The final countdown - Part 2

Warning: super long post ahead with a few pictures.

It was so fun to remember in my last post all that God did to get us into this house!  He faithfully took care of every detail.  Today, though, I want to share what He did after we moved in.  I sat down and wrote (okay typed) out a list of everything (at least as much as I could possibly remember) that God provided for us while we were here using our friends and family.  This list is in no particular order.  Just the order of remembering :)

* We painted our house twice in the 12 years here.  The first time a good friend, Aimee Charlton, and I did it the week that Mark was away at camp.  I remember that we had gotten all the way around our house and realized it was ombré colored before ombré was cool.  The paint store had mixed up the wrong paint the second time we went in.  It wasn't noticeable until we had painted the whole front of the house!  Thankfully they remixed it for free and we completed the house in a normal fashion. I had trouble finding pictures of the blue house but here's a shot when we had a badminton net set up in our front yard.

 

The second time, we painted it with our brother-in-law, Mike. He and Mark's sister, Julie, came down for a weekend of fun and painting.  I have loved the color we painted it and can't wait to paint our new house similarly (although I'm pretty sure we'll hire professionals for that job!) This was taken before we finished the bottom...

* The year that Jack was born we had a couple bring us dinner out to our house. While they were here they noticed (cause it was hard not to) how completely awful and dangerous our front deck was.  They went back to their small group, talked it over with them, and decided to bless us. The men of the small group came out to our house, tore off the existing deck, and rebuilt us a nice new Trex deck.  They battled heat and bees and blessed us with a wonderful, safe front deck.

An adorable picture of Kale's fashion at probably 3 or 4 as well as a shot of our nasty front deck at the time.

* When we first moved in we knew that all the decks needed replacing.  They were old and sagging and rotted.  One of the the first few summers here, my family, including my uncle, came down from Denver, and a family friend who lives here and works construction, helped us rebuild our side and back decks.  Mark's dad also came and did lots of work beforehand.  

* For several years I was afraid to paint the inside of my house.  I'm not a fabulous decorator (although now Pinterest is inspiring me) and was too chicken to take the plunge.  That's why God sends me adventurous friends. Our children's pastor and dear friend, Jen Kline, kind of kick started me and helped me paint my kitchen a bright blue. It was scary but looking back, I've never regretted it and have loved the bold look of my kitchen.

 Isn't the rocking horse wallpaper lovely?

 My bright blue kitchen.

 * And speaking of bold colored walls, my good friend Jo Lee came over one day, with all of her kids and helped me paint my bedroom.  My bedroom is green and orange. :) Sounds crazy but I love it. 

* The small group that we were a part of for years came to our house one year and painted our living room Toffee Crunch as a gift for pastor appreciation.  What a gift to have help painting our high walls! And what a motivator to continue around in the other rooms! I forgot how much stuff we crammed into our house.

* One year we updated our laundry room/mud room. I had painted the walls and my good friend, Tiffany Bleger, came over, pregnant if I remember correctly, and helped me lay laminate tiles.  We'd never done anything like that before and we had a blast figuring it out.  

* When it came time to replace our roof, we had the honor of hiring a good friend from church to come and do the work. I never thought I'd love a roof until he did ours.

* The same small group that painted our living room also came over and helped demolish and remodel our guest bathroom. Mark and I aren't carpenters, electricians or plumbers but we know people who are!  And they helped us tremendously with our green and black bathroom.  For someone who was afraid to paint for so many years, I picked some bold color choices for my house and have loved them!

* When we first lived here, my sister, Kelly, lived with us for several months.  One of her parting gifts was a motion light on our garage.  She hated how dark it was out there.  After living with us she knew that Mark wasn't probably going to install it for a long time :) so she asked our good friend, Mike Krupa, to come and do it for us.  He did and it still works today! 

* Along those same lines, my folks bought us an automatic garage door opener one year for Mark's birthday.  We just had to have it installed.  We're not so good at that.  One time we left on vacation and while we were gone, some of Mark's handy friends snuck over and installed it for us.  What fun to come home to one less project to do and one awesome automatic door! 

* Our backyard was basically a barren dirt wasteland for a few years.  We had hopes of a beautiful grassy lawn but couldn't afford the project. One summer a man at church came and told Mark that he had just laid sod at his house and had bought too much.  Would we like the leftovers? Of course! So we took the leftovers, and with the help of my parents, we roto tilled a little portion of our backyard and laid this beautiful, free grass.  Over the years, as we've watered it and mowed it when it got tall enough to seed, our little patch of lawn has grown into a bigger patch of lawn that goes along the back side of the house.  It's multiplied! 

