Everything happens for a reason...

I'm not so sure I've ever truly believed that everything has to happen for a reason... but this week has surely made me think more! After rushing down here to close on our house July 19th, we found out the house we had a contract on had numerous (too many to list) problems and the builder wasn't being straight with us. The day we were supposed to close we found out there was no gas line running to the house... and trusting our wonderful Realtors, we decided to back out of the deal! So- stuck in temporary lodging on base and expecting our household container in a few days... we started our house hunt from scratch last Friday night! It was so disappointing after two months of planning to start over! Sunday afternoon, after offering a contract and backing out, then looking at a few other depressing houses, we finally found the house of our dreams!!! It's turned out better than we ever could have imagined and we're now thrilled that our first deal fell through! We LOVE this house... it's brand new, out in the country a little ways and we'll have 4 1/2 acres of property. The boys have already been catching frogs in the yard. It's absolutely beautiful and we feel the builder custom built it for us. The appliances and colors are exactly what we had picked out for the other house, but they did it right! We have our appointment to close on it this Friday, August 3rd! The developer who owns it even let us store our household goods in the garage and isn't charging us rent. Our container came on Wednesday... so it's been a crazy, busy week to say the least! Now, we're down to 6 days of tolerating living in TLA... with one bedroom (Jim/Me/Caden), pull-out bed (Justin/Coleman), pull-out seat (Tyler), roll-a-way bed (Grandma). We're cramped, but LOVE Kansas! I'll post pictures when we get our computer up and running!

Flying

Today's the day! We're flying out of Alaska for good... heading to our new life! Every piece of luggage is packed to the limit with no room to spare! Everyone's pretty excited now, but I'm guessing that by 11pm tonight when we land the excitement will not be quite as noticable! We have just one stop- enough time to let the babies run, eat, and hop on another flight!

We're planning to look at our house tomorrow morning, and close on it Thursday morning. We should be busy with the zillion projects from now until whenever... but, putting in a mailbox is one of our first priorities! We'll update you with our new address and phone number when we get settled!

Homeless

After a long, hard week of packing, loading, and cleaning... we're finally out of our house and officially homeless! It feels GREAT! We received our 45' container on Monday and Jim packed it to the limit! They loaded our van in to it and only had a foot or two to spare! That thing is packed- 11, 400 pounds of household! We've got a week to recover with G'ma and Gramps, then it's off to Kansas! We couldn't be more excited!