Where to even begin....
Sunday, December 6th we went over to Nate and Jenn's house for dinner and gingerbread house decorating. While there Nate mentioned to us again about his land he was buying. Jared and I were half serious, but also sort of not really thinking it would really work out - told him we would like to go in with them on it. We ditched the kids really fast and ran out to look at his property. We said we were in!
A few days later Nate let us know that they were not allowed to build a 3 structure on the property so we were out of luck. Since Jared and I (mostly me) were already thinking about what schools to put our boys in next year, the idea of going to Eastmark wasn't a bad option. I reached out to Denise to expand our email search (she has been sending us different homes/lands for 4-5 years now but we always kept the seach within our little bubble - nothing ever came up or if it did it was way to expensice for the major fixer-upper it would be) to some place over by Nate.
Thursday, on my birthday, Jared and I went and toured ALAQC to see what we thought. All we had decided was that it would stay on our list of choices.
Sunday while sitting in church waiting for it to start, I get an autopopulated email from Denise with 4 crappy homes and 1 that seemed to good to be true. I started texting her and she was answering all my questions. We decided to just casually go out and meet her that afternoon and check it out.
Jared and I said a prayer together before we left to go see it to help us know if this was something we should look into more or if we just walk away...we are totally happy with our house now and our village of people around us.
We got out there to what would be our future cul-de-sac and she shows us the lot. Then she showed us another lot on the same street that was also available...Jared liked that one better. He wanted to face north and south and he wanted the grapefruit trees.
We decided to take this another step further and meet with their realtor on Tuesday. Tuesday we met with him for a couple of hours and still decided to move to the next step.
The next steps were several....the builder had to be willing to work with Nathan's company because he was giving us a much better rate, we had to be able to sell our house for a certain price and because its a construction loan, we needed to find a place to live while they build our new one.
Shockingly RJ was so freaking nice and gracious and said we could live with him and he would give us 2 rooms plus the den for Jared - I cried - why was he being so nice and he was a true answer to our prayers, we could not had done this without him.
That Saturday we met the realtor, Denise, Nate and Brylee out at some lady's house to walk through it and see if we really liked the home in person. We talked to Deshane about working with Nate, we spray painted the land so we could get a better visual and make sure we really liked it. 3 hours later we left.
The next week we found out the builder will work with Nathan.
The next day Sunday, December 20th, we picked up Emma from the airport - she has no idea we are even thinking about moving. At this point the boys know we are maybe considering it but they are under strict guidelines to keep their mouths shut. So we pick up Emma from the airport with the family and we drive straight out to the land and while we are driving there, Jared is explaining to everyone what is going on.
On the way there, Tyson whispers to Emma, "I don't want to move."
When we get there, before we park we say a family prayer. Jared is crying, I'm crying and the kids are sitting there with their heads bowed, eyes closed and listening to every word.
We get out of the car and walk around the land and show them everything and try to explain it as best we can. We get back in the car and I tell them, "now is your chance to be completely honest with us and let us know what you are thinking. If you don't want to move, say it. Whatever you are thinking we want to know, this is a family decision."
Emma looks over at Tyson and whispers to him, "now is your chance to tell mom." He looks at her and tells her, "I want to move here!"
Tuesday, we sign papers, pay the earnest money, Thursday we celebrate Christmas, Jan 6th Emma flies back to Utah and Thursday, Jan 14th our house goes up for sale. To make it even worse, CUSD decides school will not be in person and they will be online so Jared has to take all the boys and Alyza to RJ's house and work and do school from there while people go in and out of our house to look at it. I can't just sit there and let my mind wander because I am realizing I truly have PTSD from the last time we sold our house so I call Lululemon and go to work for 2 days just to keep my mind busy.
That night we got the perfect contract. They gave us full asking price, no appraisal, no inspection PLUS if someone offers us a higher offer, they are willing to go 2k above that offer up to 20k more.
The next day Denise used her fancy trickery and took a buyer through our house who didn't have their own realtor and wrote their contract for them, but put her partner on there. The offer wasn't as good, but she used that contract to tell the original offer that because their realtor fee was so much lower we would make 5k more on the second offer. So within 30 minutes the original offer upped theirs by 5k.
So Friday night we are locked in a good contract. Saturday morning we were set to have an open house, but didn't think we still would, but Denise wanted to since she already paid for all the signage and she wanted to get us a back up offer. The next day Denise emails us a backup offer....5k more than our current contract, no appraisal, no inspection. We signed it.
Literally 4 weeks to the day, we randomly saw a lot, bought it, sold our house and are now moving. Come to find out now, all the available lots by us are all gone too. The whole thing is crazy and mind blowing. We even called the new Bishop at one point during this to see about the ward and he answered every question wrong, but we still knew we needed to do this. Heavenly Father has literally opened every door for us along the way. We are not sure why exactly we need to be here, but we know this is the place. This is where our family belongs. I guess we are now going to be Queen Creek peeps...with grapefruit trees, other fruit trees, a sport court (boys required it in order to move) and chickens - ha ha - who are we?!
Here's the front of one of their homes, its ugly so I redesigned it - ha ha, here is our floor plan with the changes we are making, Here is Jared over the kitchen table with his poster board trying to decide exactly where he wants to place the house on the land and here is our family picture that first time we all sound the acre together.
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