* We have two sets of 2 trees (2 in front and 2 in back) that we've planted.  Mark's parents helped us plant one set and my parents helped us plant the other.

* We've had 2 big bonfires since we've been here. One to burn down a nasty shed on the property and one to burn trash.  Both times our firefighter friend, Mike Krupa, came out and helped us. Mark and I aren't real comfortable with that much fire ;) 

* 3 years ago we did a major remodel on our house.  We replaced the windows and doors, got new carpet, redid the kitchen floor, remodeled our master bathroom, put a sliding glass door in and had a new deck built.  Whew!  Big job that we weren't gonna do ourselves.  Again we were able to hire a builder from our church to come and complete this job for us.  Not only did he do all we asked but he also did a few random little projects to help us out as well.

Kate holding Jack on our old carpet.

* Mark's folks have been amazing when it's come to lots of little projects.  His dad has come and fixed the wood underneath all our sinks. His mom has come and cleaned our house and hung up all our pictures. They also helped us build the kids a playhouse (which sadly we had to tear down last week because the new owners didn't want it and we don't have a place for it at our new house). There's countless other little things that both his parents and mine have put into motion and helped us with over the years. Both of them are planning on coming down at different times to help us with our move. Marks folks come tomorrow to help us prepare for the move and mine will come when we get back from Mark's graduation in CA to help unpack.  We seriously are blessed by our parents! 

* We've had folks help install our water heater, tear down the nasty chicken coop in our side yard, haul stuff to the dump, clean our windows inside and out, move furniture, give us furniture, do electrical work, make curtains, install lights and generally help us Palmers have a home we were proud to live in and enjoy!

Just for fun :) Jack's first Easter.

I am amazed when I look around the house that God built :) Truly our family and our church family have been His hands and feet throughout the years. The trouble with naming stuff is the fear of forgetting someone or something that was done here.  I will add if I remember more ;) 

Our house wasn't perfect when we moved in -it still isn't- but when I look back and remember the people who helped us change almost very single thing in this house, I'm blown away by God's provision. Often we think His provision looks like bigger finances.  That's not true.  His greatest resource is people.  People willing and wanting to give of their time and talent.  And we have been overwhelmed by those people.  We can honestly say that every one of them have had a hand in this new season of our life as we look to moving. We wouldn't be able to sell our house and afford to move without the improvements that have been done here. 

Again I'm in awe! 

The final countdown - Part 1

As we are spending the last Tuesday, the last Wednesday, the last Thursday, etc...here at Valley Place, I can't help but get a little nostalgic over all that has happened in this home.  So much has happened here!  The majority of our marriage, all 3 children joining us, 3 dogs, 1 cat, countless family and friends visits...blessing upon blessing, provision upon provision.  And I have to remember it and I have to share it because it floors me!

We moved into this house in November of 2001.  Before that, Mark and I lived in an apartment, that we affectionately called the Barbie house because of the smallness, above a house in town. From there we moved to a 1 bedroom/1 bathroom apartment up in Edgemont Ranch in the mountains.  

Mark had owned a house in town when we first got married but we couldn't afford the mortgage on our 2 little paychecks so we rented it out for the first year of our marriage.  That was all cute and fun until tax season came around and we realized how much money we had to pay on our "income" property that basically only sustained itself.  It was at this point that we decided to sell the house and reinvest the equity into something we could live in ourselves. And so began the process. 

I could share lots of God stories about how that house even sold after years of bachelor life and countless men living there and a realtor who said we were crazy to ask what we were asking for it. The inspection report was quite a thick document!  But we had prayed and asked God what a fair selling price was and we were able to sell it for exactly that. Hallelujah! 

We didn't turn right around and buy anything but we definitely started seriously praying and seriously looking. We prayed for several things specifically because we knew God is in the business of increasing our faith.  I prayed for a house that was:

1) less that $140,000 (if you know Durango, that in and of itself is a miraculous number...even 12 years ago!) 2) less than 30 minutes from the church (at this point Mark and I were at church at least 2 late nights a week) 

3) more than 1 bathroom and more than 1 bedroom and

4) had somewhat of a yard (wasn't looking for acres, I just knew Mark wanted a dog and we needed space)

Unbeknownst to me, Mark was praying specifically for a garage. 

