Coming Up For Air...

Life has been busy, crazy, hectic, stressful, and a bit over-whelming for our family this last month or more. For years now we have talked about selling our house and moving closer to Bill's work, family and church. It's not that we are all that far away from it all, but it is enough to make us think twice before participating in a church event, or making a quick trip to Granny and Paw-Paw's house.

In the Fall/Winter time frame we were seeing so many houses on the market that were in the location we wanted to live and were a nice improvement on our current house size. But we weren't ready to move at that point. So now, with it being a so-called "buyer's market", we decided to go for it. We worked really hard in March and beginning of April to get our house ready, and on my birthday it went on the market. For that first week, we had a showing every day. I'm sure many of you out there have been through it.... The quick, complete house cleaning every morning, grabbing kids and dog and racing out the door to go hang out at a park for several hours while the house is being shown, preventing the kids from hanging any of their artwork about the house, keeping the kids out of the house as much as possible to keep it neat and only allowing one toy out at a time to keep the mess under control. I wasn't exactly enjoying the whole process, but I never dreamed that after only ten days on the market, we'd get an offer. So just like that, our house was sold. But we haven't found a house yet. We are wondering if it really is a blessing that our house sold so quickly!

But the Lord works in mysterious ways. When we have seen a house we like, we've found out an offer was just placed on it that same day. We've put offers on two houses so far, and in both cases, others had also put offers on them that were higher than we could go. God was making it very clear to us that these were not the houses for us, even if we thought so. We are actually preparing to put an offer on a different house today, one that we've looked at many times and has sat on the market for awhile now. We have been aprehensive about this house, and yet loved it at the same time. I feel that God has been leading us back to it through all of our house-hunting. It will be interesting to see if it actually works out. In the meantime, we are just praying that by our closing date (less than 3 weeks away!!!!), we'll have some where to go - house or apartment, just as long as it's not a cozy spot under a bridge! ;)

And through all of this craziness, life is moving on. Baseball has continued to take much of our time. We're still trying to keep up with our school work, though not as well as I'd like. And today is Bill's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SWEETHEART!!!! We're doing our best to make it fun and special, despite everything else we have going on. And tomorrow is Alex's birthday. So I also have a party to plan (just a small one this year ;) ) and a cake to bake.

I know it's all going to work out in the end. But getting through it has been and will continue to be hard. I'm just trying to keep my faith in God and know that He is in control.