Because of Love

In case you missed our exciting news, we moved in December.

We LOVE our new house (and this is the story all about it) but the one thing that is bad about it is that for some reason there is very limited Internet. Horrible! I could go on and on about how frustrating this is with lack of blogging, little to no Netflix, doing home school planning and lessons, trying to watch church and other things online.... It's kinda like we are living in "the olden days" but it is kinda good too cause my girls are not as addicted to TV and the iPad and all online stuff. So there are positives and negatives.

Anyway, our story of building a house.

Josh and I moved to Charlotte about 10 years ago.

When we moved here our good friends let us live in their basement. We built a little starter home in their neighborhood and planned to stay there 3-5yrs. We were thinking maybe a baby and dog could be added to the family.... 10 years later, 3 babies, 3 dogs, and lots of stuff later we were still in that little starter home. It was very overwhelming and the word "outgrew" was an understatement.

Josh and I started looking at options. We knew that we wanted a house we would love and where we could truly settle. Josh wanted land in the country. I wanted to not be too far away and have a few people nearby just in case. (I'm home alone a lot.) I also wanted a wrap around porch.

We met with a private builder. We picked out 2 house plans. Now we needed land and had to see which house was the best option for the land.

This took months. And months.

I was very pregnant with Cammie by this time.

One night Josh was told about piece of land. We were really busy and knew that we really didn't have time to go look at it together. So one night at like 10pm we loaded up the girls and drove out to the lot. It was so dark we couldn't see anything. It seemed forever away. We decided we would probably pass on it.

So still no land.

Then I had Cammie. Long story short, I was in my bed for weeks praying for my head not to explode. Josh took care of so much. But really he was taking care of a lot of stuff that I really didn't know about.

Our 10year Anniversary was Aug 2nd.

Cammie was 3weeks old. I knew that there would not be any big celebration. My parents took the 2 older girls so we could have an at home celebration. Josh told me he wanted to go for a picnic lunch. I was still pretty sore from my csection so he told me he would find a spot we could sit and be comfortable. He drove to Qdoba and got some food and then came back to get Cammie and I for our date. Soon we arrived at a lot that had been cleared.

Josh told me that he had gone ahead and chosen that piece of land that we had driven out to in the middle of the night.

He had looked at it. Found some other side roads and it really wasn't that far out. Maybe an extra 5-10 mins to church, work, and anywhere else we wanted to go from where our house at the time was. He had taken care of everything and they were breaking ground as soon as the permits all were complete.

So for our 10 year anniversary I got a house!

As soon as possible we took the girls out to see it. (Yes, they are in pjs.)

Before they poured the foundation we put a Bible in the ground. It's our way of standing on His promises and also for us to build our new house with Him as our foundation.

We went out to see the progress usually on Sunday afternoons. We didn't get to go every weekend but here is some of the pictures I took over the 5 months of building.

This was the most exciting part of building. This was our house the weekend before we went to the beach.

This was when we got back from the beach. I was so excited!

Once the sub floor and framing was done we went in and wrote verses in each of the rooms.

The process actually seemed to go pretty fast. Our builder told me he would do his best to have me in by Christmas. They also worked so well with us and let me make so many special request and personal choices. Some were too expensive or couldn't be done, but they were great to work with.