On Wednesday Otis and I closed on our house. Our first house. It's both crazy and exciting to say that. We are so incredibly humbled and amazed that God gave us this house as our first house. It is everything we wanted, and I am so excited to start our lives there.

We met a few of our neighbors over the last couple of days. They have all been so kind and welcoming, and genuinely excited to have us as their new neighbors. And that is exactly why we wanted to live in this area. It is a very community oriented neighborhood; people are constantly walking and jogging around the neighborhood with their dogs and kids or standing in their yards chatting.

Enter the grating sound of a record scratching, signaling the harsh exit out of fairytale land.

Wow, we have so much work to do on this house. Since Wednesday evening we have been doing various things to the house, such as installing locks and mowing the lawn. Yesterday and today we started on the real work - demolishing the wall in the kitchen and the entire bathroom, prepping for re-model. Then Otis went under the house to assess the extent of the beam replacement so he could knock that out tomorrow, and, I believe the appropriate expression when one finds what we found under there is "oh shit". It's just a bit worse than the inspector said it was, or at least how we imagined it in our heads.

So, we have experienced our first big "gulp" moment. I know there are probably going to be a lot more of them, but I really don't want to think about that right now. I can't think about that right now. I just need to get through this first reality check. I am not going to lie...this is hard and seriously scary stuff. I keep trying to think of someone I can call that will tell me it's all going to be OK and I will believe them. However, I think at this point the only one who can give me what I'm looking for is God. I have to trust that He is not going to leave us high and dry when it comes to this house, and that He is going to continue to take care of us. Right now I keep wavering between that trust and completely freaking out. I believe they call that being human.

* I'll post some pictures of our progress soon.