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 :)

12 months of Christmas -- Kale

Two days ago Kale and I got to go on our  fancy dinner date.  He picked Ken and Sue's.  

I didn't think I needed to make a reservation for a Thursday but alas I was wrong.  We decided not to wait and sat at the bar instead. A first for me! 

Kale was quite impressed with the amount of wine bottles on the wall.  

We talked and talked about everything. I explained to him the bar and the dark lighting and 2 forks, ordering a hamburger medium...he was so much fun.  Near the end of the night one of the waiters came behind the bar and told Kale that his mom was so cool.  He thought it was neat that we went out together.  He said he'd wished he'd have done it more with his mom. It made me so happy to hear. Kale smiled. :)

He ordered the hamburger and it was huge!  It was even off the kids meal. He could only finish half because he was saving room for dessert. :) He was picturing a huge piece of ice cream pie like Jack had but no such luck here. 

So we had fro-yo instead. 

On the way home from dinner we were talking about God and church and I asked him how Legos and church were the same (just for fun).  He went on to explain that people in a church are like the Lego pieces.  Each one had a special place and when put there it makes up a neat bigger picture.  Something unique.  And God is the Master Builder. How awesome was that?!

I'm looking forward to future conversations with him. 

When we got home he opened a box from my parents for his birthday.  His first Rockies gear.  Doesn't he look grown up and handsome? 

Last night Kale and Kate had a pre-summer camp sleepover at the church.  They for to go and hang out with friends and hear about summer camp. 

Mark, Jack and I got a pizza and watched Frozen (Mark bought it on iTunes). It was different having just one kid.  It was a nice change. 

This morning the 3 of us got up early and finished getting the house ready for a showing today.  We headed to bountiful baskets to get our food (the food co-op we do every other week) and then went to town to pick up the big kids. 

While we were in town our realtor called and said another realtor wanted to show our house today too. Couldn't say no.  The house was already clean!  Show away! 

We decided to kill time and have brunch at CJs diner.  We've had a really wet, sleety snow today so there were huge puddles in the parking lot. 

After we were done the big kids wanted to watch Frozen so we went back to the church and watched it in Mark's office.  Kinda nice have another "home" to go to! 

Hopefully all these showings turn into something more.  We shall see! 

What's with our house?

Many moons ago I shared that our house was going up for sale. Back in April I believe. A lot of things and nothing has happened since then.

3 weeks after it was listed we had a buyer. After negotiating, we went under contract. They wanted to move in June 14th - 5 weeks from then. So we got a move on and 3 days later found a house in town and got a contract on it to move the same weekend. All was grand. We thought...

Right before we left for Florida our buyers pulled out. Their reason wasn't very convincing so we're pretty sure there was more than what we knew. Because our house wasn't moving forward our sellers wanted out of the contract we had with them as well. It all kinda went kaput! 

We were disappointed but okay. God has never let us down. Since then we've had only one showing and they didn't like it. Other houses are selling but ours isn't even being nibbled on. I started to wonder about it and maybe even worry a little but then I stopped and listened to God. 

There's nothing I can possibly do to control this situation. So I let it go. It only takes one looker to be the one buyer. And Lord knows that I'm terrible at keeping my house in "showing" condition all the time. I think I might lose my mind. So I'm praying for no showings but the one that needs to happen in order to sell. And that would just be the most awesome testimony to share about God's specific provision in our lives!

And wouldn't it be grand if that one showing happened while we all were gone...

Thankful Thursday

Since it is Thursday I promise I will include things I am thankful for but I have to start off with a bit of a recap from last night.

It started while I was making dinner. Actually the whole day had been one of those days when everyone's just a little on edge. There wasn't any particular reason why but we just were. We were all a little bit ornery, a little bit impatient, a little bit moody, a little bit tired and a little bit restless. Ever had one of those days? Where you just aren't clicking as a family? Yeah well we had one. Nothing too terribly bad had happened but it always seemed just below the surface.

So, I'm making dinner (meatball stroganoff - Yum!) when there's a knock on the back door. It's the guy we had called last week to give us an estimate on possibly doing our foundation. ---back story: our insurance company told us that our foundation is not up to their standards to be insured as a house. So we are in a situation where we need to either fix it so that it is or get a different policy that will be more expensive. We're having to do some serious weighing of our options and that's hard when you don't know much. :) We are in the process of gathering information. Not really what I call summer fun... --- Anyway, the guy was back to give us his estimate. We knew he was coming and Mark was pretty much racing him to the house. Mark lost.

