We are home owners again!

We were finally able to close on our house on Friday, after so much frustration and work. It will pay off though. It was such a nice birthday present. To top it off, my mom and dad took Charlie and I out to dinner and it was great. I had a really good time. So our first step to fixing the house is to get the skunk out of the basement and then the electrician is coming tomorrow to restring the electric in the basement so we can have power to check the furnace and for power tools and such. We went this weekend to tarp the one part of the roof that was so bad that it started to leak into the house. Yes, we had to do some of it yesterday and break the Sabbath, but Charlie is so busy during the days of the week that we wouldn't have been able to finish it any other way. We are happy it's done now because we have rain in the forcast this week. The roof will have to wait until next month to be fixed. We just didn't want anymore water in the house while we wait. We can't move in until all the work it finished, per our rehab loan rules, so we plan to go as fast as we can. It looks like we will have until April to stay where we are. The redemption period will be up on March 8th and then we will have 30 days after that to be out. We are hoping to get that 30 days extended, but we aren't holding our breath. The realtor who will be listing the house once the redemption period is finished told me that the bank who owns the house doesn't usually let people stay in the house once the redemption period is over. We can't officially ask for permission until the redemption period is over, so we will know more by March. Either way, I'd like to have the work on our new house finished by the first of April just to be on the safe side. We are all pretty excited. I had to pick the kids up from school on Friday so we could make it to the closing on time. We told the kids that I had to pick them up so we could go get my birthday present. So when I picked them up Makayla said to me, "So are you going to see what we get for you?" Because it's suppose to be a surprise, right? I told her that I had to. She asked why they couldn't wrap it so I wouldn't see. I told her that the present was too big to wrap. She said that that was impossible and I replied that the present was as big as a house. She said that was impossible. So I told her it was a house and she got the biggest smile on her face and exclaimed, "We got the house!" Our kids have been waiting for forever to buy that house. In fact, Jaxson said almost everyday to me, "I want to buy the big house." And I'd have to reply that we were trying to. Yesterday as we were leaving, after we had tarped the roof, he started to whine that he wanted to buy the house and we tried to explain to him that we had finally. But I think it's just been so long that we haven't been able to that he just doesn't understand that that has changed now. Yeah for us! Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts on our behalf. We know it helped.