All Things Work Together for Good

One of my very favorite scriptures is Romans 8:28, "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose."  I've been repeating it to myself day by day, hour by hour sometimes.  On Tuesday afternoon, Duncan called me with the news we had been waiting for.  He started off by saying "I hope you still believe that all things work together for good because the appraisal is done and it's the same number it was before."  Which is to say, it's bad news.  As a recap on my post last week, Quicken was doing a second appraisal on our potential new home after messing up and appraising it in June before it was done.  We had high hopes that a second one would bring much different results but alas, it was not the case.  The value did not change at all and in fact, it appears the appraiser didn't really appraise it again but merely checked to see if it the house was done.  Obviously, this was very discouraging news.

Our options at this point were to either (a) pay the difference between the appraised value and sale price to the builder in cash or (b) move to a new lender and hope for a better appraisal.  We are definitely not interested in "a" so we've moved to a lender recommended by our realtor (who is earning every penny of her commission at this point).  This seems simple enough but many lenders tell you that it takes 30 days to close a loan, time we do not have.  This lender says they can close us in two weeks or less but once again, everything is dependent on the appraisal.  This next one should happen on Monday so hopefully by Tuesday, we'll know something.

The part that's the big problem is that we have renters moving in here in one week on 8/31.  Clearly, we will not be closing by then any way you slice it so we were left with the realization that we are going to be homeless.  Calleigh approached me all excited, "Mom! I know where we can live."  "Oh really?" "Yeah, we can live in our car for a few days."  So yeah, that's not exactly what I had in mind as a solution.  Naturally, the in-laws would be a choice and several other friends and relatives have offered but do you remember that expression "Fish and visitors smell in three days?"  Well, the number goes down for each kid you have.  Ron had suggested going on Home Way or VRBO to see if we could get a vacation rental or something.  I thought that was a smashing idea until I found that basically everything available, save for a few huge houses in these parts, is in the Disney area.  That's way too far of a commute for Duncan for work.  Finally, I did find a place near SeaWorld that looks like a very viable option but I'm trying to figure out if we'll need it for a week or maybe two or three.  It all comes back to the appraisal.

Our week has pretty much been spent dealing with all of this.  I spent several hours last night sending an email to Quicken explaining all the things that were factually wrong on the appraisal report and other issues/questions we had with it.  We don't think anything will come of it but it's worth a shot.  A friend's mother who is in banking told me that Quicken may be good for refinancing (which it was and why we picked them this time) but they are not good for initial mortgages.  I only wish we had known that a few months ago!  To be clear, Quicken doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the appraisal per se, but there are so many things messed up surrounding that which have been terrible.  I'm not going to go into detail with it all here but let's just say, I would never, ever go with Quicken Loans again.

So...one could be feeling a little stressed out at the prospect of things not working out with the new home and the thought of imminent homelessness but you know, I think Duncan and I are taking it pretty much in stride.  As I had mentioned previously, you really put things in perspective when you see things other people are facing like a health crisis or your child unconscious in the hospital (as our pastor's son was last weekend).  In the end, it's just money and it's just a house.  We may not know the reason that this is happening the way it is, but God does and we're putting it in his hands.

One bright spot, according to Duncan, is that we sold our living room furniture last night.  Duncan has wanted to get rid of it for years and I held him off but it's finally gone.  We were just going to include it as part of the rental or if the new tenants didn't want it, donate it to the Salvation Army.  As it turned out, the first lady that came to look at our place didn't end up wanting to rent it but she did offer to buy the furniture so I guess it worked out after all.  Fortunately we still have our futon so we aren't just sitting on the floor.  Calleigh has told me about five times that she wants the old furniture back.  That kid doesn't like change!

From a kid's perspective, it's probably been a pretty dull week since we barely went anywhere due to packing and such.  We did start it off, at least, on a high note when we went to Blake and Evan's birthday party on Sunday morning.  Jennifer, of course, is the master of all things party related so I was eagerly anticipating the party to see all the neat things she put together.  All I can say is that she keeps setting the bar higher and higher for herself because it was amazing.  It was a carnival theme and it was unbelievable all the little touches she had centered around that.  She had a bunch of midway games set up in the backyard along with a clown face painter, cotton candy, candy apples, snow cones, etc.  Brady thought he was one of the big kids and roamed around with all of them and in fact, one time I had to go looking for him because he had wandered off with some of them when I got distracted with something.  It's SO nice having him walking.

I can't think of much else at this point so I'll leave you with some pictures.  Enjoy the Sabbath.  We will be enjoying the break from packing and gathering financial documents!

Of course, she had to get a flower because Calleigh did.

Brady loves, loves, loves this doll stroller that he discovered this week.  He'll sit in it peacefully for minutes on end...just sitting there doing nothing.  It's crazy!

Dress up time...or is that the outfit she wore to the playground the one day we got out this week?  I can't remember!

We took our two big jars of change to a coin machine at Walmart.  They don't charge you anything if you get a gift certificate so one of the two I got was for Starbucks and told the girls they could get a smoothie.  Duncan took them this afternoon and Aubs had a tough time finishing it.

The dog crate Duncan had attached to our end table which the lady who bought it didn't need.  Now it's a toy for three happy kids.