Our First Home

***Hart and I are cleaning and organizing our blog posts so we can make a blog book for our family and we realized we never posted this story of our first home! Enjoy looking back with us!***

 Doing some major yard work with Daddy Harry

This post is to tell you about our first home. Many of you have not heard the story of how the Lord brought us to this house, or even know what our house looks like (either because you haven't had the opportunity to visit yet, or even seen any photos). So here you go...

Putting in some sweat equity doing yard work as newlyweds

The Story:

At the time when we began the house search, Hart was living with his parents, and Vanessa was living with the Nelsons (some family friends). In the very early stages the plan was once we found a house, Hart would continue living with his parents, while Vanessa would move into our new home. She would also try to get some roommates who would pay us rent. So a few months after getting engaged, we started the house search with the help of Hart's best friend, Charlie Mather (a real estate agent at The Wolfe Co... this was obviously a long time ago! Now at The Mather Company!). From about April to August the search went on. We saw a lot of houses during that time. Most of them we can't even remember. Of course there were some that we loved, but didn't pursue because of either the price or the location. There were some that one of us loved, but the other didn't. We had one house we actually put an offer on, but the seller was not willing to budge. A few weeks later we found another house in the same neighborhood and we got excited. However, after the seller told Hart and Charlie he was angry at Charlie's boss about something and therefore he wouldn't sell us the house (and after Hart and Charlie realized the seller was being serious) we scratched that place off our list (it's a long story...just ask)!

Anyways, by August as you can imagine, we were starting to get a little nervous...the wedding was a few months away, and we were starting to wonder if we'd have a place to live by then! But praise the Lord, for he was at work! Hart's parents' best friends (who we will call "G2 B") were wanting to move. They just weren't really planning on doing that this soon. But, they invited us over one time to check out the house and see if we'd be interested. When we arrived at the house we knew pretty quickly this was supposed to be our first home! A lot of the details are pretty fuzzy now. But contracts were drawn up and agreements were made. Because G2 B hadn't been planning on selling the house so soon, there were many repair projects that needed to be done. But praise the Lord! Mr. B is an amazing handy man, and a perfectionist, so he did amazing repairs and additions to the house! Furthermore, he was so accomodating with us, and allowing us to have the say in how we wanted things.

We bought the house in late August or early September. Because of all the repairs needed, the house wasn't move in ready until October. Because it was now so close to the wedding, we changed our plans around and decided it would be better for Vanessa to continue living with the Nelsons, and Hart move in first, and get the home ready for his future bride.

Signing on the dotted line! Hart bought our first real home! Praise the Lord!

Our first home at Christmas Time, Christmas 2008!