The price of a sunset

Our lives have been a wee bit crazy since my last blog post. I finally decided I better sit down and document the latest news, even if it’s only to help me remember.
We accepted an offer on our house two weeks ago. We were out on one of our first really big house scouting missions that morning. What had started as a leisurely day of getting an idea of where we wanted to live, suddenly turned into a frantic search for the perfect house. We were walking through about our fifth house of the morning when we got the call that a realtor and her clients were sitting in our house writing us an offer.
We saw 13 houses that day, and as exciting as it was in the beginning, after about six houses everything starts looking the same. We were looking for anything that would make one house stand out from the rest. I had a feeling that when we found “our” house, we would just KNOW it was the one.
We walked through one house after another and then hurried on to the next. With only a few exceptions. When we walked into this one house, I had a physical reaction. My head actually felt dizzy. My heart was pounding. I couldn’t think straight.

The house itself was nice. But it was the lot that was making my head swim. It backed up to a nature area with a walking path. The yard was larger than most and it only had a neighbor on one side. The house had a massive deck that looked out on the tall prairie grass behind it. I couldn’t wait to get outside and inhale the peace and quiet. I felt like I was on vacation.
As we walked around the house, all I could see was what was right with that house. We saw a few more nice houses that day, and decided to take a second look before heading home. It was weird, but this time as we walked through, all I could see was what was wrong with the house.
It was going to need new carpet in the basement. We would have to stain that huge deck. I would want to replace some carpeting on the main level with hardwood floors. The cabinets and appliances weren’t as nice as the ones in our current home.
We ended the day thinking we needed to keep looking.
We looked at a lot of houses in the next week. Thirty-five to be exact! At the end of each house hunting trip, we would take all of our flyers and rank them in order. Then I would find the flyer for the house with the deck and sneak it back in the pile.
Last weekend, we saw our last bunch of houses. We had narrowed our search down to three areas. We were thinking it made the most sense to live as close as possible to where we live now. But we felt strangely drawn to the area that was farthest away. Every where we went, it seemed some random person came into our path and said something nice about this area. When we thought about living somewhere else, we felt like we might be missing something if we didn’t follow our gut.
We had pretty much looked at every house in our price range in the areas we were considering. We organized our flyers one more time. My husband and I both looked at each other and then we put that one house back on top.

We decided to take our family back to that house one more time. Maybe God would give us a sign. We all went for a walk on the nature path behind the house. The sun was setting behind the tall prairie grass. We imagined ourselves living there. Each person in our family agreed that was it. We all felt the same peace.

We talked about the pros and cons of some of the nicer houses. Yes, we would have to replace some carpet here. But we can’t exactly add a nature area later. Yes, we would have to stain that big deck. But you can’t upgrade the view. And yes the inside would need lots of paint. But what’s the price of a sunset?