Happy 4th Birthday, Elijah!

Wow, our baby is 4!!! It seems like just yesterday that we were bringing him home from the hospital, looking like this . . .

And now he's this! Our fun, happy, 4 year old!

Elijah, you are such a precious gift to us. We love being your parents and watching you grow and learn more each day. You have such a silly, fun personality, and are our sweet boy. You are so smart and learn so quickly that it's a joy to teach you. This year especially your inquisitive mind is in overdrive and wanting to know everything about everything! You keep us hopping and we love it!

Some of the things that you love right now - trains, Lightening McQueen, playing soccer and "hockey" (even if it is golf), running (very fast!), music (you're BSF teachers tell me you sing all the songs and love to play the instruments with them!), and Mario Cart of course. :)

We are truly blessed to have you for our son, and we can't wait for another year of fun with you. We love you, Elijah! Happy birthday!

Pictures of the House!

Here are some pictures of the house! Okay, a lot of pictures!

View from the street - with our car parked in the driveway!

The back of the house (duh). Jon's fixing the downspout (which were all off or missing).

ALL of that is our backyard, and we have a big side yard too. But it all faces the street, which is kind of funny. In the future we'll be planting some trees for privacy!

The inside of our front door. I like it.

Front entryway. That light and window are pretty much never going to get cleaned.

Looking from the kitchen/breakfast area to the front door.

View of the window bump-out in the front room (to the left when you come in the front door).

Looking into the front room from the kitchen.

Now looking into the kitchen from the front room.

The kitchen from the breakfast/dining area. I love the pantry!!!

Looking at the dining and kitchen area from the living room.

Another view of the dining area - you can see the bump-out window nicely and part of the door leading to the deck. :)

Eli playing in the living room. We need to repaint this room for sure! I think the people wanted that "eggplant purple" look but it came out too bright.

Matea's room! I couldn't get a good picture, but it is the bigger of the bedrooms.

The "jack-and-jill" bathroom between Matea's and Eli's rooms.

Eli's room! He chose which room he wanted, and he has a nice view of the backyard.

The master bedroom. The blue isn't as blue in person, but I think we're going to change it anyway.

Walk-in closet! It's a nice big one too!

Heading in to the master bathroom  - and is that the tub I've been hoping for? The kind actually big enough for me to take a bath in?!

YES! It is a big enough tub! I sat in here for a long time when we were looking at the house. :)

In the tub, looking at the rest of the bathroom (there is a shower too, but that's too boring to take a picture of).

The finished basement! The green color needs to change, but we like the rest!

Looking the other way in the basement. There is a full bathroom to the left of the wetbar too.

Looking out of the fourth bedroom/office into the rest of the basement. There are built in cabinets on each side of the closet.  

Happy Matea! Both she and Eli loved being at the house!

I can't believe it but we bought a house!!!

As most people know now (since we've already shared the news via Facebook), Jon and I bought a house this week! It was a whirlwind and completely unexpected, so I wanted to share "the story" with everyone.

First of all, both Jon and I totally feel like this house is a God-thing and that God's hand reserved this house for us and led us too it. And then we received such an awesome, dream-come-true deal that it can only be from God. So, all credit and glory goes to God for preparing this special home for us in advance!

Anyway, back to the story. :) As we've been lining up a realtor and looking at houses online for the last month, a house down the street from my brother Jeff and Lori's house went up for sale. We normally couldn't afford a house in their sub (it's a very nice community), but the house is a foreclosure that went up about 5 weeks ago or so. We were interested in the house, but weren't sure because it was at the higher end of our price range. A definite "want-to-see" though! Then last week when our realtor was lining up houses in Byron for us to go see on Monday night, I mentioned that we wanted to go see the foreclosed house. Our realtor searched for it on the Grand Rapids MLS and came up with nothing! I sent her the listing from Realtor.com, but the MLS number listed there was not in the Grand Rapids region. Somehow, the realtor assigned to the house was a realtor from K-zoo, so they listed the house in the K-zoo region MLS. So if people searched the Grand Rapids region the house didn't show up.  I still don't totally understand this, but our realtor was very excited as she tried to explain what must have happened. Bottom line - almost no one knew about this house since it wasn't coming up on the standard searches for houses in Byron Center. You had to KNOW the house existed to find it!

Our realtor couldn't get a return call from the agent the house was listed with though, so we didn't think we could see the house on Monday night when we went out looking. We saw basically every house in our price range in Byron that night, and everything was either too expensive (it needed landscaping and finishing) or a dump. We were discouraged. Our realtor wanted to at least go see the house by Jeff and Lori though since she hadn't seen even the outside, so we drove on over. As we were standing on the porch peering in the windows our realtor tried the door for some reason - and discovered that the house was not locked (which is freaky and scary, and awesome, all at the same time!).

When we went in we could see some damage from the big dog the previous owner's had (chewed baseboards, one chewed wall, corner of island chewed, pet hair everywhere, damage to the lawn from holes, etc.). But other than that the house was in great condition and was beautiful. Our realtor was amazed and told us it was a great deal.  I replied, "Yeah, and they just lowered the price by 20 grand on Friday." Our realtor did not know that and was almost beside herself - she literally said, "This is the best deal you will find in Byron Center in your price range ever. You guys have to buy this house." Well, Jon and I were already thinking that anyway so we were on board with that! Our realtor said that if people had know about the house it would have been sold in days for the higher price, it was such a great deal. But people didn't know about it (thank you God!), and we were one of the only people to see the house!

The next day we submitted an offer to the bank for a little bit less than asking (we do have to buy all the appliances, and we figured we'd give it a try!). The bank counter-offered the next morning, splitting the difference, and telling us that the price they offered was the "drop bottom" price they could sell the house for. I don't know if that was true or not, but we did get an  awesome deal. The house was built just a 3 years ago and we are buying it for 56% of the original build price. We are so excited! We never thought that we would ever be blessed with such a nice house, in such a nice location, for so little money. This truly is a gift from God and we haven't been able to thank Him enough! We bought a house!!!! :)