Selling and buying

I briefly mentioned in a previous post about 5 offers on our house. I got a bit ahead of myself, as I had not yet mentioned we are moving. So, yes, we are moving...to Iowa in June. We did have 5 offers on our house in three days. Our house is sold. Yeah!

The next step was to find a house to buy. Troy and I went to Iowa in a whirlwind weekend with the task of finding a house. I almost bailed on the trip when Teresa threw up the morning that we were supposed to leave. Timothy had a quick stomach bug earlier in the week. But we all seemed fine until it hit Teresa. The plan was to leave the kids with my parents. I had flashbacks of a year ago when my parents visited right in the middle of a stomach bug at our house. And yes, they both got it. I was so afraid that would happen again, but Troy and my mom talked me through our fears and we went ahead with the trip.

So to the cities we went, and thankfully Teresa seemed to pull through the sickness and was on the road to recovery even that night. She got tired of me asking how her tummy was feeling.

The next day Troy and I drove to Iowa early in the morning to make a meeting with his colleagues. And by noon we were beginning the house hunting. I was discouraged to hear that our two favorites had sold a few days earlier. We saw some nice houses, but the story was really in the yards. To say that it is hilly in Dubuque is an understatement. A majority of the homes had yards that were hills that would not be good for two kids to play on. After looking at several homes, we did find one that stood out. While we liked the house, we had to think through what kind of neighborhood we wanted. Did we want to be right in the center of town like in GF? Did we want an established neighborhood? We ended up with more questions than answers.

After prayer and much conversation and a good deal of stress we decided to put an offer on a house. (Well the news of of another second showing was a bit of a spark to get us moving too!) And with that offer we felt peace. While dining at Mario's (pretty close to a Maria's--every town should have a Maria restaurant!) we got the call that our offer was accepted. There was a lot to take in during the weekend. I will have to write more later on our impressions of the city. We are just thankful that we found a house and we look forward to making it our home soon.

The view of our neighbornood from the roof. (Troy was up there during the inspection.)

 Our new house!