Bucky Comes To Town...

In my family, when you have a tree that needs to come down, there's only one person to call...Uncle Scott!  Uncle Scott is a recently retired paramedic firefighter, and one of our all time favorite people.  He has an excellent reputation for tree falling...unless you count the one that he fell across the back of his truck (completely smashing it), or the few unfortunate accidents with the chainsaw, but who remembers those???

When we moved in, there were a few trees that needed to come down...so we called Uncle Scott, who generously agreed to drive up from Portland and tackle the project.  When he arrived, he told me that he and my dad used to have a "side business" Bucky and Swampy's Woodcutters.  Their motto was "When you want something busted, call someone who can be trusted, Bucky and Swampy Woodcutters"  That's pretty hilarious!  Unfortunately Swampy (my Dad) couldn't make the trip, so Bucky came with longtime friend Gary (my dad, uncle Scott, and Gary all went to college together).  And my cousin, Ginny (Scott's daughter) came along to supervise.  


It was a great day, trees came down, and we are incredibly grateful!

Meet Uncle Scott a.k.a Bucky

Don't worry, he's a professional...and if anything goes wrong...he's also a paramedic.   :-)

Luke had a half day of school, so he joined in and worked hard.

Luke was intrigued by the helmet...every time Uncle Scott took it off, Luke put it on.

The whole crew...Aaron, Luke, Ginny (and Junior the dog), Scott, Gary, and Peter

The "after" shot! 

a new HOME....

So, in my last post, I told the story of how we bought our new house.  This post is a little bit about how we've made it our HOME!

Just after we took possession of the house, we brought the kids over and had some family time.  We wanted to make sure that they understood that this house was a blessing (never to be taken for granted), and that as a family, our plan is to use this home to bring Glory to God.  This was a pretty funny concept.  Peter suggested we put a big picture of Jesus on our house so "people would know that we like him."  I'm not sure the HOA would approve, so we decided on some other ways.  {smile}

Part of our family time involved "marking" our new home!  You should have seen the kids' faces when we told them that they could write/draw on the walls.  Sheer JOY I tell you!  Of course, we also had to be absolutely clear that this was the ONLY time they could write on the walls!

We had compiled several Bible verses that reflected our hopes for our new home.  And so the marking began....

Excuse the handwriting...ball point pen on a textured wall is difficult.  Here was our inspiration and this was written in the entry hall.

"Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and strength.  These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children.  Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  WRITE THEM ON THE DOOR FRAMES OF YOUR HOUSE AND ON YOUR GATES."  

Deuteronomy 6:5-9

Luke:  As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

I love how Natalie is nestled right under her daddy!

Peter just turned 5 and is learning to write.  So he had some statements, rather than verses to write.   
Here he is writing, "I love God."

Natalie just turned 3.  She was drawing pictures.  She showed me this picture and said, "Look mama, I made God."
Yep, looks just like him!

I loved this one too.  Peter made a cross and wrote his name so that God would know who did it!

This was a priceless activity for our family.  I look around at the new paint, and I know what's under there!

a new house....

This is the picture from the real estate listing.  Our new house!

As you have probably have figured out, we moved...back at the very end of August.  Yes, I know it's October, but give me a little break.  Moving is HARD work!

There's so much I want to tell you about our new home, and how we came to own it.  It's an unbelievable blessing!

So here's the first part of the story.

First, we bought a house that had been in foreclosure.  The amazing thing is that we know the previous owners, and they were the ones who invited us in, showed us their home, and suggested we try to buy it from the bank.  They are wonderful people, who enjoyed the home, and in their graceful way, wanted another family to love it too.   At the time, I was pregnant with Benjamin, and we knew that we were very quickly outgrowing our 2000 sq ft, 3 bedroom home.  6 people, 4 young kids, 3 bedrooms....things were starting to get tight.   And then things started happening....

Last Halloween was the first time I saw and LOVED this home.  We were trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, and the previous owners answered the door and invited us in to look around.  As we were walking away, Aaron asked me what I thought.  I said, "It's amazing and we'll never own it.  There's just NO way." (I'm really coming off as a glass-half full person, huh?)  But the truth is that this neighborhood, and house are much nicer than I ever dreamed we would live in.   Aaron was calm and cool and just said, "you never know."  Over the next few months we talked on and off.  We talked with our families, small group, and asked friends to pray.  At that time, it seemed almost impossible.  The owners of the home moved out, and the bank took possession within days of Benjamin being born.  In the busy time of welcoming our new little guy, I had no capacity to ponder a new home, and it slipped off my radar.  But not Aaron's.  He loved this house from the moment he saw it, and diligently researched and learned as much as he could about buying a foreclosure.  It was extremely helpful that we knew the previous owners and they were willing to give us all of the information we needed.  In fact, when they moved out, they gave us all of their touch up paint...just in case we ended up buying the house.

To make a very long story, a little bit shorter, here's what happened.  The house went up for auction and didn't sell, went on the market for  90 days for more than we could afford, went down a little, and then went back on auction 3 more times.  The price was getting lower and we were confident it was in our range.  We contacted the selling agent and let him know we wanted to make an offer as soon as it came off of auction and back on the market.  The agent was skillful. He contacted the bank, they pulled it off of auction early, and we made our offer immediately.  With some minor negotiations, the bank accepted our offer.  To say that we got a "deal" would be a gross understatement.  We got an amazing steal of deal.

In the meantime, we had listed our home for sale, and it sold within 40 days of being on the market.  Phewwww!  

We owned both homes for a month, which was actually a relief.  There was lots of work to be done at our new place.  You can read all about that in another post!

green

I love this color of green.  Here are two things that are adding a little color to my living room while we wait for spring to arrive.

a "bouquet" of these flowers

the kids call this the cabbage pillow