I'm Thankful for my House

For those of you who don't know the story of our house, here's the quick version. (Ok, quicker. There's no way to make this story quick!)

When our triplets were 6 months old we decided to build a house. We loved the house we were living in, but it was bulging at the seams from the addition of 3 babies and all of their paraphernalia--especially the 3 high chairs. So we put our old house on the market and signed with a builder to build a new house in a new neighborhood.

It was no fun. I kept the house as clean as I could, but with 3 babies it was difficult. It was sometimes impossible to leave quickly if people came to see the house, so quite often the house was shown with us in it. Within 6 weeks of us putting our house on the market our neighbors on each side and also across the street put their homes up for sale. Instead of a lovely residential neighborhood I was sure it now looked like there must be a toxic waste dump somewhere.

Three months into the building process the builder told us that if we couldn't take a bridge loan (promise that we would buy the house he was building even if our house didn't sell) then they would need to put the new house on the market. But he assured us that it was merely a formality--they had plenty of other new houses to sell in the new neighborhood and wouldn't really sell ours. Since we were in no position to own two houses, we said we would not take a bridge loan. And he put a for sale sign in front of our under-construction new house.

We kept showing the old house. And hired someone to do a bunch of painting. And showed it some more.

After 5 months we were pretty sure we were going to go crazy. We started to consider adding on to our old house instead, since it was looking like no one was ever going to buy it.

At 6 months the new house was done. We still had no buyer for the old house. One afternoon the builder called and said that he had a buyer for our new house. I immediately called our realtor and told her to take our old house off of the market. The next day someone made an offer on our old house.

I chose to believe that Heavenly Father doesn't make 24 hour mistakes, and that there must be more to his plan that we understood. Russ & I made an appointment with the realtor to go and look at some other houses later that week--since we had gone from having two houses to now having no house at all.

When we walked through the first house with the realtor that Friday the spirit spoke to me--louder and more clearly than at any other time in my life. It said, this is the house where you will raise your children. It still gives me chills to think about it.

Moving with 3 one-year olds was not easy. It was a long time before I could say that I was happy that we had moved, and even longer before the last box was unpacked. Through all of the difficulty, though, I was always very aware of Heavenly Father's generosity. The house we ended up in was bigger than the house that we built; it might not have had freshly painted walls (the paint was a nightmare!) or nice carpet but the rooms were just the right size for a family with 6 children. The yard is big and the screened in porch has been the site of many happy dinners.


The kitchen has miles of countertops, room enough for a table for a big family, and even plenty of room for those 3 high chairs.



The family room has almost enough built in book cases to hold all of our family's books.



The bathroom is beautiful now thanks to my amazing sister Laila's beautiful mural. (Which now includes a lighthouse behind the door!)


I could (obviously) go on and on. Our neighborhood is spacious and rural. We spend happy summer days at the pool and take bike rides on fall mornings to the park. I take long walks with my camera and am delighted by the beauty that is everywhere around me.

I can't think of a nicer place to live.