Homeowners!!

As of July 9th we officially became homeowners! Woo hoo! After  7 1/2 years of marriage you can bet we were pretty excited to finally purchase our first home. We were always traveling a lot or in school before, but since life is now settled in WY and Keith has an amazing job, we figure we'll be here a good while so it was the perfect time for us to buy.

Ours is quite the story, back around the 22nd of May the home we bought was on the market, we got outbid though and so we didn't get the home, a week later we put in another offer on a different home and got outbid again. Needless to say we were pretty frustrated but kept on looking, a home came on the market on a Saturday that I really wanted to look at since it was in a neighborhood that I loved, I called our realtor and she said the earliest we could see it was the next day (Sunday) and that we probably wanted to jump on this one so she set up the time for Sunday afternoon to look at the house, we weren't too sure since we knew it was Sunday and didn't want to be looking at homes on the Sabbath but agreed to it anyway. That night was stake conference and the theme was keeping the Sabbath day holy. Keith came home from the Priesthood meeting and said he felt strongly that we needed to reschedule for Monday, that we shouldn't look at homes on the Lord's day but that day should be dedicated to him, how can the Lord bless us if we aren't showing him obedience and following his commandments? I agreed and we rescheduled for Monday. We went and looked at the house but it didn't have much of a backyard so we decided not to go for it.

Monday evening we went and looked at another home we loved but it was A LOT higher than we wanted to go (still within budget, just top of budget), we decided to sleep on it. So Wednesday we decided yeah, ok maybe we should just go for this higher one, we prayed and prayed, didn't feel much either way but then Keith got a call from his boss saying the position in Star Valley will most likely be opening up because his co-worker is moving. We had previously talked about moving to Star Valley because it's only 5 1/2 hrs from Boise instead of 11, they're getting Wyoming's first temple, the schools are fantastic and it's an amazing LDS community to raise our family in. There are some downfalls with not having much commercially there or big grocery stores like Winco and Walmart (the nearest would be almost 2 hrs in Idaho Falls). So we thought about it, slept on it and were seriously considering it but Keith was talking to his boss about where he would prefer Keith to be and his boss said Casper because there is more opportunity to get recognized here and be promoted. So that threw us for a loop and we didn't know what to do, after Keith told me that I started looking at homes again online in Casper, I immediately spotted the first home we put an offer on, it was back on the market!! I didn't know if it was a flook or what, but they had previously taken the listing down, so I immediately called the listing agent and she said it had been back on the market for 2 hours! We called our realtor and put in another offer right away! The previous people who put in an offer lost their job and so the loan fell through. The rest is history! We got the house!!

Funny thing is, is that Sunday after our offer was accepted we were sitting in Stake Conference in Kansas City, MO (we were on our Church History trip) and the speaker was Kim B. Clark (former pres. of BYU-IDAHO) and he was talking about keeping the Sabbath day holy and promised blessings that will come from obeying and trying to be better about following this commandment. It was in that moment that Keith and I realized, that us getting that home was a direct blessing from keeping the Sabbath holy and deciding not to go look at homes on the Sabbath but dedicating that day to the Lord. The Lord knew it wasn't just any home but THE HOME that we wanted, out of all the ones we looked at, this was the one we loved the most. I will forever treasure that experience and try to do better about enriching my Sabbath days with spiritual things.

Wow...that was a lot but I mostly wanted to write it down for my sake. So here's some more from the rest of July....

Our first Sunday in our new house!

Fruit pizza for the 4th of July

Keith smoked ribs all day, we ate a wonderful BBQ then went swimming for the 4th

The day before the 4th we roasted hot dogs on Casper Mtn. I love that the mountain is only 15 min from our house!

These next two were in late June but hey--water and shaving cream fun for the kids at Athena's.

Father's Day Celebration (on a Saturday) at Washington Park in Casper.

Keith got two awards--Employee of the Month-not sure why they didn't give it to him till almost July when it was for April but whatev, and the Above and Beyond award! Congrats Babe! Already doing great things!

Keith took Carson to the fair so I could unpack things at our new home.

Moving madness

Carson was so excited to ride his first bike! It's yellow too--his favorite color!

Hope you all are staying cool this July!