Roller Coaster Ride and Blessings (Part 5)

In that last leg of our roller coaster journey, the first home we had fallen in love with sold...to someone else.

To say that I was disappointed would be understating things, but given a little time to talk things through with those close to me, I soon recovered.

Just like when you're young and have a crush that only lasts until the next one comes along...my love for that house was eventually replaced by my love for another.

In my continued search through the listings, I found a newer 4 bedroom, 2 bath one story ranch home. It was very similar to that other lovely home in the country, just less square footage. And at far less a price.
We met our agent at the property and instantly fell in love with it.

It was completely fenced and cross fenced, with a dog run.

The inside was pristine. It didn't appear to need any work at all, just new paint colors and our preferred type of flooring. And the pantry...I loved the pantry.

It had been on the market for some time and the price was about $50,000 less than we had anticipated needing to pay for a home that nice.

While looking around the house, our agent received a call back from the listing agent...a deal was pending. Someone else's offer had already been accepted.

Bummer. "Well, it must not have been the one for us then," I remember saying, though longing to find another home with a walk-in pantry like that one.

We searched the listings yet again, and amazingly found another home in that same price range roughly the same size. On 2 acres in the country west of our home.

It was about this same time, we noticed that home prices had really begun to drop.

And we'd begun hearing bad things about the mortgage lending company we'd gone through, and so we changed over to another one.

We went to see that house on 2 acres, hearts filled with hope.

It was also a 4 bedroom, 2 bath, but there was no fencing and there was lots of desert brush around the home.

I cringed thinking of our little Judah wandering off and getting lost out there somewhere among the rattlesnakes and coyotes down near the railroad tracks.

While looking through this house with our agent, I noticed that everything inside appeared to be covered with a film of grease...much like what you'd find in the kitchen of someone accustomed to deep-frying all their food.

Except this was all over the linoleum floor, and appeared to have dog hair stuck to it.

It was disgusting. As in the-flooring-would-need-to-all-be-ripped-out disgusting.

They'd left a bunch of stuff in the house, too. Framed family pictures and a vaccum, long dead potted plants, a white plastic lawn chair, a beer can in the windowsill.

Strange. From the listing, it had been vacant for some time, so surely they would have had time to return for the rest of their belongings.

The mystery deepened, and beckoned me down the hallway. I looked through the bedrooms. Same story. Other junk left behind.

Divorce? Death? A homeless person living in the home until they were chased out?

Puzzled, I came back out to the living room to find Jeff and our agent engrossed in conversation, and glanced over just in time to see Judah upending the old beer can that had previously been sitting on the window sill.

"NOOOoooooOOOooo!"

Ever have one of those frantic slo-mo moments trying to get to your kid? That was me just then.

He spat out whatever was in his mouth and dropped the can, which rattled with grit.

It wasn't liquid, whatever was in that can.

We all stood there aghast, completely repulsed by having witnessed such an appalling thing.

None more than Judah, who was clawing at his tongue disgust on his face. "Ith icky" he said, and did a full-body shudder.

I grabbed him up, took him out to the car and rinsed out his mouth with hot water from a half-used bottle in the car. Blech!

I still recoil (and gag) thinking about it.

I didn't even want to know what was in that can. All I wanted to do was get out of that miserable place.

What would possess the kid to do such a thing? He had just barely left a Spongebob sippy cup full of cold juice in the car. One word about being thirsty, and we could have gotten that for him!

Had it come to this? The poor kid was feeling so 'deprived' that he had to resort to drinking out of abandoned beer cans in filthy vacant homes? Ack!

Needless to say, that house was scratched off our list of possibilities.

Oddly, rather than feel discouragement at the state of things (which didn't look very encouraging at the time), it felt like a certain momentum had begun...like we were closing in on 'the one'. That we were at long last nearing the end of our house hunt.

We just sensed that the Lord had it all under control.

He certainly knew we were exhausted after so much time spent looking.

The very next day I found a listing that had just come on the market...






(Bet you thought I was going to leave you hanging again, huh?)

Well, I'm not. Because this was the house that made us forget the wonderful ranch house in the country completely.



This house had, in our opinion, the best of both worlds.

The front yard faced a street in a beautiful neighborhood that has managed to keep it's property values up in spite of market fluctuations.

The back yard backed up to undeveloped desert 'greenspace' (which, in the desert is actually brown), which had a fabulous view of the mountains, and the clouds that come rolling over those mountains.

The house was on almost an acre and a quarter, and had a lot of potential. The back yard extended out quite a ways, and was situated at the top of a sloping bluff that led down into the desert.

Down below were some train tracks.

Now I know this would be a deal-breaker for most folks, but the way the bluff was situated, the noise of the trains reflected off the walls through that desert canyon, and made it sound way off in the distance.

We know this because we visited that house three times that weekend, and stood both inside and out of the house while trains were passing by, and the sound was not obtrusive at all.

These are the same trains we hear from the house we're currently living in, and we've grown quite used to the sound.

Did I mention that view?

Don't laugh, my Pacific Northwest peeps...in the desert we take what we can get. (It looks a little better in person).



It was the same view which, if a person was to buy a new home about 1 mile further west would cost about $250,000 more than the price of this one.

We talked about how it would be nice to have a Gazebo out there on that bluff...a place where we could sit in the evenings and watch the trains down below go by.

I know this is some bad photoshopping, but we envisioned it looking a little something like this, except with some landscaping around it.



With perimeter fencing to keep Judah from rolling down the hill.

Judah looooved the trains. "Thomas!" he yelled, and waved like mad each time one passed.



"Are we gonna wive at da Thomas house, mama?" he began asking after our first visit.

"Maybe," we replied, not knowing for sure, but our interest rapildy growing.

Jericho, sensing our interest, staked out his bedroom upstairs.

This home was beautiful inside.







Well, with the exception of the parquet wood-look ceramic tile in the formal living and dining rooms, and the odd, 70's throwback tile in the kitchen and other rooms.

Guess whoever installed that must have thought they found a real bargain, "The look of Parquet with the durability of tile!"

Not pretty.

Too bad they had to bring it up the walls and put dark grout between the tiles.

Oy, it was going to be a lot of work to get all that out...but for the price of the home, it just might be worth it.

Dare we dream?

Too late. I already was.

There was a perfect place near the staircase which would be ideal for a really tall Christmas tree. See, right there to the right?



I couldn't get the decorating possibilities out of my head, and was already planning out the big family Christmas gathering in our new home.

"It's perfect!" I said.

Jeff liked it a lot, too, and agreed that it was a great deal and could be made into a real showpiece...one that could make us a good profit when the market turned around.

His only misgiving was the amount of work we'd have to do to the place before we moved in. That wretched tile was all over the downstairs.

However, we knew that we needed to jump on this opportunity quickly or someone else would, and so, after dragging our agent out there for a third visit, we finally made an offer.

There was just one problem...