I got to chat with the guy. So I left my stroganoff and noodles on the stove and went to outside {can you see where this is going?}. He's super nice and, just like everyone, needs work. If we do hire him to fix our foundation (although there isn't anything wrong with it according to the county - they say our foundation is fine which is why we're having to do some number crunching) he'll have a terribly tough job. Terribly tough. One that will require lots of patience, lots of dirt, and on our end, lots of money. :( But like I said he's a super nice man. So we chatted till Mark came home.

And of course you can guess what happened to my dinner by the time I got done chatting away on the difficulties of finding and buying and fixing up a house in Durango for the working class. I came inside to find my meatballs completely stuck - as in they had been welded - to the bottom of my pan. All the sauce had been simmered out and the remaining sauce was a thick black coating on the pan. The noodles were an overcooked mush. The house smelled beyond nasty and my children were quietly watching cartoons during all of this.

By this time we were well past dinnertime. Too late to thaw anything and start again. We were down to cereal or PB&J. *sigh* We loaded up the kids in a hurry to head to town. It was dollar kids night at Applebees. Unfortunately when we got there, there was a wait and we weren't thinking our kids would be great waiting another 15 minutes before we even sat down then waiting another 15 minutes for their food. So we caved (or as my friend Jo put it, had a fun parent moment) and went to McDonalds. Both Mark and I are a bit sick of McDs. Our children, however, were ecstatic. We don't eat out a lot and we are always trying to avoid McDs so this was fun special time for them. And they had the whole playplace to themselves (that's because normal parents don't take their kids out that late to eat dinner and avoid a stinky house). In the end we had a good time.

Mark and I were a bit information overloaded so it was nice to have a change of scenery. We are getting lots of different information from our mortgage guy, our insurance guy, a contractor friend guy and our possible foundation building guy. Requirements for all these different people are all different. So we have another friend who does inspections for the county and he said he'd come look at our house and tell us what is required. Being a homeowner definitely has it's pluses and minuses :)

I am thankful for people who are willing to help us. I'm thankful that we do not need to go through this process alone.

I'm thankful for homeschooling. I actually look forward to the things we get to do this year (I know this is day 4 of 179 and I'm supposed to be optimistic...).

I'm thankful netflix downloadable workout videos. Why has it taken me 2 months to remember that I wanted to do that? I got my booty kicked this morning. So nice!

I'm thankful for Thursday mornings when Mark goes into work a bit later and can take care of the kids so I can quickly blog uninterrupted.

I'm thankful that we have 95 tomatoes, a dozen or more big cucumbers, 20 or so jalapenos and 10ish peppers growing in our garden!!!! Yeah for beginning gardeners :)

A few before and afters

I took a couple before pictures of my living room before just so you could see the amazing transformation. It may not look like much to you - especially if you've never seen the inside of my house - but it feels like a totally different place. I'm actually starting to feel like I live in an adult's house instead of a college-thrown-together place {no offense if you're still in college and throwing things together}. It's just different when you've been married 9 years and in the same house for almost 8 of those years and you are finally putting it together.

BeforeAfter: What is now our homeschooling area

Before: Clutter, video game stuff, broken chair rail...etc...After: Put up my shadow box, brought in a book shelf for our
thousand books + homeschooling books. Yikes! We love to read.
Before: Computer stuff, small book shelf, nothing really happening...After: A beautiful, wonderful place to sit and read books and more! {BTW, those are the pictures that I said yesterday were a bit of a challenge to put up - they turned out pretty awesome I think}I wish I had a before of this area. Basically the clock and picture weren't up. The TV sat on the top of our entertainment center because there were shelves inside the open area and it made the TV place too small. We removed the shelves, hid the clutter and now we have a grown up entertainment center.
Margie {my MIL} hung this picture up and decluttered my buffet.
It looks so nice now.Here are a couple cell phone pics of the kids' rooms. It was difficult to see because of the light coming through their windows so forgive the crazy lighting.
You get the idea though.

Kale got a loft bed. It's more like a ceiling bed. We need to build a ladder for it. Right now he looks like a monkey climbing up in it. He can't sit up or he'll get a face full of ceiling.Kate got a new bookshelf, a new picture and new curtains.
She was thrilled.And I really wish I had a before and after of the garage. That place...well you could barely walk around in there. After a winter and a summer of going through things in the house and just putting them in the garage to "deal with later" it was overwhelming. After 3 hours of organizing and arranging and sweeping and somewhat dusting and sneezing and listening to Sean Hannity we accomplished this monumental task. It was a job worth posting pictures!That's where we store our cow :) I mean steaks and ground beef and roasts and stuff.They even pyramid stacked our paint!

And our stuff to give away, fix or sell. We've got quite the pile!
So whether or not you wanted the full tour of our newly cleaned, painted and rearranged house, you got it. I hope you survived!