Hanging in there....

Continuing life at the ranch....

It's becoming always exciting! I'd have to say we are a pretty healthy family, for the most part... but not accident free. I never said that.

We are crazy finishing projects around here - pictures are sure to follow! I'm just not quite organized or techy enough to get them on here all at once, so they will be coming....

So our "powder room" bathroom is shaping up really nicely, and we are using old barn wood on the walls, which includes some real nice long, rusty nails! So Sam was busy getting them installed the other day, when Gabe comes crying wailing into the house. My 2 year old Cassia came in to interpret. Isn't that nice of her? "Ummm, Gabe hoit he-self rearry bad." You think? As he was walking in, he was leaving a trail of blood and I don't know about you, while you are worried about what might have happened, you are also thinking - I don't really want to try to get blood out of the carpet - so he got carried in and luckily Sam was home. I don't really like blood. Finally he got ahold of himself enough to let us know that he stepped on a rusty nail.... Nice.... So he and I headed in to make sure his tetnus was up to date - which he had just one shot left, so he's doing great!

Then the next week came....

We've got this deck and we've been working on it for two whole months. And most of that time it was just the frame with no floor boards. But we have our second story walk right out onto it and there has always been a door there. So I know it's bad, but Gabe just climbs all over it and he does fine. It's not super high off the ground so I can touch the bottom of it when I'm standing on the ground. Well, just this weekend, we had some dear friends over for dinner and Mike offered to come back and finish our deck! What!?! So awesome!!! So he came in on Monday and worked on it, Tuesday, he started getting floor boards down, so now you can walk across part of it! And then I heard it... the wailing again... And the interpreter made it in first "Ummmm, Gabe just fell off da deck." Oh Lordy! Here comes Gabe holding his arm and screaming quite a bit more than the rusty nail incident, so I knew it was bad. Meanwhile Micah was screaming for dinner and it was getting late. So Sam took him in and he came home sporting a nice little splint!

So that's about how things are going for us these days! Stay tuned for those promised pictures!

The next step....

Let's see, now where did I leave off.... Oh yes, it was now time to sell our house - in a sellers market! Shouldn't be too hard, right? We LOVED our little house on the hill in Mandan! Like, LOVED it! It wasn't necessarily the house I could see myself in for the rest of my life - not enough bedrooms on one floor, but we just loved our house. We made so many memories there, so many people made so many memories there. When people walked in, they just felt a lot calmer and more at peace. I loved that about our house. I always said that if I built a house, it would have the same layout, only a little bigger....

Well, I hardly know where to start. We put our house for sale by owner just because that's what we were feeling the Lord was leading us to do. That way we had a little control over when people came through and with 3 small kids, you can imagine that was a major issue! We had approximately 1 family come through in about a 4 month period. That was very productive. Then in March, we had a few people come through and one young couple was going to be getting married in the fall and they just fell in love with the house! It seemed so perfect! We were just a young newlywed couple when we moved in and it was just perfect for us! They came by probably 3 times and then were ready to make an offer, which they did, but it was just so low. We counter offered. Back and forth. But in the end while we really wanted to be able to sell the house to someone who was really going to love it, we just couldn't swing it. After all, we were about to move to country and take on quite a hefty mortgage.

We were getting a little discouraged since time was flying by... The first weekend of April was a big one! We had 3 of our very best friends coming into town and we were going to start remodeling the Circle C Ranch Homestead - which is the property we were hoping to purchase as soon as our house sold! On top of that, we had 3 appts. for people to come and look at our house! This is it! I could feel it! We squeezed the appt. in around our friends and busy activities and it was obvious in the first 1 minute that they were there that it was a waste of time. Talk about discouraging.....

Then the weekend was over, it was fun and we had some people come through the house (even if it that wasn't successful, but the house was clean!) And coming off of a weekend like that with a clean house is a plus! We were out at Circle C and looking at the progress that Sam made on that - we pulled ALL the flooring out of the entire house! As we were driving back into town on Sunday night, my phone rang and there was a couple that saw our house and wanted to come by right then to look at it. I was less than excited and exhausted and so I told them we wouldn't be able to meet for an hour. They seemed kind of disappointed but said they'd come in an hour. Sam had to go to a meeting, so it was just me when they came by... I was doing the normal rigamarole and showing them everything. He was quiet and taking it all in, she was trying to keep her 2 year old in line and flying through the house saying how much she loved it! I thought this was just going to be one more no call back. So as she was leaving 15 minutes after she got there, she said to her husband, I love this house. I want this house. And Boom! That was it. Have a nice night.

Monday came. No call. Sam and I decided we'd better just go ahead and put our house on the market with a realtor, we might loose a lot more money but better to sell the house. I felt like the Lord said, just get in touch with that family once more before we called the Realtor. So on Tuesday morning, I really quick texted the gal and said that I wanted to check in with her because we are about to list with a realtor. She immediately texted me back and said, "oh no, I definitely want the house, we were just getting squared away with the bank yesterday. Would you be willing to take $______?" Her first offer was the lowest amount that we had previously decided we would be willing to take. So just like that - we SOLD OUR HOUSE VIA TEXT MESSAGE!!! What?!

The process went so smoothly, it was scary. We didn't actually think it was going to happen until closing! In fact they wanted to move up the closing, they were so excited to get into the house! They love flowers, they loved our yard, the colors of our house and I really think they will just love, love, love living there as much as we did!

Goodbye Little House on the Hill! When I find my pictures, I'll post them! :)