Did I mention that we bought a home?

Yes, right in the middle of getting diagnosed, we purchased a home. It all started in July, 2003 when I saw a picture of our home in one of those little real estate books that you can pick up at the grocery store. I thumbed through it and found this lovely home. It was on 12 acres in a rural area about one hour from where we lived. I called to ask a few questions and when John found out that there was a creek at he back of the property he wanted to go take a look. We set up the appointment for that Friday.


We had talked many times about buying a home with some land, but we had to wait until John was close enough to retirement that if he was asked to come back into the office and stop traveling, he could manage the commute until retirement time. We are 62 miles one way from his office. As long as he's in his present position, no problem because he works and travels from home.

We arrived at the address and started down a 1000 ft. driveway and when we rounded the corner and saw the house, our mouths dropped open and we knew we had found it. We tried not to get too excited because you just never know what lies behind a front door. We were not disappointed! The prior owner, and I am really happy about this, was a clean freak and the house was spotless. Neither of the couple smoked so that gave us a really big sigh of relief. We returned home and decided this was it. We needed to make an offer.

We contacted a realtor because this was such a big investment, we needed to be sure that our interests were protected. The owner told the realtor that she was going to be out of town, so no need to hurry because she would not be in town. The realtor met with us, wrote up the offer and said she'd call on Monday to present it. Imagine my surprise when the realtor called and said that her plans to go out of town had been cancelled and she had already excepted an offer. We were devastated!!!

We decided to make a back up offer anyway. We wrote the new offer and we were luckily in a position that we did not have to sell our existing home, so there was not a contingency clause. The other buyer had to have a contingency, so at that point, the owner exercised her right to the "kick out" clause which means that she contacted the first offer to see if they could remove the contingency. They could not, so we got the house! This took an unbearable 48 hours. We decided to close the last day of August, 2003.

We moved into the house in October, 2003. This all occurred at the same time as the diagnosis.

There is one thing that happened that still makes me shake my head. About two years before we found the house, we were on a trip and got to the airport a little early. I purchased a book of house plans and found a home that I thought would be just right for us. After we moved in and I was unpacking, I found the book with the bookmark on the page of my selection. That's right! It was this EXACT house!!!!!

Was it meant to be?


Thought for the day:

No success can compensate for failure in the home.