Our realtor at the time, the same one who had sold Mark's house, took us to a few different homes to show us what was available.  None of them really made an impression.  They weren't exactly what we were praying for.  She got a little annoyed with us at one point and said that there was nothing in Durango like what we wanted and we needed to change our expectations.  I totally understood where she was coming from. Durango is a TOUGH housing market if you don't have a lot to spend and you narrow down your options significantly.  But we told her we were sure that God was going to provide.  We just had to wait and see. 

She never returned our calls after that. She basically quit but never told us. Alrighty. 

Some friends of ours told us about another realtor in town who had helped them. She was located on 2nd avenue. 

One day I was walking down 2nd and remembered her office was around there somewhere. I found it and decided to go in and meet her (something I normally would never do without an appointment). 

She was actually free for about 15 minutes and agreed to talk with me about what we were looking for. Imagine that?! :)

I gave her my prayer request specifics and she put them into her computer system. Her computer shot back out 5 options for us in the Durango area. 5!  She told me to drive by them with Mark and see if we wanted to look inside any of them.  If we found anything, call her, and she'd set it up for us. This was before you could browse homes online. 

So we spent some time driving around. One of the houses was repossessed, listed twice and in horrible condition.  One was out in Hesperus which was a good 40 minutes from church. One was a single wide trailer that was on a dusty patch of dirt with broken windows and sagging fence.  Honestly the more we looked at this list of houses, the more we lost hope of being able to find our new home.  It was depressing.  No wonder our other realtor quit! 

Reluctantly we drove out to Valley Place to see the final house.  It was a 25 minute drive from the church.  As we came upon this place for the first time we were kind of in awe.  Not because it was a gorgeous mansion but because we couldn't believe this was on the same list as the rest. It was way nicer than we had hoped! We drove by several times checking to make sure we had the right address. Yep. We did. 

As soon as we got home, we called the realtor and scheduled a walk through. There were plenty of things wrong with the place. Sagging decks that needed replacing, old windows and doors, nasty carpet, ugly wallpaper etc... But ya know what?  It was listed at $145,000, had 3 bedrooms/2 bathrooms, was on 3 acres of land, was 25 minutes from church AND it had an over-sized garage.  

He answered every single prayer. 

We put an offer on the house. We offered $136,000.  She countered with $139,000 and we had found ourselves homeowners (for under $140,000).   Incidentally, the realtor told us that the woman who owned the house had refused an offer the month before for $139,000. Only God! 

We moved in November of '01 with the help of all our youth leaders and I'm sure some youth. 

There's plenty more stories. I will wait and share them in another post.  That way your eyes won't bleed from the length :)

It worked!!

Mark and I have been married 14 years and together for 16. In that time I've had a few successful gifts (either Christmas or birthday) but honestly I'm not very good at it. I struggle being creative, I tend to be cheap and practical...and my poor husband endures.  I finally gave up and said send me an email with a couple things you'd like for your birthday and I'll pick from that.  Fabulous isn't it? 

I even try tricking him when I get something. One year I bought him a coat I thought he wanted and I put an old pair of shoes in it to try and throw him off (he's freakishly good at shaking a box and guessing what it is). So I'm thinking I can out smart him. Nope.  He picks up the box and says "it sounds like a sweater or a coat and shoes?"  

Seriously? 

I have to say all of that because it helps set the stage for what happened tonight. 

Today is Mark's 40th birthday.  Really it couldn't have been more perfect. A Sunday! Church! Surrounded by his favorite people! A milestone birthday! I couldn't pass this up. So I took a chance. 

A little over a month ago I approached our good friends, Jerome and Tiffany Bleger, with a plan.  Could we use the downtown restaurant (Jean Pierre's) to throw a surprise party for Marks 40th? They thought it was a great idea and helped me brainstorm and plan.  They saved me from total brain meltdown several times! Them and Pete - the fabulous man who coordinated everything food wise! 

We invited over 100 people (thank you Facebook) and started the process. Keeping this a secret from Mark was the most difficult thing! I hate buying presents early because I hate waiting for them to open it!!

My plan had been to tell him we were meeting the Blegers at the restaurant for dinner except that he told me this week he had a big paper due for school tonight and he didn't want to do anything for his birthday cause he was going to be so busy. Yikes!  A tad late for that...

So I had to devise another strategy. I finally settled on using our kids as bait. 

First off, I emailed some baby pics of Mark to the guys at church and they graciously helped bring some attention to the congregation about Mark's big day.  I was kinda hoping Mark would think that's the "big" surprise of the day.  He was surprised and it was funny :)

We took him out for a quick birthday lunch and then had to head back to he church to do some premarital counseling with a couple. After we were done there the kids and I kissed him goodbye to head home and leave him to do his school work. 

