03.26.10
A present that tops them all
For my birthday I received the gift that trumps all gifts. For my birthday Matt bought me a house! Ok, well he didn’t really have it ready for me on my actual birthday but we did make an offer on a house. Before my birthday I had joked with Matt that I wanted him to buy me a house for my birthday. He joked back that it wouldn’t be happening and that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. Yeah, yeah…it was all fun and games. But, Matt should have learned by now that I usually get what I want…I mean who doesn’t know this??!!??
Our house story:
We have been looking for a house in the DFW area since the summer of 2009. It has been a long process of exploring neighborhoods, realizing that lots of what I liked was WAY out of our price range, finding desirable neighborhoods and towns that had the amenities we desired, searching that town for the perfect house, coming up empty handed, starting over…you know the drill. After almost a year of searching we finally decided on the town we wanted to live in. It had everything we wanted, great schools, a small community with close proximity to shopping and fun, a decent commute time. We narrowed our focus to this town and were determined to wait it out until our house appeared in that area.
One day I was speaking with a co-worker about a house we had found and he mentioned that he knew the realtor listing the property. Awesome, I thought. So we called to get more info about the house. The realtor did not encourage us to purchase that home but said if we would wait a few more weeks the perfect house would be coming on the market. So, we waited. The day before the house went on the market the realtor called and asked if we wanted to see the property. We made arrangements and drove out to visit this house. It was PERFECT! I fell in love and knew that this had to be our home. Matt felt the love too. We loved everything about it, it was our style, our colors, created just for us! There was not one other house in the area at this price point that had been completely updated and remodeled. We wouldn’t have to do a thing but move in!
Matt and I committed to think and pray about our decision and continued to explore other houses in the area but always came back to this one. I kept praying that if it was to be our house God would make it happen and that no one else would get it before we were ready. Well, one Tuesday morning I got an email from the realtor website saying that there was a contract on our little piece of heaven. My heart sank! I knew that it must not be our house but I was still sad that the home I felt should be ours wouldn’t be so, I started exploring more options. On Wednesday I got an email saying that the house was back on the market….humm…what’s up with that. We contacted our realtor and he confirmed that the offer had been retracted. Matt and I knew we had to act fast if we wanted to have this house and we felt like we were supposed to have this house! We made arrangements to walk through the house one more time. After visiting for the final time we decided to make an offer.
Now, here’s a helpful hit for those of you with children who are house hunting. When you go to write up the contract for your offer…hire a sitter! We knew that making an offer was a possibility for that day but didn’t realize how long the process would take. Thankfully we had a fabulous realtor who opened up his home to Dean and let us play while he worked on paperwork. Dean was a trooper through the whole process and we managed to get everything complete for our offer in one sitting.
After filling out all the paperwork we left our realtor’s house filled with joy, excitement, and nervous anticipation. We prayed that the homeowners would like our offer and give us everything we requested! One can dream right?
We ended our evening with a champagne toast at the McLaren’s house. They were nice enough to invite us over for drinks, little did they know we’d have something to celebrate. It was a wonderfully exciting moment and produced the best birthday gift ever!