The Wait

That year was pure craziness in our home. We had a new little baby girl and 3 wild boys that were always bouncing off the walls. 

These things served as constant reminders of our need for more space and how much we wanted to buy and move to Betties house.  We did our best to stay in contact with Bettie during this trying time.  We sent her a Christmas card and I dropped by her home several times over the following months.  Every time I stopped by I would knock and knock and knock but she never came to the door.  Now summer was creeping in and we had no idea what was going to happen with Bettie's house.

We finally wrote her another letter saying "PLEASE, let us know what is going on".  She finally responded and told us how sorry she was but that she needed more time and figured that she would be ready to sell to us that Fall.

So we waited and waited and waited again. Summer came and went and now Fall was upon us. We again reached out to Bettie and asked her how things were going and she again let us know that she just wasn't ready to move yet.

We were so bummed and feeling quite discouraged.  We had just spent a whole year waiting to buy her home.  Tad and I were now starting to question whether pursuing this home was the right thing for us to do.  We found ourselves saying, "should we continue to hold out faith that someday Bettie is going to move or should we cut bait and move on to something else??"

We decided that we needed to send out some more letters to other home owners in the neighborhood..... so we did......and within a couple of days we received a response.  One of our neighbors was planning to sell and they wanted to speak to us.

"YES!", we said to ourselves.  We have another option.

The Talk

The home owner had actually opened the door. Here I was TOTALLY pregnant and I had three little boys hanging on my legs and we had just knocked on her door for 30 minutes... I had not even thought of what I was going to say!!!!

I said, "HI"
She said, "HI" back to me.
Then I said " I am Amber and these are my little boys".....
She introduced herself but for the purpose of the blog we will call her "Bettie"
"Well Bettie.. my husband Tad and I wrote you a letter a couple weeks ago about wanting to buy your house... did you receive it?"
"Yes", she said.

..........and then the conversation just kinda took off from there. She told me that she was actually interested in moving to be closer to her daughter (which just happened to be the town I grew up in.) She told me she had recently retired from her job (which happened to be where I had interned in college).  She told me that she wanted to help take care of her grandchildren since her daughter worked full-time at a veterinary hospital (which happened to be owned by my parents friends.).....It was such a wild conversation... I just couldn't believe how many mutual connections we shared.

Of course, the best part of our conversation came at the end when she said, "YES", I would love to sell my home to you!

I couldn't believe it. I knocked on this home owners door and asked if I could buy her house and she said YES........"Wow!"  To this day I honestly still say to myself, "Wow".

She said YES!!!

Bettie, of course,  told me she was not ready to move quite yet. She said she needed to sort things out a bit around the house and hopefully she would be ready to move come summer time.

"No problem",  I thought. I was just about to have my 4th baby and I wasn't in any condition to pack up and move my family - so 9 months would give us plenty of time to get out lives in order, as well.

The Thought

After sending our 5 letters to the different home owners and after getting no responses I started to become discouraged.  Then it happened!  One night I was laying in bed and a thought came to me. I  actually call it "my revelation" or "inspiration". The thought came very clear and distinctly into my mind, "Be aggressive on the cul-de-sac house". "What?",  I thought to myself. This house was for sure one of my favorites. It was in a cul-de-sac, it was across the street from a nice park that was attached to the elementary school, plus it has a HUGE backyard (at least for our location :)).  However... the house itself... was looking like what we call a "haunted house!!". It was falling apart in every way, the backyard was a complete forest or amazon jungle (take your pick) and it looked like nobody had been living there for centuries......YIKES!!!

So I asked myself, "what does "be aggressive" really mean?"  I figured writing a letter to a homeowner telling them I wanted to buy their house - seemed pretty aggressive!!  Yet again that distinct thought came to me again saying..."be aggressive."  The next day... my 9 month pregnant self and my little boys ages 1, 2, and 3 years old... went to the house.

Tad and I had been keeping a watchful eye on this property due to the fact that it looked deserted. We did some research and found out that an older single lady did live there alone and we knew she drove a white car.

With this being said... As the boys and I walked over to the house... I saw the white car there and knew that the owner was home. We went up to the door and knocked... and waited... and knocked.. and waited.. and waited. I knew this was my chance to talk to her and I was not going to give up!

The famous words from the hit TV show -  "Saved by the Bell" kept coming into my mind.... "Be aggressive, be, be, aggressive" Funny but actually really true.

We sat their for at least 30 minutes.. knocking and knocking and knocking and knocking...... luckily my little boys were loving it. Then it happened.... the door actually opened... and out came the home owner...

At that moment, inside my head I screamed out.....OH NOOOOOO..... WHAT DO I SAY NOW????

The Search

OK... so when you start searching for a house to buy you 1st write down your wants/needs right?? So that is exactly what Tad and I did...

1) 5 bedroom house
2) Bonus room for our kids to bounce off the walls.. preferably padded :)
3) Home office
4) 3 car garage
5) Large great room (kitchen/family room open concept)
6) Laundry room.. inside
7) At least 3 bathrooms and one of them HAS to open to our backyard (for swim school purposes). And the master bathroom needs to be bigger then a portapotty (the size of our old master bath)
8) AND A NICE SIZE BACKYARD... with a pool.
9) With an interior location in the tract. (meaning no walls backing up to busy streets)

Like this one..

 Or this one...

 Yes... and this one..

that's all... oh and did I mention it has to be affordable (which none of the above houses are).. AND in the same neighborhood we currently lived in...

Tad, being a top selling real estate agent, has been in the market long enough to know that we are asking for a miracle. If this house exists it will never go on the market.

So if this kind of house will never go on the market.. then we must contact the owner's directly right???

And... that is exactly what we did. We sat down at the computer one night looked at all the lots in our neighborhood. The house had to be a 5 bedroom, with a large lot, and have an interior location inside our tract.

And we found them, a whopping 5 homes that met all of our requirements. 

We wrote a great letter to each of the families... letting them know how much we LOVE this neighborhood, how we have all these little kids, how we are the most fantastic family... yadiyadiyada, but most importantly how we need to buy their home!

We put our letters in the mail and wished ourselves good luck. Weeks went by and, of course, no responses.

THEN CAME THE THOUGHT....

Our Past

Welcome to our new blog!! We are excited to document our new home evolving from Trash to Treasure. To really appreciate this journey your must know our PAST....

Tad and I moved to this amazing town 13.5 years ago (as newly weds) and instantly fell in love with this place!!! We loved the atmosphere and the people and knew that we wanted to call this town "home".

We lived in an apartment for several years, then eventually bought our first home. It was a 3 bedroom 2 bath and it worked perfect for Tad and I.

THEN... it happened... we started having kids. And they just kept coming....4 children in 3 years 9 months. How did that happen? It is a long story reserved for another blog (but it is a great story.... too).


Now that we had 4 little bundles of joy, it become very clear that our perfect little 3 bed 2 bath house, in our perfect little neighborhood, was just TOO small.

"WE NEED MORE SPACE" - this is what I would tell my husband over and over every night after watching our 3 little boys literally bouncing off the walls all day. And again every morning as I woke up to get dressed... and COULDN'T because our little baby was sleeping in our walk in closet!

SO THE SEARCH WAS ON!