"Summery" 2009 - It's a LONG ONE

WOW! This summer has been one to go down in the history books for our little family. We started in June with Plan A...moved on to plan B and now I do believe we are on plan XYZ....
Plan A was to sell our house, the original close date was on June 16th. We left Texas on June 4th and headed out to Utah to stay with my mom for the summer...and save money to get ourselves establised in Arkansas. June 5th we pulled out of Pflugerville very teary eyed but happy to be onto our new adventure....plan was to move to Hot Springs AR...anywho.... June 8th we found out that the contract was not going to close on our house. June 9th was our 10th anniversary and also the day Dan's grandpa died. Talk about a week....on to plan B

Plan B was to now re-list our house....still go on a house hunt trip and see where that took us. Had a few lookers..at the house...but in the mean time we decided against moving to Hot Springs for a bit and decided on Northwest Arkansas. Hot Springs was beautiful and tons of lakes...but Northwest AR just made more sense for the stage we are in right now. Start looking for houses in Bentonville, Rogers, and Bella Vista....

Plan C - List our house with a realtor - excluding one family that had been looking for a while and were just firming up financing. Realtor gives us more exposure...just cost a little more money. We had a few offers on the house...but none we could take yet. At this point we are into July. Still having to pay all our bills in Tx....meaning not saving as much money as wanted in Plan A. Nonetheless....still okay with plan C....Maybe we will just rent. Oh yeah, and i find out I am pregnant....AAHHH!

Plan D - Dan goes house hunting by himself in AR to get us a house. He looks at a few rentals and decides that isn't the life for us...so..makes a few offers on a few houses...and one gets accepted in Bella Vista. Big house, for a great price. We move forward and pay for inspections, appraisals, etc. In the same week...we get an offer on our house in TX that we can accept from the family that we excluded from the contract with our realtor. Get all the loan stuff going and we are headed in the right direction...so you think. Got the kids registered in the school they are supposed to go to (which you wouldn't think is a big deal, but AR schools are Wierd...and that is a whole other story). Call the bishop, and find out which day we will be baptizing Tarin because they do stake baptisms....everyone buys plane tickets for Oct. 10th...which will be baptism day..and we are on our way to Bella Vista.

Plan E - the mortgage comany calls....three weeks later...and says...sorry we won't fund this loan until your house closes in TX. We had gotten pre-approval letters and they had all our income information for three weeks. We were one week away from closing when they decided this. ANGER starts to seep in...we shouldn't have gotten to this point if we weren't going to close. The people we are buying the house from agree to let us move in a few weeks early and then close after our house in TX closes. Well...then we started thinking...what if our house in TX doesn't close? Then, what? Three weeks after we move in we have to move out and find somewhere to live...change the kids schools because they start here Aug 19th.....NO WAY! We used to be risky type people, now we aren't.

Plan F - Decide to Rent......(5 days before we are supposed to leave) Find a house on craig's list. In a good neighborhood.....meet a girl in Utah at the park who lives here in Bentonville. Get her phone number...call her and check things out with her to see about area's etc. She seems to think we will be in her ward....since that decision to rent..EVERYTHING has fallen into place. Because the girl I met at the park knew we were coming, she called the ward and the bishopric members were waiting for us. The 2nd counselor in the bishopric called a few days before we left and welcomed us and made sure we had his number in case we needed anything. The landlord had shown this house to a bunch of couples, and then decided to rent to us. I am literally calling on our drive through Wyoming to set up utilites and make sure the kids can get into school somewhere. I got it all figured out on the second day of our drive as we left Nebraska and headed down Missouri to Arkansas. The day we moved in the neighbor next door came over and invited us to the pool. I left my mom and Dan unpacking and took the kids to the pool (I know, rude, huh?) The cute neighbor next door set up a playdate for this week....and introduced me to running friends. Turns out a group of girls meet at 6AM three times a week to run...and a couple of them are actually in our new ward...I met them today. WoW! I really thought the people in Tx were friendly....I CANNOT believe the kindess of people here in AR. Even the lady just hooking up our utilites was so sweet and kind and helpful. You just don't luck into stuff like this...we feel VERY blessed and VERY happy. Although I did have to change the kid's school..and they didn't get into the school close by..so we have a big drive every day now.....everything else seems to be working out.

So, here we are...six plans later all settled into this little rental house. We had to get a storage unit. It is hard going from the space we used to have...to this, but we will all learn to love the coziness of it. You are all still welcome to visit...just know that there is a bunch less space, but we will fit you in...anywhere we can. It will be exciting.

So, what we've learned is that plans Change...and that is okay. I guess our plan just needed to be more aligned with His plan for us.....and it all worked out. Church today was amazing. The people are more kind than any ward we have ever been in. It was reminiscent of our first Sunday in Mansfield. We just feel so blessed....and now we can get settled in.

In my next post I will post pics of all the fun we had this summer at my mom's. Walker felt so free. He could go outside and play at his will. He learned how to ride a bike. The girls and I helped my mom make rasperry jam, apricot jam and bottle beans. They took swimming lessons, played with their cousin Taylor and had sleepover after sleepover. Tarin loved going to her Aunt Carin's house to help with the boys. Livia came to visit. Ella got to play with her cousin and learned how to sleep by herself at night. We got to go on the boat with Jen and her mom...Got to see Jill and the kids in Salt lake....as well as Bogans from the loop. We had a truely amazing summer amidst all the turmoil and changing plans.