July, August and September 2018

We were on holiday on the other side of Denmark when the offer on our dream home was accepted. We were so shocked, excited and happy that we just decided to cut our holiday short and get back home so we could sign the papers. 

 In the middle of July, we signed the papers and the house was ours. We spent the rest of our holidays at home going on trips with the kids, with friends and sometimes just Kristian and me. 

August came and it was back to work again after a wonderful summer holiday. 

One of the first weekends in August found Leah and I driving to the island of Fyn to babysit for the weekend. Our old neighbours from years back, their daughter was getting married, and since all the family were going to the wedding she needed someone to look after her little son. I said I would do it and took Leah along for support. 

I must admit I was a little nervous. The wee boy had only turned one and he had never seen me in his life. He was going to be staying with me for the weekend and I was feeling for him. I was mentally prepared for a sleepless, hard weekend. I couldn´t have been more wrong.

He took to us like a duck to water. He was as happy as anything and even when his mum walked down the aisle at the church, there was no crying. He just stayed sitting on my knee.  We ended up having a great weekend with him. 

In August we also started to pack. We would get the keys to our new place in the middle of October and we could hardly wait.  

 I started sorting out all our DVDs and photos. We found some precious old photos as we cleared up and packed things away. It felt good to get organised.

                        An old photo of all of Kristian´s brothers and sisters with their wives or husbands.

 We cleared out a lot of stuff that month. 

September came around rather quickly. We had our 28th wedding anniversary on 1st September. It´s so hard to believe that we have been married for so long. It has gone by so fast and what a blast it has been. I would do it all over again with him Kristian - he is just the best! To celebrate Kristian had arranged an evening out. We had the most delicious dinner and walk. 

 We have loads of birthdays in September too and so between birthdays and packing, the month just flew by. 

                              Kristian was the first to hold a birthday.

 Then it was Leah´s turn. She had invited some friends for brunch.

 Sara had a birthday at the end of September but since she lives 4 hours away, we didn´t get to celebrate her face to face. 

The packing really started to come along...

By the end of September, we had pretty much packed most of the house. 

June, July 2018

By June life had gotten really exciting!!!

We had the deposit saved for our dream home (if you are wondering what that is all about you will have to go back and read April, May 2018) and amazingly it was still for sale. (we first saw it Easter 2017)

The bank had agreed to loan us the money and so we made an appointment to go and see the house one more time.  We took Leah and Andrew along. (Leah had been there before but it was Andrews first time to see the place.) Andrew was not impressed. He thought it was old and run down. We could also see that the owner had not kept up repairs on it. It was looking more run down, but we still loved it. I was a little worried about the busy road that it was on but because it was back from the road I was sure we could live with that.

Kristian and I had decided on an amount to bid. We prayed about this amount and said that if he didn´t accept that amount we would not bid over, it would be God closing that door.

We were soooo nervous after we gave our bid. Kristian and I went to the beach to wait on the phone call while Andrew and Leah just went home.  When the call came it was not good news. He would not accept our bid. He wanted way more than we were willing to bid. We were so disappointed. Me especially. I remember saying to Kristian that we should just ring the bank and get the extra money that the owner wanted, as the bank had originally said we could go up to that amount.

However Kristian didn´t have peace about giving more money for the place and deep down inside I didn´t either, but I was so confused. I was so sure this was the place that God had for us. I just could not understand. Maybe in a month or two, we could bid again. It looked like God had closed that door for us.

So we continued to check the internet and look for houses.

We found one that we sort of liked. It had wonderful views out the back. (see the photo above)  The house was sort of our style but we were not wildly in love with it. We could make it work if we needed to.

And we were starting to feel the need to move. The owners of our apartment had told us that the rent would be going up from September 2018. They were asking roughly £400 more a month!! It was actually better for us to now buy a place than rent. So we really wanted to find a place as soon as possible.

About the middle of June, we saw a house on the internet that looked really interesting. It was a Thursday evening and it had literally just been put up for sale. I made an appointment to see it on the coming Sunday afternoon.

As soon as Kristian saw the place he fell in love again. I really, really liked it but there were a few things about the place that I didn´t like - the kitchen for example and the windows.  (I always wanted small country house windows) But I loved where the house was situated, I loved the house itself, I loved the entrance and the fact that it had an annexe that I could use as a studio or as a bed and breakfast through time.

                                        The house was in the country, yet not totally isolated.

There was a lot of interest in the house. There was a couple out looking at it before we came and another couple coming to see it after us. We told the estate agent that we were really interested and would like to come back with our carpenter for him to check it out.

So the following Thursday we were back again with my brother-in-law. He checked the house out and thought it was a fantastic house for the money.  So the next day we rang and told the estate agent that we would like to put in a bid - unfortunately we couldn´t. They still had some legal papers to get ready so we could not bid before they were ready. 

So we had to wait.

While we waited life continued......

June turned into July and it was time to go on holiday. We had a weeks holiday here in Denmark with Andrew and Leah. We just went exploring places close to us. We had some wonderful days together. 

 Then Kristian and I went away for a few days - just the two of us. We headed to Jutland (the other side of Denmark) to explore some of the areas there. 

One day we found ourselves only an hours drive away from Sara so we met up with her for dinner. 

It was lovely spending time with her.


