This is what things are looking like around here lately. There is a good reason, though. We sold our house! It didn't come easy. The selling of our home nor the "finding" of another. The home we have had a contingency contract on all summer. . . the home that I envisioned our family in. . . the home that I had fully decorated in my mind. . . was sold out from under us. It's a complicated story, but in short, we came down on our price drastically in order to sell to a family that couldn't go any higher. We only did this because the seller's of the home we had a contract on agreed to come down enough to make it doable for us. We signed the contract for the sell of our home and the re-negotiated contract for the home we were purchasing. In the tiny little window of time between our signing the contract and it getting to them to sign they received word that they had someone else coming for a second viewing of their house. They decided to hold off on signing the renegotiated contract with us. And, you guessed it, they received another offer. We could have still had the house since we had the first contract on it but it would have been at the original offer. Which we could no longer do because we dropped our own sell price so significantly.

So, what can you do but go out and find another house? And that's exactly what we did. We spent a day with our agent moving from house to house in search of a home for our family. We found one that we all liked and made an offer that afternoon. Our offer was accepted and everything has been smooth sailing since.

We were pretty peeved when the owner's of the other house reneged on their verbal agreement with us. But things tend to work out, don't they? While I was at our new house meeting with the inspector and our agent I was told that the inspection on the other house was pretty bad. Lot's of issues, including structural. I tried hard to refrain from breaking out into a big grin. Not because I was glad they were having to deal with that. But because, wow, we were spared from having to deal with that.  Our inspection? Nearly perfect.

It was pretty affirming. It was a great reminder to me that just because there are difficulties, bumps in the road, even detours, it doesn't mean the Lord's not at work. He most definitely is.

Additionally, His work, is broader than just getting out little family settled.

I know, duh!

I am thrilled that the family moving into our home got their dream house. They are a military family, the husband is an army chaplain and just returned from Iraq. They have three children, one with special needs, and the husband is also a cyclist and runner, just like pastor J. Knowing our neighborhood, filled with military families, I know they will love it here. And I am really happy for them!

The Lord's timing is perfect. It's awesome to see how he works things out!

We move in a few weeks so I have a lot to do. The boys start school tomorrow, in this district, but will be changing schools when we move downtown. I am doing some major purging and selling and cleaning out as we are moving into a much, much smaller home.

I am excited about making 1700 sq. ft. functional for our family. It will take some creativity, to be sure. I already have several idea's floating around. If you want to keep up with the how-to's of maximizing a small space I'll be documenting it all over at green seed creations.