1. Wrap Up. After typing last weeks entry with just my thumbs and one eyeball on an iPhone in an airport terminal, I did, in fact, end up making it safely back to The Woodlands and my little family that I missed so greatly. It was quite the whirlwind trip and I was so glad to see my little ones upon returning. But the few days after returning, I was plagued with the landslide of let down after a momentous occasion. You know, where you totally build up all your adrenaline to get through something and you manage to get through it and then you're just totally wiped out. So I've been trying to rest. Trying to get things back to normal here at my parents' house. Trying to re-establish a little bit of a routine with the boys. That and other things like getting our new house inspected, getting all of our documentation together for the loan on the new house, going to doctors appointments to check on the new little fella. Just because one big event ends doesn't mean there aren't a few more on the horizon. The baby is doing well, by the way. Getting stronger and stronger...I'm almost to the point where I look forward to him not being able to move around as much! Some of those jabs are rough! And my blood pressure is staying in an okay range right now. Just nine more weeks till I'm thirty-six weeks. With all that has gone on, this has got to be the fastest pregnancy ever.
2. The New House. I mentioned it briefly last week but was still somewhat in the is-this-really-going-to-happen mindset. By now, it's definitely a reality. We are buying the "dream house." The one that we just loved that we were mad at our realtor for even showing us because it was out of our price range and we couldn't help but compare every single house to it. The one that we imagined ourselves living in ten or fifteen years from now.
On the Saturday before I left for Lubbock, Mark and I went and looked at a house that had just come on the market that day. It was in our price range and the online pictures looked nice, so with our hopes up, we decided to check it out. As Mark accurately said as we drove away, "It's forgettable." We spent the rest of the afternoon debating whether or not we were being too picky. Should we just settle on something that "would work" for now with the thoughts of moving in to something different later? Or should we just keep looking and hope to find something that we could see ourselves in for a long time? We just couldn't see ourselves putting an offer in on a house that didn't hold a candle to either the "dream house" or the house we had previous been offering on. Especially when many of them were asking the same price. Our realtor suggested that maybe we should just put an offer in on the dream house even though it was out of our price range and see what the say. After all, an offer is better than no offer at all. I argued that at the top of our budget, we'd still need them to come down roughly fifteen thousand dollars. Having only been on the market for about twenty-five days, who in their right mind would take that!?! Mark was in agreement with the realtor...what do we have to lose? It's not like we're meeting these people in public and they're going to spit in our faces or something.
To make a long story a little bit shorter, after several days of going back and forth and lots of pestering our loan officer to crunch numbers for us, we managed to score the house we thought we'd never be able to get. Apparently, with a move to Wisconsin just weeks away, these owners were desperate to sell their home. And with the help of their company's relocation service, they were able to meet us where we needed to be to make it happen. Again, never in a million years...
But when all is said and done, here is where we'll be living in just a few short weeks:
3. Our Newest Godson. This time last week, I let on about a special little miracle that was in the process of taking place for our dear friends, Ben and Erin Johnson. Ben and Erin have been eager to start of family for several years now and for reasons known only by God, it hasn't happened. Our friendship with them grew from casual acquaintances to hang-out-multiple-times-a-week over this three year span so we shared in much of the ups and downs, hopefuls and heartaches of the journey. Mark and I never could quite figure out how they could tolerate to be around us as our family continued to grow, but in some stories, certain relationships are just meant to be. And that's just how God brought us together.
Ben and Erin began to be open to idea of adoption over the past year or so but were finding it difficult to figure out how to make it happen with such high costs. In one of the more unique stories I've ever heard, God amazingly brought them to a young pregnant mother through one of her high school friends that happened to be a part of the youth group that Erin helps out with. Within two weeks of hearing this girl's story, Ben and Erin became the parents of her biological child. Jacob Cole was born Saturday morning and weighed just three pounds and nine ounces. Due to the birth mom's struggle with pre-eclampsia, he was definitely early and is receiving care in the NICU. While I couldn't be there for the event (and what a tease!...I had just left roughly ten hours earlier!) I was blessed to get to spend the middle of the night hours texting back and forth with Erin from the waiting room getting the play-by-play as he was welcomed into this world.
Ben and Erin became the legal guardians of Jacob Cole on Monday morning. Mark and I feel so blessed to get to be part of such an amazing story and are honored to serve as Jacob's godparents. (That makes five male souls that we are responsible for lifting up now...Kolbe, Reagan, Grant, John, and Jacob...girls are just not in the cards for us!) We love this little guy already and can't wait to meet him face to face.
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