Birthday Party Luau!

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Ava and Lucas' birthdays with a big luau party at our pool. We had a blast! Gotta love the Dollar Tree because ALL our decorations came from there! MY favorite was the fruit bouquet that I made after my friend Lindsey inspired me! I also felt very Martha Stewart-ish when many a nap time was spent handpainting sand buckets for all the kids for their take home gifts! 22 in all! We are blessed by wonderful friends. Our friendships here in Franklin is definitely at the top of my list why I love living here!

God's Hand

God will NEVER be outdone in generosity. He reveals this to me time and time again. I am so happy to share that after MONTHS of searching, we have found our DREAM HOME!! Now I could be jumping the gun a bit here since we are going to rent the home first for about 12-18mos, but we are hoping and praying to purchase the house at the end of that time period if financially we are ready. Anyways, I can not tell you how many hours I have poured over craigslist, realtracs, and trulia searching for a home to rent. We walked through SOO many homes that were just not right for us. I admit, I was kinda particular about what we wanted: Garage, backyard (preferably fenced in), bonus room, hardwood floors, open floorplan...I started a joke to Bobby asking him how many "frogs" were we going to have to kiss before we found our "prince"?? I mean, we came upon some real DUDS!
I was starting to think that maybe we were just going to have to stay in our apartment because I just wasn't sure that I wanted to settle on something and go through the pain of moving if we didn't absolutely love it. But we are truly busting at the seams in our 1200 sf apartment (which for the first 18mos that we lived there, I LOVED it- you can't beat how easy it is to clean!) But we really want more outdoor living space for our kids. I have this image of them coming inside with green grassy feet after a long day of playing outdoors!
We knew our budget and were committed to not going over it so that I could continue to work just one night a week at the Children's hospital. Thanks to our best friend Lauri (or Tory I should say ;) ), she gave us the greatest idea EVER! After telling her how all the rental houses were either asking too much rent or were in poor condition, she recommended that we write a letter and place it in the mailboxes of houses for sale that we were interested in and ask them if they would be interested in renting. Talk about a great idea! That opened SOO many doors for us, literally! So as our excitement grew, so did our disappointment as many times we got our hopes up about a house, only to be beat out by other renters, etc. Finally one Tuesday morning last week, I went to daily Mass and had the opportunity to go to Confession. During that time, I poured my heart out to God asking his forgiveness for the times recently where I have lacked trust in His will and begged him to purify my heart and my intentions so that I can let Him reign in my day and in my family. After spending that time with our parish priest, I felt so much peace in my heart. And no joke, within 48 hours, we received a phone call for this house! AMAZING!
We prayed and prayed on the way to this house and we spent Bobby's lunch hour on Thursday speaking with the owner of the home. He shared with us that the night before, he and his wife finally decided to rent their home and the next morning (the morning he called us), he went to his mailbox and found our letter. Crazy. By Friday night, we had reviewed the lease and then we sealed the deal on Sunday. We move in on September 1! Bobby and I have been on cloud 9 ever since!~ We are thrilled to have more space for our family and have room to grow! The best part of the house is the lot. It's one of the biggest in tne neighborhood and backs up to a huge common area, which is a really popular feature in Franklin neighborhoods. It has everything we hoped for and MORE: 2 car garage, fenced in yard WITH built in playset, 4 bedrooms, hardwood floors, spacious kitchen, double vanity in master bathroom, etc. Thank you Jesus!!!
The furniture in the house is not ours, it's the owners, so I will have to post pics again once we move it and get settled.