Currently, we live in the suburbs in Northern Colorado. That will be
changing soon. Lord willing, we will be building a log cabin on some land,
debt-free, and closer to our church family in the very near future.
Meanwhile, we have to be out of our house in a matter of months, so we are
looking for a place to rent.
Well, we have found the place to rent and moved completely! We are now in Elizabeth, Colorado. It is a beautiful part of the state; half prairie, half trees. Where we are it is mostly prairie. We love the openness and still being able to see some of the mountains.
The house we found is a ranch on two acres with a partially finished walk-out basement. It is a bit smaller than our old house, but it is much more open and very well laid out. We lost one bedroom (the new house has 3) and a study, but the basement makes up for that and more.
We are so thankful to have this house, and we’re just rejoicing and praising God. I love this area. I love all the space we have and the gorgeous views. It’s so neat to be blessed with all the things we’ve never had living in the suburbs. One of the first days we were here a buck walked through our backyard. That never happened in Frederick… =)
Getting the house
The way we ended up with this great house was purely God’s providence (well, everything is, but some things are just a little more obviously miraculous.)
When Daddy got his retirement check in the mail (from 14 years of working at CU), that was the green light to begin searching for rentals. We pored over Craigslist for days and found some rentals that looked very nice, but they were always snapped up quickly. The few that we did go see were pretty much flops. One had a bad leak and an anthill in the basement. Another one looked so structurally unsound that Mommy was afraid to go inside. They weren’t all that bad though. Some the price just wasn’t right or the space was a little too cramped. In the Elizabeth paper there was one tiny listing, two very small lines, that read:
3 bd on 2 acres
Phone number
Mommy excitedly called on it, saying how nice the ad sounded.
I was thinking that there was no way it could be very nice. And there was no picture! How could I blindly trust that it would be a "nice" house? I spent a few hours on Craigslist that morning, and expanded the search a little bit to areas surrounding Elizabeth and Elbert. I found about 10 nice listings and printed them up. Daddy approved, but said we would go look at the one from the paper first.
We went to look at it that day, and I was careful not to get my hopes too high up.
I was so humbled when we pulled up to the large property and saw the new, beautiful house. In that moment it felt like God was saying, "See? I’ll always take care of you! Trust Me and what I can do, and not yourself and what little you can do."
We walked inside and were even more impressed. Everything looked perfect.
I prayed that God would let us have that house and that the landlord would accept our offer, which was lower than his asking price.
The landlord was a very nice, laidback, older man who talked quite a bit about his grandchildren. His and his business partner’s friend, who was a land developer, had built the place, but was going to end up losing the house and going bankrupt after the economy turned. The landlord and his partner bought the house to save their friend. We were the first people who had looked at it, and he said, "To be honest with you, I’m the one that lives close enough to show this place, and I don’t want to be doing this all the time." I was thinking, "Great! We’ll take it off your hands for you!" Daddy put in his offer, and by that evening the landlord had called his partner and they accepted! We felt so incredibly blessed.
Moving Day
We first saw the house on a Thursday, got the keys on that Saturday, and decided to start slowly packing and take a load of all our big stuff the next Saturday. On that day, Daddy rented a U-Haul and some of our friends from church came with a few of their own trailers. We explained the plan; that we wanted to take all our big things, and then pack and move out completely within the next couple weeks. But that didn’t make sense to the men. They said, "Well, you have us and the trailers NOW- we can get you all moved out today!" So we agreed, and they helped us pack and load the whole day.
Some vidoes of moving day..
The day was a little chilly, but God held off the snow ‘til later that night. We drove off at about 4 or 5 and our whole family spent the night at the new house. We didn’t think we would do that for another week or two! Over the next three days we made a few trips back up to the house to finish getting all the random stuff that is not fun to pack. (There comes a time when things just get thrown in boxes and it’s not very organized, to say the least..) We also took apart the playset (The Fountain Castle). I wasn’t there that day, but I hear it was quite the operation. It involved tying it to the back of our van to topple it…. Yeah, I’m not really sure what was going on. =)
Some more videos of moving day...
It is incredible that we moved so quickly! Usually, we would have been packing a month or two in advance, but we didn’t know our moving date definitively. I am thankful to all of our friends who helped and made it possible
We have unpacked a lot, but we still have much to do. The work load seems light though, because all we can think about is how greatly we’ve been blessed!
There is much, much more to write about this, but I think it’s time to wrap up.
A beautiful home for a beautiful family!! May God grant you peace in your new place!
ReplyDeleteBill R.
Woo! Can't wait to see it up close!
ReplyDeleteAmazing how God provides, huh?
Rachel
Yay.. it's beautiful!
ReplyDeleteYou're Basement is perfect!
ReplyDelete