A Day in the Life...: Our house

Now, this is the story all about how

my life got flipped-turned upside down.

I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there

I'll tell you how I became the queen of the fresh Benton air!

Iiiiiiin west Benton, Kansas I was born and raised.

On the playground is where I spent mosta my days.

Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool or

shootin' some b-ball outside of the school.

When the man of my dreams, who was up to no good,

married me and took me out da neighborhood.

I moved to west Wichita and I got real scared and said,

"I'm moving back east to the fresh Benton air!"

I whistled for my mom and when she came near,

she said, "I know a couple selling land with some deer!"

If anything, I could say that this chance was rare,

So I yelled, "Call them mom, we want those deer!"

We pulled up to a house about 7 or 8

and we yelled to each other, "It's perfect and great!"

We looked at our kingdom, we were finally there.

To sit on our thrones in the fresh Benton air.

You're welcome.

I know you loved that. And I know you'll be singing the Fresh Prince song allllllll day. This started with me wanting to write a post about redoing our bedroom. And that morphed into me wondering if I had ever shared how we happened to buy our house. And I don't think I ever have.

It's kind of an amazing story. We lived in west(ish) Wichita and I HATED it. Nick bought the house before we got married. He loved the price. I tried to tell him if you have to drive down a road between a pawn shop and a liquor store to get to your house.......you probably shouldn't buy the house. But I digress. We lived there for about a year after our wedding before we started getting the itch. He wanted land, I wanted a house without blood stains on the front sidewalk (true story).

We told my mom one day that we were going to start looking in the Benton/Towanda area. The NEXT day, she called me and said some people she'd cleaned house for for years were going to be selling a house on some land soon. I remember being slightly excited, but thinking there was no way we could afford it. It was 3 bedrooms, 2 bathroom, finished basement and 5 acres. We were young and poor (now we're just old and poor). But we started looking into it anyways. Within a week, we had talked to the sellers (who didn't want to use a realtor) and had been out to look at it. We pulled up, I looked at my husband and he knew I was a goner. We had been told due to recent EXTREMELY high winds, it needed some repair work so we weren't holding our breath. But when we pulled up and saw this........

.........done deal. Granted, this picture is newer--the garage needed a little love and the grass was a little higher than it is in this pic--but how could we not fall in love?!?

Long story short, we LOVED the people selling it (who were also going to be our neighbors--they own the adjacent lot) and ended up hand-writing a contract that all of us agreed on. They worked with us on closing costs and through a freak hail storm (that I prayed for to damage our car so we could get insurance money), we came up with a down payment. God had his hand in the WHOLE thing. From start to finish.

It took about 3 or 4 months for us to get all the paperwork done and some work on the inside done and then we moved in and have loved every second of it since then! It's quiet and peaceful. Our neighbors on both sides are amazing (although we've lost two now to cancer and while we're broken hearted about it, we are so, SO blessed to have known them and still know their families). We're far enough away from town that we can enjoy the country, but we're close enough to make a quick trip in for groceries. We live only about 4 miles from the turnpike, so we can both get to work quickly.

It's just truly the perfect location, the perfect size, the perfect neighborhood......PERFECT. I love it. And the view just can't be beat.