Last Wednesday afternoon, we loaded up our van and headed up to the (not quite yet) Frozen Tundra for one final time! It has been a long road to selling our house, but God has proven once again that He is always in control! We were starting to really worry if our house was ever going to sell, and with it going into the fall/winter months, we were really worried....houses hardly ever sell in winter...especially in Minnesota.
So not only were we stressing over selling the house, but then came the realization that we were soon going to have to start paying taxes and insurance on our house here in Indiana. And then, we found out that our home owners insurance was going to drop us as of September 16th, because we don't actually live in our house that we are having insured. In the same week we got the letter from our insurance, we also got an offer on our house!! It all happened so quickly, they saw it on Wednesday, saw it again Thursday and wrote an offer, we countered on Friday morning, they accepted Friday afternoon, and Saturday morning we had signed the purchase agreement...and they wanted to close September 16th. Talk about God's perfect timing!
The offer was contingent on us putting a new roof on the house, so we had to make a lot of phone calls to contractors and our insurance company. The roof had damage from a strong wind storm that came through, but our insurance were not being very nice and wouldn't cover any of the replacement. So once we found that out we moved forward and hired our contractor. It is very difficult to make such a big decision with someone we had never actually met!
We have been planning to go to Minnesota for Labor Day for many months, and we were just hoping and praying that the timing would work out that the house would be sold before we moved our stuff to Indiana. When we moved last October, we left everything (except our clothes and some of the kids toys) so that the house would looked staged when people came to look at it. Kristoffer's company would pay for a moving company up to one year after his start date, so we picked Labor Day weekend to make a nice long trip for our family. God's timing worked out and we were able to move our stuff home without worrying about staging the house.
We drove up to Rockford, IL on Wednesday night and then the rest of the way up Thursday morning. We arrived at the house just in time for lunch and a little nap for the boys. After they woke up we decided to head up to IKEA and the Mall of America for a little fun.
IKEA is the perfect place to find little decorations or an entire room if you are just starting out...
...or a little nap if you are a little tired from your drive!
...or a little nap if you are the world's cutest 3 year old!
After surprisingly only spending $20 at IKEA, we headed to the MOA to have some delicious BBQ for dinner.
This was our strangest trip to MOA, because we didn't do any shopping! All we did was eat and let the boys ride rides.
We bought enough "points" for each of the boys to ride one ride. Karter chose the Wonder Pets ride!
This ride takes them up a couple stories in the air and then bounces them around before slowly bringing them back down.
It is safe to say that he liked the ride!!
Then it was time for Kaden's ride!
Daddy was pretty excited to ride the Blue's Clues ride!
Karter loves a good self-portrait as much as I do!
It is always hard to tell id Kaden is enjoying himself.
But once the ride started he was all smiles and had a good time.
While we were watching Kaden ride his ride, someone offered us the rest of their points. They were leaving for the night and had enough for one more ride. Karter chose to ride the Big Rig. When we got to the front of the line the machine wasn't working, so she let him ride for free. Which meant he had enough points to ride another ride yet.
Karter was pretty upset that he didn't get to ride the same on Kaden did, so that is the one he chose to ride for his final ride.
Not bad for paying for 2 and riding 4!
We couldn't pass up getting some ice cream!
Karter walked up to the counter and declared "I want the blue one". Can't argue with that, so he got his own cotton candy ice cream...which of course he ate maybe 10 bites of. Oh well, we were on vacation!!
We packed a lot into Day 1 of our adventure...after some fun at the MOA, we were back to Hampton for one final night in our house.
3 comments:
And meanwhile, back at the Gray ranch, it was very VERY QUIET!!! Too quiet...
Glad all the timing worked out! There is always a Plan.
Blessings all around...it's amazing how everything works out, even if you have to anxiously wait sometimes. SO glad to hear it sold :)!!!
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