Peace

While we were on our way into to close I remember Dan asking me if we were making a mistake. It was in this moment that I said to him, Dan if they would have taken our first or second offer in June I would have questioned this myself, but after watching God work in this situation, and God answering specific prayers that we had prayed, and after watching God open every door we walked through, this is what God has for us.

Closing

Campsite

So our 3-4 month long trial on if we were going to get this place was at an end. In our contract we had just a couple of conditions that we asked for, one of these conditions was that Dan would have sole hunting rights of the place on October 1. Yes, part of this was because Dan could not wait to be able to hunt and gather on his own place, BUT it was also because other people had been given rights, and we wanted to make sure no one else was on this but us. Dan is extremely cautious about hunting and any kind of weapon use, especially when he has his children involved, so we thought this necessary. So on October 1st Dan took his tried and trued buddy Duanne down to walk through the entire property. We finally were able to close at the end of October, and once we had closed Dan took me down once again on afternoon. Did Dan have a successful hunt on our land this past year? Yes and No. Our new son in law Grant got his first good buck here, and was the only one that took a deer on our place, but Dan was just as please that he was able to do it.

Looking at the field across the creek

Grace and Hardwork

Before I go any further in this blog I want to be very clear about two things. #1 My goal is to live a Christ centered life, which isn't always easy. Because this is my goal, I will at times mention my faith. This is never meant to offend, but as this is a personal blog, I cannot, will not remove mention of this. I hope if you are reading this, you would know this about me already. #2 If it was not for the journey Christ has put my husband and I on, we would not be doing this and I would not be writing this. By his grace we have been given this opportunity, and only that.
Hard work has had it's place. If you have ever known or met my husband, you would know he is a stubborn ole coot. You would also know that his dream has always been to find a chunk of land in the county that he could call his own. A former boss of Dan's once wrote a letter of recommendation for him, and it simply said Dan is the epitome of a hard working man. At his former job Dan had no sick days in his contract, and if they needed to stay home ill they would need to use a vacation day. When he badly herniated a disc a few years ago the only time he missed was when he had an appointment with a physician, and those were scheduled out of work time as much as possible. For a number of months he could not sit down without being in a tremendous amount of pain. Each morning he would pull himself out of bed, and then he'd somehow get himself into our car, and drive the 25 to 30 minute drive to his job. He was rattled with pain the entire way. Then at the end of the day, he would do the same thing to come home. I in the mean time had gone back to work full time, and we started to think about being able to find our place in the country. In the fall of 2008, while Dan was pulling him self into work each day, we found out that his employer was going to be closing their location, and that he would soon be out of a job. After talking to a number of doctors about his back, we had surgery approved, and in March of 2009 he had back surgery. We weren't sure at the time if he would have a job to return to, but they ended up staying open for a couple more years. During this time, we were pretty careful to not spend a lot of money. We prayed and searched for what Dan would do for a job or business, and sometime in 2012 we knew that God had something else for him, we just weren't sure what it was. We just knew that as long as he stayed where he was, he couldn't move forward. We had a couple of opportunities come up, and he decided to take the next layoff that his company put out. Dan's last day of employment was on the anniversary of his first day. He had put in 24 years exactly. A week before his last day he had been offered a job with great benefits just 10 min. from home.
While raising our kids I have had a number of conversations about their hardworking father. Both Dan and I would praise hard work, and where it could get you, but to be honest, our kids had really never really seen that their dad's hard work had paid off. I promised my kids, that it would, that I had faith in God that God would bless their dad for his hard work, and faithfulness. When we purchased this property, both my children knew that God had done just that. God keeps his promises, and he does bless faithfulness and hard work. Now, both of our kids have full time jobs. Their employers are usually astonished with their work ethic, and we could not be prouder of them.
On Sept. 23, 2013 we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary by taking Dan's parents down to show them the land.

Over looking our creek know as Coal creek

Our view across the creek

Walking up to the campsite from the creek view

Sorry about getting my finger in the picture. This over looks our Coal creek. 2013 was very dry and we were in drought conditions. I need to take this shot again after all our rain over the past few weeks.

