Our Lexar Journey

About a month and a half ago my husband called me from work and dropped a bomb on me. 
"Let's build a house".  Or maybe what he said was more like "You know how we had decided to stay in this house awhile longer, what if we just built a new house now instead?"

I was floored, to say the least.  First let me tell you why.

Our wonderful, cozy home!

We currently live in a double wide manufactured home on 20 acres.  It's a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home that we had placed out here in 1998.  In 1998 we had no kids and the house was plenty big enough for us.  Fast forward to 2011 when I'm pregnant with our 5th child.  We already had 2 girls sharing a room, and 2 boys sharing a room- and we were managing just fine.  Of course having a little extra space would be nice, but it wasn't necessary.  We always had the mind set that our little house kept us close as a family, so getting into a bigger house was a want, not a need.  But we thought we'd try selling our house anyway (the house and shop on our 20 acres), and build a house next door on a separate 20 acres that we already owned.  
So that's what we decided to do in 2011, we put our house on the market and waited, and waited, and waited.  We had a lot of interest, but no offers.  This wasn't the best time to sell, the housing market wasn't great, but we thought we would try anyway.  We had our house on the market for that entire spring and summer without any offers.  We dropped the price during that time, had a lot of interest but no offers.  I was pretty discouraged.  We took our house off the market at the end of summer. 
The next spring we did it again, and the spring after that too. 
For three years we had our house on the market during the spring and summer months.  No offers.
Yes, we have a manufactured home and you may think that was the problem, but I don't know about that.  It's a nice home, we've updated things inside, we've landscaped over the years, we have a spectacular view of Mt Adams, it's in a great school district, we have a huge shop as well, the list could go on. 

So why wasn't it selling??
I truly believe now that it was not in God's plan for us.  He had other plans.

The last summer we had our house on the market, I actually didn't want to put it on the market.  I was tired of trying, and the more I thought about it the more I realized I did not want to move off the land we were on.  You have to understand that when we first bought our 40 acres there was absolutely nothing here.  Not one tree, not one bush, nothing.  Since we moved on the property we have worked our tails off getting trees, working on landscaping, etc. 

I love it here! 

Our amazing front yard with the beautiful Mt. view!

The yard is perfect and big, enough space for all our kids to run around it.  We have huge trees now, the trees we planted 15 years ago tower over us now, and over the house as well.  We have lots of green grass that was once just a field of alfalfa.  The kids have their play set, their trampoline, the huge shop that they can ride bikes and scooters in, we have an awesome drive way for bike riding and basketball.  If we were to move next door on the bare 20 acres we would have none of that.  No green grass, no yard, no trees, no shop, nothing. 
So I wasn't excited to try and sell again, and luckily we didn't.  Another summer and no offers on our house, even with repeated drops in price.  
God knew!
Two years ago was the first year we didn't put our house on the market, for once I enjoyed my spring and summer, I wasn't stressed about keeping our house picture-perfect clean 24/7.  It was nice.
We came to terms with living in the house forever (or at least for quite awhile). 
I was okay with what we had, actually I was thankful for what we had. 
Oh sure it would've been nice to get into something bigger, now 3 boys were in one room, but we made it work.   We continued to do some updates in our house, we re-did our kitchen cabinets, we replaced carpeting, added laminate flooring, painted and redecorated. 

We were happy.

Then my husband dropped the bomb.
I'm thinking to myself, "where is this coming from??"  I thought we had decided to stay where we're at?  We had some bigger projects on our list, and had made some decisions about getting our mortgage paid off within the next 8 years or so.  So why was he thinking about building a new home now?  But my husband had a different plan this time. 
He wanted to build the house on the same 20 acres that we are on now instead of the 20 acres next to us.  We would still have the yard, the shop, everything. 

We prayed. 
We wanted to do what was right.

This is where we'll have the new home built, right where we park our cars,
directly in front of our current home and next to our shop.

This is the model Lexar home in Kennewick, WA.
The same house that we've chosen to build.

And now here we are, in the early stages of getting a Lexar home built.  And when I say early stages, I mean early stages.
But it's exciting, really exciting. 
It's funny how plans can change when it's God's perfect timing.  Our timing wasn't right, but God's is always right.
He's always right!

My next post I'll explain what stage we're in (I tell you it's early), but I'll chronicle the stages which will be helpful to anyone else thinking about doing this same thing.