The House That Was Never Built.

It's been almost a year since Cory and I moved to Arizona.  It has been a fun and exciting year. We've had our ups, and our downs. We miss our friends and family back in Utah so badly it hurts some days. However, I wouldn't trade our move for anything in the world.  It's allowed us to grow closer as a couple and be able to more clearly see what we want for our future.  Do you want to know my favorite part though? We get to live just down the road from my sister Angela, her family, and my parents!  My sister and i have always been close, despite there being a 15 year age gap.  Her husband was in the military for the majority of their marriage, and because of that, I very rarely got to see them, or their six kids.  Now getting to live close to them is one of the best things in my life. They're a huge support, and some of our biggest cheerleaders!

Here are some of our adventures so far:

                                        

              This little family of mine, I'm going to let them shine!

When we first moved here, we decided we wanted to live close, but not too close (my parents and sister live in the same circle!). We also knew, if we moved a little farther down the main road, it'd put us about 15 minutes closer to Cory's work.  So, we went about 15 minutes away and bought this perfect one story home.  3 bedrooms, 2 baths, perfect for our hopefully future family.  We were ecstatic.  We had just sold our old home in Utah. When i say old, I mean literally. We put our heart and souls into fixing up that house. It was bittersweet leaving it because we knew it wasn't the house we were meant to stay in forever but so much of our blood, sweat, and tears were in it. 

The happiness of know there was nothing to fix right away!

Now, what most of you don't know, is as much as we love our home, we wished we would have been closer to my family.  A few months ago they opened some new construction lots just across from my parents circle.  Angela and I look at just about every home in the area, it's like a hobby. So it was no surprise when we went in and looked at these.  What was a surprising is some how Cory ended up in there with me the next day, with a contract on a home and me enrolled in real estate school!  We went through and had every upgrade we'd ever want put it. We were excited, my family was excited, I think Bert was even excited!

Flash forward a couple of weeks. The new home had been trenched, I had only one last test to get my real estate license, and we were pre-planning our furniture layouts and decorations.  We're sitting in Olive Garden, enjoying a free meal thanks to a gift card, and Cory says "I think we should start looking into adoption."  Little did he know Angela and I had already been researching adoption for a few weeks.  Everything from domestic, to foster care, to adoptions from Bulgaria and China. We spent the meal in our booth discussing the information I'd found, and realizing it was actually realistic at some time in the future.  Just a few days after the "Olive Garden meal that will go down in history."  We get an email form the lender of our new home.  To our surprise, thanks to my 6th grade math level and a rise in interest rates, we were spending about $300 a month more than we were planning to.  We were shocked, and starting finding a way to afford it.  Yet, one of the first thoughts we both had was "Well, if you don't move, that's 6 months sooner we could start the adoption process."  We let it sit for a while, seeing if there was a way we could have our cake and eat it too. In the end, we had decided the $500+ we would be spending extra a month would be better spend on our future family. For now, we'll stay 15 minutes away from my family, and an extra 15 minutes farther away from target.  I'm still working through which one is sadder.

Watch out, i'm about to get a little spiritual on you. 

Cory has always been a huge believer in, "if it's meant to happen, it'll happen."  I've always struggled with this a little more. I'm more of a doer.  However, in this case, I think that's exactly what it was.  I think there were reasons we jumped the gun on a new house.  Yes, we will lose our $500 of earnest money, but in the grand scope of things, that doesn't seem like too much.  What it did give us, is my second career.  When we started talking about adoption, the biggest problem was the cost.  We're hoping I can find a good broker, and become a real estate agent while balancing my flight attendant career.  If I can manage it, 100% of the funds made from real estate can go towards our adoption.  I truly believe going into there, going to school, and the timing was all part of gods plan.  It was always a small comfort when talking about adoption that he was a chance of back up funds from real estate. Even though I'm not quite to having my license, just know there is a chance of the extra income is so comforting. I still can't explain it, but for one of the first time in our lives, it feel like we're on the right track. Like we're moving in the right direction.  Maybe the reason we haven't been able to have kids on our own is because we already have kids out in the world, we just don't know yet that they're supposed to be part of our family. All we need to do is find him/her or them to make our family complete. 

Oh, and if you know anyone needing to buy or sell a home in Arizona, I'm your girl!

And that's the story about how we almost bought a new house!