Finding home

On the day that we accepted the offer, we had planned to walk through another property that my husband had grown very fond of. The land was not all timber, but he would have the availability to put the open land into production of something. The land was just a bit further west of the land we had been looking at for weeks now. When the offer came back to us, we had to make a decision to postpone the walk through. But I had the feeling that God had brought another property to us almost to see if we would actually get stuck on what we wanted or would we follow him to where he wanted us. We were completely ready to walk away.
Through this dialog I don't believe I have mentioned that the reason this property was on the market at all was because the couple who owned it was going through a pretty nasty divorce. In the divorce decree the couple had to both sign off on allowing it to be sold and accept the offer. So it when to the seller (wife) and then we had to wait days to have the offer accepted by the former husband. But it finally was accepted. We went under contract in early September and took our good friends down to walk through a portion of it and where we would build our home.

My favorite picture of the place yet. Bottom of the campsite. Sun coming through the trees at sunset

Dan and our friend Duanne looking over what we call the campsite

Coal creek or what our family refers to as the gorge

In his time

We decided to put a offer on the place. We had not been working with a realtor, so we contacted a former classmate of his who was a local agent. We put in an a low ball offer and it was countered. When we came back they stood firm. We decided pray about it and wait for a while. In a few weeks we had our real estate agent contact the listing agent and although they no other offers they stood firm on their price. Dan and I moved on with our looking, thinking may be this wasn't the place for us after all. This place still found it's way to each search we made. Two months after our initial offer and while we were out of town, I received an text from our real estate agent. They had dropped the price.  A few days later we countered the offer and also asked them if they would consider selling us all but a couple of sections. We would still be left with a considerable chunk. Although at first they talked about it about doing this for us, they would not separately what we wanted.  We walked again and my husband was done. A few weeks later and more search, this house kept creeping to mind and on every search. We actually found a few new places to look at and started talking about walking through. As I ran through some things about conversations with their agent, something was not adding up on the chunks of land we had made the offer on. I started doing some research and decided to call their auditor about the land. He told me some information and I decided to contact the listing agent and our agent again. The land that was on the sale flyer did not match what was the assessor page. Of course they did not agree, but this did get us talking again. My husband was very surprised that I had done all of this o  my own but I did not want to risk him getting let down again. We decided to make one last offer on the land and make it very clear this was the last and final offer. They came back a couple thousand higher and we accepted the offer.

 

New beginnings

So I have st started to blog a couple of different times in the past with not much follow- up. I intend to change that this time, especially with the pictures I have people asking for. My husband Dan and I are in the process of building our new home. This has been filled with many ups and downs, but learning has taken place along the way. So this is where we being.
In early 2013 my husband and I were scouring everything and everywhere for a chunk of land to purchase and build on. We also would have looked at a home if it came with the right piece of land.
Our daughter had recently gotten engaged and she and her fiance, now husband Grant, had been contemplating buying our home of 25 years to make as their first home. So, if this was going to happen, we would need to find somewhere to go, but where?
Many of our evenings were spent scouring over real estate sites. we became very familiar with with a number of sites and chunks of land. I became very good at locating the location even without and exact address, and and we would ofter drive by them. We had looked at a chunk for quite a while. The pictures were terrible, and it was out of our price range for what it appeared to be, so we just did not really focus on it. For some reason though, every site we would go on, this one would jump out at us. One early spring day, Dan was getting particularly anxious about finding where we needed to be, and I suggested we take a drive, and drive by this location that kept appearing to us. It was just under 63 acres of timber, so a drive wouldn't hurt. Well, the pictures did not do the property justice, and we soon contacted the a realtor to ask about a walking through it. The place happened to be very close to where my husbands work supervisor lived, and he offered to walk through with us as he was somewhat familiar with the place. My husband and I fell in love with the place at this moment, and deep in my heart, I knew that this was the place God had for us.