2 Dogs, 2 Babies and Us!: Settling Down and making memories

For the first time in our married life, Jason and I are finally settling down. Ha Ha Ha!!!! Isn't that funny? No, we are not wild and crazy party types or something else really strange. We are just in a place where we feel we will stay for a while. And this is the first time we have felt that way since we got married.

Our first house in Spartanburg, SC was so much fun and we loved our little place. We realized quickly that whenever we started having children, that house would become too small for us and we knew that the house had an expiration date on it for us. We weren't sure when that would be but while we were there we enjoyed fixing up the yard, repainting the entire house and a few projects here and there every month. This is a picture taken of our old house right when we moved in:

Then God had plans we never foresaw. We moved to Texas in the summer of 2008, after 4 years of living in our first house together. It was bittersweet. Because we didn't know how long we were staying and if we would like living in Texas, we decided to first rent an apartment and get to know the area a bit. So we went from our 1300 sq ft house with a yard to an almost 800 sq ft apartment with one bedroom. It was.....a whole lot of change.

We lived there for a year and a half and decided that with the dogs, we needed to just rent a house since the economy was so unstable and we still weren't sure if we were settling down in Texas. Luckily, God had just the perfect place in mind. Just down the street from my friend was an available rental house with fenced in yard and the rent was no more than our apartment. So we moved into our "Texas house" and it was nice to have more space for us and the dogs. Thanks goodness too because right as we were moving out of the apartment, we discovered that we would be having another person to live with us in about 9 months! Here is that house:

Although our Texas house was older and had a few issues, we called it home for a year and a half and made many memories there. We brought our first baby home from the hospital to that house. Our baby learned to crawl there and we had many friends and family over for dinner there. We even lost that beautiful tree out front to a wind storm right after Spencer was born! But we knew after having our baby, Texas would not be our forever home. We needed to be closer to family than the 16 hour drive from South Carolina to Texas. But we weren't sure how that was going to play out but our hearts were yearning and open an opportunity that God would soon open.

We were celebrating Christmas 2010 with our new baby in Virginia with my extended family. Jason takes his work with him where ever we are and Christmas day night, he took a call from one of his business/family friends. When he got off the phone call, he came back to join the family and I could tell he was excited. His friend, Steve, had called him out of the blue that night to tell him he was thinking of moving to Georgia and wanted to know if we wanted to move too? Really???? YES!!!! You see, Steve's brother lived outside of Savannah and his family was visiting this brother for Christmas. And the east coast got a snowstorm on Christmas day that year. They were snowed in and couldn't get back to Texas on their scheduled flight. We got snow and enjoyed our baby's first Christmas being a white one. They had decided it would be nice to have family in the same town and the Savannah area was nice. We, of course, were on board with this plan. This way, we could move back to the east side of the country, be closer to family and live in a new place but at least we would know a few people here.

Fast forward a few months. They put their house up for sale, Jason found a job in Hilton Head that would allow me to stay home with Miss Spencer, our rental ended the month we would move and by June 2011, our family was living under one roof together again, in another rental. Steve, Jen, and their kids, moved out later in August when their house sold. Here is our rental house here:

We have lived here almost a year and now we feel like this is a great place to actually settle our family, grow our family, and the economy presents a great opportunity for us to buy a house we can live in for a while. So when we moved here, we kept an eye out for houses, lots, new neighborhoods, and got the scoop on where to and where not to live in this area. We learned that Effingham County has much better schools than Chatham county. We have looked a foreclosures but there is a builder here who can build a brand new house that is bigger and newer (obviously) than the foreclosures in the area. After prayers and crunching numbers, we made the decision that God was opening the door again to home ownership. This month, we signed a contract on a new construction house that should be finished right after Grayson is born. One of the last memories we will make in the rental, is bringing home our baby boy before we move to our new house to make more memories for our family. Here is what the outside structure of the house will look like, the floor plan, and our family standing on the lot where it will be built: