fall retreat

This year we took our high school youth group on a fall retreat the last weekend in October. In years past we've gone to the middle of nowhere Missouri but we always got lost and had car trouble. So this year we decided to stay a little closer to home and go to Camp Durley in Greenville.

The camp's facilities were perfect for what we needed and the weather held out so it wasn't too cold. We did all the normal fall retreat activities- we played games, had a camp fire, did a bible study, had small group prayer time, ate all the puppy chow, some of the boys fished and two of our fellas thought it was a good idea to jump into the lake...the very, very cold lake.

It's always encouraging to study scripture with our students and for them to engage and grow in their faith. Youth ministry isn't for everyone but we love our students and seeing them grow closer to Christ.

the house we sold

We lived in our brown house (maybe it's more tan?) for four years and made so many amazing memories there. Not only did we do a lot of the updates to make it our own, but we grew in our marriage, hosted countless game nights and backyard bbq's and brought Margo home from the hospital to name a few.

We loved so much about the brown house and it was far harder to say goodbye than I'd like to admit. We knew it wasn't our forever home and we felt (mostly) confident that it would sell. Thankfully it did and with virtually no hiccups!

the house we flipped

The blue house was a labor of love but when we finished it we loved it. We saw a lot of the benefits and updates that it offered that our house (let's call it the brown house for the sake of clarity) didn't offer.

The brown house still needed a lot of the expensive updates that we didn't feel like we'd see a return on when we decided to sell. The brown house needed a new HVAC and windows, the floors were getting really worn out (I got a splinter walking in our bedroom!), the oven and dishwasher were on their last legs and I really wanted a deck in the backyard.

So, after a lot of discussion, advice from friends and family, lists of pro's and con's and prayer, we decided to list the brown house (OUR HOUSE!) on the market and see if it sold. If it did, we'd move into the blue house if it didn't we'd try our luck at selling the blue house and see if that went any better.

We decided to sell 'by owner' so I cleaned, organized and staged our house. Then I took pictures, edited and narrowed them down to enough to leave you wanting more so potential buyers would schedule a showing. I was so nervous that:

a) no one would like our house and come look at it and
b) people would come and be really disappointed and not buy it

It was a humbling process for me, but we nervously posted the house and within hours had several showings lined up. It was in our favor that the housing market in Edwardsville was on fire! We posted the house on Zillow on Tuesday and had three full price offers by Friday and were under contract on Saturday.

All of the inspections and appraisals went well, we had a few updates and changes to make but then closed without a hitch on November 2, 2017. 

That gave us 30 days to finish all of the little details at the blue house and move in. Somehow, with a broken foot, several Trailhead Students events (including the fall retreat weekend away) and an upcoming vacation we got everything done and settled just in the nick of time.

the house we bought

We found out that the owners of the house two doors down were planning to put their long time rental property on the market in the fall. So, Alex walked down to ask them how much they were asking and if we could walk through it. They told him their price and we did our first walk through. 

Alex and I are both the type of people that take on too much. We tend to do our best in seasons of busyness. So, why not buy a house in the midst of all of our other chaos!? 

The house is 700 square feet with two bedrooms, one bathroom, a decent sized living room, small eat in kitchen and it has an attached one care garage and a full unfinished basement. All the major (expensive) updates had been done: new roof, windows, electrical, plumbing and HVAC. Not big and fancy, but definitely not a bad house for our first rental property...

We had an appraisal and inspection done and everything came back in our favor, so we went ahead with the purchase and closed on the house on July 28, 2017. 

We had every intention of buying the house to do a little work and then put it on the rental market before school started at the college in August. BUT then we started talking to one of our friends who is a contractor that buys and flips houses and he suggest that we should put a little more work into and try to flip it for a profit. 

So we ripped out the old (smelly) carpet, installed engineered hardwoods and new baseboards, had a painter come in to paint virtually every surface, shiplapped over some 1970's (ugly) paneling, re-drywalled one of the bedrooms, installed all new interior doors, took off the old aluminum awning, painted the exterior, installed a new front door and garage door, updated the landscaping and had new gutters installed. 

All of this work while still having our own house, wrangling Margo, running the office, taking over leading our youth group full time, being in a wedding and having a virus that kicked my butt for 2+ weeks that required several weeks/months of follow up blood work and then falling off the steps and breaking my foot. It was child's play...

But, we did it. We got the little white house flipped and finished and now it's the blue house.