Exciting News

I just wanted to thank those of you who have been praying that God would provide us with a house to buy. God is sooooo good and just this past Thursday one of our bids was accepted and we are now in the process of buying a GREAT house. There are a few miracles involved here and I would like to share them with you:
1. The house is a regular sale (not a repo) and there was a bid that was $25,000 over ours but the buyer chose us (we think they are Christians) anyway!!!!!! There were many, many offers-look at all of the realtor cards (above) left from when a realtor showed the property!
2. A good friend of ours (he is a professor at BIOLA in the music dept.) is also looking for a home to buy right now and we've joked about how cool it would be to live close to each other. On Friday they had an offer accepted on a house just 3 blocks away! They have 3 little boys and our kids enjoy playing together.
3. All along we have hoped to live in the Gardenhill neighborhood in La Mirada (close to Talbot) and this house is only .4 miles (that's 4 tenths!) from the Talbot parking lot.
4. We stretched a bit financially to make this happen and we still need to buy appliances. Our realtor told us she would buy the stove for us!!!! And we've had some other people tell us that they are sending a check to help defray the appliance costs!!!! Wow!

Needless to say, we are sooooooo excited and a little overwhelmed. We've had a lot of ups and downs in this house buying process that I feel like I can't relax until the keys are in our hands. We had the inspection done yesterday and everything seemed to go fairly well. There are a few issues, as would be expected from a house built in the 50's. There are a few quirky CA things like a stone roof (in good condition), a palm tree growing into the side of the house roof, etc. We'll have the appraisal done this week and find out what needs to be fixed before our loan can be approved.

The house is truly beautiful and so much more than I thought we could get! Most of it has been freshly painted. In fact, when we first went to see the house (a week ago Monday), we had Sky and Brad with us and had to read them the riot act about not touching the walls, etc. because everything had been painted the day before. When we found out that our offer had been accepted and told Sky she said, "If it's our house, can we touch the walls now?" Sky also really likes the purple tree in the front yard!

So, I am hoping that you could continue to pray for us and that we can truly get this house, that the appraisal would go well, and that we could move in before the baby arrives. Thanks so much! We really appreciate it!