Praise the Lord & begin the Payments!!!!

Hallelujah - God is amazing...

We closed on both houses today and have amazed those involved with how God has provided for our family through this situation.

For those of you who don't know the whole story, let me just put it down for you! God is truly amazing.

October 2007, we made the decision to move from Muskegon, Michigan to Prairie Village, Kansas - seemingly the worst decision we could make from a financial/economical standpoint, but none the less, what we felt we were supposed to do at that time.

November 19, 2007, we moved to Kansas and brought just the 'essentials' to our temporary little yellow house, very close to church, with a dirt/mud yard, but everything we really 'needed' for the time being.

March 2008, we received an offer on our Michigan house from a couple we actually know in Michigan, and they wanted to close as soon as 2 weeks. We countered their offer and came to an agreement to close April 2, 2008.

I immediately went out house hunting and open house stopping. One house I went into, which was clearly over our budget, was being shown by Susan Sargent - realtor with Weichert Realtors here in Kansas. Susan gave me her card and had a nice conversation with me, telling me why she should be our realtor and exactly what she would do for us!! Her outgoing personality, attention to what I was saying and straight to the point attitude won me over. When I talked to Tim and he asked me what I found, I told him that I thought I had found our realtor. Tim was out of town during this time, so he had me set up some showings with her right away when he returned.

After our first outing with her, Tim told me I did a great job selecting Susan. I laughed, because I don't feel like I selected her, as much as God brought her to us for this very time.

The house we ended up labeling our #1 choice had been on the market for 7 months, and as we investigated about this, we found out that it was actually being sold via a relocation company. Interesting! Even more interesting...Susan is specially trained and schooled in just this kind of negotiations. There is a whole other ballgame when it comes to dealing with 'relo' companies & she has the brains for it. Amazing!

As we looked at the house a couple more times, once with Tim's parents and sister that were in town visiting, Tim's Dad reassured us that if we did not buy this house, he would!! That was all Tim had to hear to make him feel secure in this house for our family.

Susan immediately went to work helping us formulate an offer. In the midst of our negotiations and waiting for responses from the relocation company, we found out that Susan also has training in law & boy did that come in handy. Not only is she an expert in the area and locations, but she too has the umph and the guts to tell the people we were dealing with exactly 'what they were going to do for us'. There were many times that Tim and I were glad to have Susan on our team and not the other guys.

Then there is our lender...referral from some friends who also just moved across town, Martin Still. He was great, patient, flexible, fast and accurate. I felt like I had so many balls up in the air and he was still waiting for us to secure homeowners insurance, that he just said, 'Do you want me to call and get this set up for you? I know someone...' - of course I quickly said Yes and about an hour later I was getting confirmation/quotes from a local insurance agent.

As the closing day came and went because of a hold up with our buyers in Michigan, both our lender and our real estate agent were on the phone with people in Michigan trying to figure out what was going on, how they could help, and what to do for us here - talk about above and beyond!

So, the boys and I had driven to Michigan, visited with friends, supervised the packers and movers as they loaded the truck with the rest of our things, signed paperwork and headed back for home. On my drive back to Kansas, I spent hours on the phone and hours waiting to hear that the Michigan house had closed....but that word did not come until 5 days later - today!

So, the moving truck came to 'our' new house, unloaded and put things in their place, we moved out of the little house across town, and began to be the ultimate trespassers!

Our agent had arranged for us to move all our things into the new house, and we ended up living there for a few days before actually closing. Kind of scary, but also kind of funny!

Hopefully, this is the end of the new house saga & we will live happily ever after in Overland Park, Kansas!