The House Story

It's really a pitiful story and yet is full of hope too. DH owns/runs/manages (with the help of 1 part-time employee, well, not counting me) a fitness franchise almost 2 hours north of where we are currently living. He's been in business for himself for 3 years and we're still not breaking even. In his defense, there was gradual growth and it was paying for itself for a few months prior to Hurricaine Katrina hitting. Then gas prices spiked and our membership started dropping. We haven't had an income aside from $400 a month that DH was able to pay me for awhile (I work part time handling the deposits). Last year I started doing some contract data entry work part-time from home which paid a little better, but still not enough to make ends meet. We've used up our savings, cashed in all our profitable stocks and bonds (we'd lose money after commission on any we still have), cashed in our retirement, racked up massive credit card bills, till finally we got a foreclosure notice and chose to avoid that with bankruptcy. Not a fun thing, but we really want to try to make the club work, we just need more time/a new start... yada yada. We've prayed and prayed about it and know we have lots of people praying for us. We feel that God is leading us to leave our house and probably to move closer to the club so I can help out more and so that we can be together more as a family. DH has been staying up there during the week so we only see him on the weekends. It's tough being an only parent during the week to 3 very active/needy (one nursing and in diapers) kiddos and trying to find time to fit in 3 or 4 hours of work a day. So we were going to have to see if we could find something in the $300-$500 a month range, but even that was going to be pushing our limits (after taxes, utilities, insurance...). Then my parents said they wanted to look for investment property up in that area and they'd let us live in it rent-free until we can get back on our feet or start making payments. My mom got on the ball right away and her realtor neighbor helped her find an older (40 years old) brick home about 10 minutes away from the club (hallelujah!!!), 3 minutes away from our bank (where I'd be making the deposits), 4 minutes from Wal-Mart (appologies to those who HATE Wal-Mart, but that's all we can('t) afford right now), very close to a library, maybe 10 minutes from my best friend, 15 minutes away from my brother and his wife (and the mall), a few minutes from the interstate... The house is on 2+ acres of land and even tho it doesn't have a basement like our current house, it has an extra room and both a living room and a den (which our house doesn't have) so it may actually have more room (at least more rooms). It comes with a pool (yee-haw, and it's fenced in), a treehouse, riding mower, some other tools and pool equipment and a long paved driveway. I am just so jazzed and almost can't wait for closing so we can start to move our things in. It'll be a cinch for DH to take boxes every time he goes up to work (till we finally get moved in for real). There are so many good things about moving up there, but we will really really really miss our church family down here. I wish we could transplant our favorites up there. I think that'll be the hardest part. It's not like we're going where we know no one, but it's still going to be sad. And it'll take time to build up new friendships... I just hope we can find a church that has a good kids program. I think our church down here does pretty well, but not all churches are like that. DH is going on the home inspection today, wish I could be there, but I really didn't want to have to spend the day up there and also didn't want to have to drive so far just to see the house so pics will have to do for now. As soon as my parents close, I'm hoping DH can go get exact dimensions of the rooms and what-not so I can draft up a more accurate floor plan. I'm so goofy about that sort of thing, I love to imagine where I'm going to put things, how things are going to look...