It was while we were on holiday that the estate agent contacted us via mail. All the legal papers were now ready and she had sent them to us. Everything looked in order. We now had to make a decision - should we bid on the house and if so how much?!!! It was all rather exciting!!

It was while we sat and looked over the water in the picture above that Kristian and I decided we wanted to bid on the house. By now I had also fallen in love with it. So we sent the mail away to the estate agent with our biding price. We had bid £6000 under the asking price but we were willing to go to £2000 under. Now we just had to wait and see what the owners said to our bid. Oh, it was so hard to wait. 

We heard nothing that day. The next morning we woke and checked our emails and phone but there were no messages for us. We went out and about and by 2.30pm we still had heard nothing. It was a Friday and we knew the estate agent was going on holiday so we really didn´t think we would hear anything that day either.

Around 3pm while Kristian and I were sitting at the beach Kristian got a message on his phone. The owner of the house wanted 2000 pounds more - if we would go along with that the house was ours. That was 4000 pounds under the asking price! We couldn´t believe it. We said YES!!!  Finally, we had bought our first home. It had only taken us 28 years - but sure it´s better late than never haha

April, May 2018

Life started to get a bit exciting for us in April of 2018. 

A little background information.....

We were renting our wee apartment and in November 2016 the apartment (actually the house with 4 apartments in it) was sold to new owners.  At first they were fine and we thought nothing would change, however around February 2017 they started to talk about putting the house rent up, taking away our rights to use the garage as well as my wee art studio space.  They talked about making an apartment in that area so they could make more money. (We totally got that - they were business people but we were just wondering when they would do it and how much they would put our house rent up. However they didn´t seem in a rush so we decided to just wait and see what would happen) 

Well way back Easter 2017 Kristian and I were out on one of our roadtrips. We were driving around in one of our favourite areas and we saw this lovely country farmhouse for sale. We thought it looked absolutely lovely. As we passed the place we saw that there was an Open House arrangement and so we decided we would just go in and check out the house, just for a laugh. We would pretend we were interested. (We actually didn´t think we could afford this type of house. It was all just for fun) 

So we pulled into the driveway and went in to have a look.  The first 30 seconds in that house did something to Kristian and me - we fell in love!!!  It was rather funny, because after we had seen the whole place we both came out and just sat in the car. We looked a little dazed as we asked each other "what happened in there??"  We soooo wanted to buy that house and we didn´t even know if we could afford it, (we needed to talk to a bank!!!)

                        
                       Views from the back of the house

When the Easter holidays were over Kristian rang the Bank. Long story short - they told us we could afford the house but we needed 5% of the asking price in cash as a deposit. We could not borrow 95% from the bank but the last 5% we could not borrow. Well we didn´t have that amount of money saved so we made a decision. We decided to save for the deposit and if  the house was still for sale when we got near the amount needed, we would go and look into buying it more seriously. 

So we started to save for our deposit for the house. In November 2017 the house was still for sale and we were getting closer to our goal. In about 6 months we should have the deposit. We decided to get my brother-in-law out to look at it. He is a carpenter and builder so he knows about houses. He would check out the place and see if it was worth us buying it, then we would know if we should really go after this house.  So he came and checked it out and thought it was a good house.

Ok, so this is where my life started to get rather emotional!! Up until now it was just a dream but now that my brother in law had said it was a good house,  it actually might become a reality. I started to get scared. This could get serious and we could buy our first home!!! Were we doing the right thing? Could we really afford it ? Were we crazy taking on a mortgage at our age? I needed to see what God said about it all. I needed His guidance.

One morning before going to work I was praying about all this and then I thought "God are you really interested in us getting a house? It´s all a bit silly when there are bigger things in the world to worry about." I then opened my morning reading and it was from Psalm 37 v 23 in NLT "The Lord directs the steps of the godly, He delights in every detail of their lives."  It was like God had just answered my question. He delighted in these details of my life.

A few days later I was up at the beach. I sometimes go to the beach when I want to get alone with God. I had planned a whole day just me, God and my Bible. (Oh and a delicious sandwich!)

 I was praying about owning our own place. I was somehow feeling very selfish about wanting my own place. We had everything we needed, did God want us to own our own house and land??  

Well after I had been praying about that for a long while  I decided to read my Bible. I thought about the verse I had read from Psalm 37 a few days before, about God delighting in every detail of our life. I just thought that I would read the whole Psalm.

Well as I read through the Psalm so many things spoke to me. Like v7 Be still and wait patiently for the Lord to act. (mmhh I was worrying, wondering, trying to figure out everything. Reading this calmed me inside.) Then I read v.9 which really jumped out at me...." ...but those who trust in the Lord will possess the land." I had just been praying if we should own a piece of land. It was like God answered me. I felt a peace come over me.

If this was to be ours God would work it out. 

By April 2018 we had nearly saved all the money for the deposit. The house we had seen was still for sale but we decided that maybe it was wise for us to check out other houses just to see what was out there. That´s what we did.  But we didn´t find any that beat the one that we were in love with. 

In between checking out houses we had some friends come and visit from Ireland. We had a wonderful few days with them. 

Then in May I had a birthday. Kristian had arranged a night away. He had packed a picnic and took me on one of our beloved roadtrips

He had booked an overnight stay at a lovely wee hotel in the south of Denmark.

After some good food and a good nights sleep we were on the road again and out exploring Denmark.

It was such a wonderful birthday and break away from everything.