The Story of Our House

We finally listed our house with a real estate agent this week. Kind of a sad moment for us. I just thought I would record the love story we have had for our home as it has been more to us than just a house. And this house must surely be loved as even though this house was built back in 1963, we are the second owners. The first ones lived here until quite a few years after her children were grown and raised and her husband had passed away. She moved to Seattle to live near her kids. But she was here for nearly 30 years, and we have been here for 17.

When we moved to the Tri-Cities in 1991 so Brad could work for Boeing we lived in a hotel for the first month and then moved to an "A" house after that. I began looking for a home for us to purchase and gave our real estate agent some specific guidelines as to what houses she could show me. The home needed to have a two car garage, needed to be at least 2000 square feet, and it needed to not be in Pasco. That was my only stipulations. She was very good at showing me exactly that. And nothing seemed to call out to me saying, "This is it." But lets back up a moment. Not having lived around here prior to 1991 and knowing nothing about the schools, wards, towns, etc. and wanting the best for my family, I prayed before I ever started my search for a home. I prayed that we would find the place to live where our family could grow the most in the gospel, and where we could serve the most and grow through our service. Michael was only 7, Courtney nearly 5, and Erin almost 3. I was homeschooling, so I didn't really care about the schools, but I had checked out Hanford High and knew the kids who graduated from their had the best GPA's and test scores and went to great colleges.

Day after day the real estate agent took me out to look at houses. I perused the newspaper and even picked up one of those free Land and Home magazines at the grocery store. I read it avidly and came to house that I thought might fit my family's needs and showed it to the realtor. She looked it up and said, "It doesn't have a two car garage, it only has 1901 square feet, and it is in PASCO." I told her then don't bother and she continued to show me other houses. Of course, they all began to blend together. We even looked into buying land and building ourselves, but we didn't really know anything about that so that was really questionable. Day after day after day, the house in the Land and Home magazine pestered me. Finally, I told my agent to take me to the house so I could get it out of my system. After seeing all of the storage, the great organization of the house, and all of the bookshelves and built-ins, I knew I had to show the house to Brad. We went back that night, he walked around the house and said, "This is our house." We gave an offer on the house, and moved in a month later. And as they say, the rest is history.

We have loved this house so much. So why are we leaving? I use to visit teach a sister in the nursing home. We often talked about her family that lived in another ward here in Pasco and it made me very sad, as they rarely came to visit her. She never got to go for a walk outside with her children or grandchildren, even before she became an invalid. She lived there for many years until she passed away. It was always sad for me to go there to see her as I could see how sad she was. After talking to Brad, we decided that as long as we were capable, that was not going go be our family. We wanted to be able to have a place where Brad's folks could come, or my mom or my brother, or whomever. We began looking at homes through out the Tri-Cities, but wanting to stay in Pasco and never could find a house with as much storage as we have here, and still be able to have an extra room or two for other family members to come live with us. Every house that we saw we would have to use the extra rooms for the food storage, etc. We invited a contractor to look at our home and discussed adding on an upstairs, or an extra room instead of our covered deck, or even digging out a basement. He strongly suggested we not doing any of those options as it is too expensive and we would never make any money on it when we went to sell years later. We even bought a piece of land on Road 56 and held onto that for a few years before selling it. Finally after praying again, we jumped at buying the land off of Road 76 and began building. We aren't doing anything fancy, just somewhere that if we ever need to have a place for our family to come live, we have a spot for them.

So, it has been with much trepidation that we have finally put our home on the market. If you know of anyone who is looking for a home with lots of storage (we have a storage room with shelves and a work bench, built in book cases in the computer room and family room, built in cubbies in the family room, an attic with pull down ladder, a crawl space that we have shelves in for our food storage - and plenty of space for a couple of buckets to be stacked on top of each other), pull out drawers inside the kitchen cupboards, storage closet on the back deck, 3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, 2 carports, and by the way - we had the house measured - it is actually 2113 square feet, not including the attic or crawl space.

Best of all - we have the best ward! Even with all of the changes in the stake I am so sad to leave behind this ward. My older kids have grown up here and have great memories. Zach (16), Kylee (13), Kaitlin (11), and Conner (6) were all born in this ward and some are reluctant about leaving behind their teachers, friends, etc. I know we aren't moving far away, but this has been home. We have loved Pasco 2nd ward and they have been so good to our family. My children's testimonies and mine have all been strengthened here. We have really grown strong in the gospel. My prayers were truly answered in our move to this house that we thought wasn't even on our prospect list.

Our neighbors are great too. Just last winter, I was out cracking snow and ice from the road so I could go pick up my kids from school and my non-member neighbor from across the street came over and helped me. Whenever we have need help, or had to borrow a tool, or whatever, our neighbors are there for us. When we went on our month long RV trip, the neighbors kept an eye on our house and made sure everything was safe, turning lights on and off, mowing the grass, etc. They have always been like this. What more could you ask for!

So if you know of someone looking for a great ward - a starting out family, or a retired couple, someone looking for simple and homey, head them our direction. We would love for them to love our home.