heavenly Father to help us know whether we should take this huge step and put in an offer. And OVERWHELMING feeling came over me, YES! I got a huge smile on my face, finished the prayer and said "DID YOU FEEL THAT?!" Erik and I just smiled and decided we had to do it.

I will cut out an alarming amount of details and tell you that we got the offer in Wednesday night. Thursday morning Mark text me and said the offer was in and they had until Friday 10 AM to get back to us. Not even an hour later he called and said "This is unbelievable. They countered, asking $2000 more than you offered" but agreed to all our other conditions. He asked if I wanted to call Erik, I said "Nope! We accept!" He was so happy for us and couldn't believe how smoothly it was all going. It was meant to be! There were a few other offers that had come in right after ours but Mark had told the listing agent about us and our family, that we were putting every penny into this home and he decided to go with us.

Over the next few weeks we had lots of paper work to get in and had to get things in order to find someone to take over our lease. This was a huge test of faith for me.  I had so many ups and downs, feeling like "how can we afford this?" "it's too good to be true, something is bound to go wrong" etc. I was so discouraged and thought we were being stupid for thinking we could actually buy a house. 

I cried and called my mom, Erik and sisters asking for advice. In a conversation with April, she told me that Satan will get us anyway he can. He knew that this house was right, we were supposed to be in that home and he didn't want that. It was incredible how much better I felt about it all. I still had some rough days, just not knowing how it was all going to work out. A friend also told me it's so easy to doubt myself with something so big and important, but to always remember the feeling I had when our prayer was answered and I KNEW it was right.

Another prayer was answered when we found two different families to take over our lease just in time. (won't go into more details)

Now on to the not so smooth part. We were scheduled to close October 10th.  The day before closing Mark called and said that the lender was stalling and he didn't know what the problem was. All we knew was that we had to be out of our apartment Friday and no one knew if we'd be closed by then.  Mark offered and basically begged for us to stay at his home if we weren't able to close by the time we had to be out but we weren't even going there. We WERE going to close by Friday! 

Wednesday (10th) came and went, Long story short (too late) it turns out Quicken Loans (the loan officer got our loan through them for the best interest rate on the day we locked in) wanted a second opinion on our house being a fix and flip. So they had to have another appraisal done. 

It is nearly impossible to get a mortgage loan nowadays. You have to jump through so many hoops and they have so much power leaving you helpless. The second appraisal was done Thursday morning, we loaded all our belongings into a Uhaul with only two people's help (thanks again Shawn and Natalie!) and a few young men at the very end. We spent Thursday night in our apartment on the floor with the bare essentials so we didn't have to stay at Mark's house for what we hoped would only be one night.

Friday I finally got a hold of the loan officer and he said, sorry, but it was looking more like Tuesday or Wednesday. I was in tears, so frustrated, helpless, lost and literally homeless.  It would have been a completely different story had we not had two kids, but I wasn't sure we had all we needed and we were going to all be in the same room (not to sound like a brat) for a week. Everything we owned was going to have to sit in the Uhaul until we could move in, and I had only packed enough for a few days while trying to pack all our other belongings. My cousin insisted we stay with them which was so nice, seeing as they have two kids of their own and had company coming to stay Wednesday. 

I also felt so bad for Violet, she knew we were moving to our new house and was so excited to play in her play house. She had a hard time that week, so confused, didn't take any naps and was very emotional. It broke my heart that she didn't understand what was going on.

Another long story short, after lots of tears, feeling completely helpless, and not hearing a word for days at a time, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we didn't get to close. My cousin had family coming to stay Wednesday and although she and her husband insisted we were fine to stay there, we headed to Mark's Tuesday. We stayed there until Thursday when we got to close! Mark and his wife are amazing, they made us feel right at home and we've made great friends with their family.

It was kind of a blessing in disguise that we were so in the dark even though it was so hard and frustrating: We learned at closing that we almost didn't get the house, we weren't going to qualify for the loan through Quicken because it was a fix and flip. There were people badgering the seller/listing agent (same person) saying that they were ready to buy the house and go to closing THAT DAY. Bless his little soul, even though we had broken contract (even though it was out of our control) and he could have gone with another buyer, he stuck it out and we got our house. The Lord truly had a hand in all of this and we are so grateful.

All in all, it was worth every nail biting moment, we got .25% lower interest rate because of all we went through, not to mention a few other fantastic apologetic measures to make up for us being homeless and putting us through so much.

If you've read this far, we are loving our home, getting settled and can't wait to get some pictures up to show everyone back home what it looks like, since it will probably be a while until you get to come see it.  We are so incredibly grateful for the lessons that were learned in this process and can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for us in our new home.