What we really did was run a couple last minute errands and help set up a few decorations. 

Here I am with a few ladies resting before the party began.  Most of these pictures were taken by Tiffany before the main event.  So thankful other people took pictures! 

The kids and I left and went back to the church to pick up dad. When we got there we surprised him and told him we were taking him on a scavenger hunt.  He opened his card and the first clue was Jean Pierre's restaurant. 

So we piled in the car and drove downtown. We walked up to the building and could see that people were in there but couldn't tell who (thank goodness). When Mark opened the door he was blown away with surprises! It. Was.  Awesome!!

A lot of pictures are on a camera but Tiff took pictures of pictures for me to be able to share a couple now.  I was dying to see one of his face. These were great!

Mark swears he had no idea it was going on.  He was so blessed you guys.  It thrilled me to no end to think that I finally got him!! 

When we had left to get Mark there were maybe 20 people there? When we came in the door the restaurant was packed.  And we loved every minute of it! 

More pictures of the evening were taken but they are on cameras.  I will post more (because we have to remember all this!) when I get them.  Here's what I have now.

Jack and Tim

His amazing cake made by Jean Pierre himself! With all love ;)

My vintage dude!

Josie and Violet. 

Bill and Jerome

The kids entertaining themselves before it got started. 

And this was my sweet boy after a long and exhausting weekend!  We all kind of feel like that but it was oh so worth it!!

We've been so blessed by Mark Palmer.  He's a gift to us and it was worth it all to show him how much we love him and are thankful for him. 

40 years old! Can't believe it. 

Half way through April!

The past few weeks have flown by. Which is good and bad! 

Our 12 months of Christmas in March continued with all the kids enjoying lunch out with us.  Mark forgot pictures from his date with Kale (who picked Dairy Queen because he wanted ice cream) but totally went overboard with Jack to make up for it. ;)  Jack also picked Dairy Queen for the same reason. 

Kate and I enjoyed our first date of the year at Denny's.  Once she heard she could have a shake she was sold. Haha! 

We are plugging along with our move. I found a four week packing plan and have been doing well sticking to it. Each week packing a little more so that the final week won't be as overwhelming.  Everything keeps going well, only a few hiccups.  Our closing date is May 5th and I think we're all ready!  Living in a half packed up house is interesting. 

Especially with a leg and a half. Just over a week ago I either stood up or sat down and something just didn't feel right.  For the rest of the day it would lock up and buckle.  I almost fell a couple times.  This led me to borrow some crutches and make an appt with an orthopedic dr ASAP.  Thankfully we've kept my knee brace from 1998 when I first torn my ACL. It's helped support it a lot! 

I met with the dr and they took X-rays.  The X-rays showed bone fragments moving around in my knee.  One is under my patella and probably giving me the most problems.  It is something they can scope and remove.  They still had me get an MRI (did it today) to see if there's more tissue damage that we need to address.  My hope is that whatever is wrong can be fixed with a simple orthoscopic surgery.  We shall see! 

I am feeling better though.  Not as dependent on the crutch. It still locks but not as frequently.  I can make it around pretty easily which is a relief.  I can still pack! 

Last night was the much anticipated 5th annual Daddy Daughter Dance.  I think Kate's been talking about it since last year's got over!  This is her date for the month of April. 

The boys and I stopped by the church yesterday to pick up a couple other boys whose parents were helping and attending the dance. I snapped a few pictures, in awe of what this team of people do each year! 

The theme was Moonlight in the City.  They wanted to do kind of a formal, elegant environment where the girls were escorted to the tables, chairs pulled out for them, food served, and waltzing!  They had almost 275 people attend this year which is by far the largest attendance in 5 years! 

Isn't this incredible?! This is the stage. All made out of cardboard boxes!! And lots of glitter :)

They had a 6 ft chandelier instead of a disco ball over the dance floor.  Gorgeous! 

Kate was so amped up to go that she barely stopped for pictures.  I made her! 

I love her cute little sense of style. 

I hung out with my boys and 2 other boys. There was lots of Lego playing, shooting and running around.  Finally got them settled to watch a movie.  

Here they are at dinner.  The stillest they were all night. 

Jack and Tatum 

Kale and Toby 

It was great to have the boys have friends over.  They all played and I relaxed! Great night. 

Tomorrow is Mark's 40th birthday.  I promise to post pictures of the celebrations.  It's gonna be a fun day!