What a weekend!

This week has been an interesting one! We had a great weekend which started with Dave and I going on a road trip in the Corvette to Melbourne. Our first stop was USA foods to see what kind of American food goodies they had. We were not disappointed! There was heaps of American candy, sauces, seasonings and meal bases that we had to make ourselves leave before we spent a fortune! From there we drove to Ikea, just to see what they had. We always love Ikea, and we came away with a big list of things to save up for!


While we were driving home I got a phone call from the daughter of the lady we rent our house from. She had a phone call completely out of the blue from the guy that is supposed to be taking care of the gardens, asking if they just wanted him to mow over one of the garden beds in the back yard. They had no idea what he meant, so they wanted to come around and see what the guy was talking about. We know our landlords through our church, so even though we weren’t home I didn’t care about them stopping over.

I didn’t really expect to hear anything more about it, but when we arrived home, they were just leaving so stopped to let us know they had fired the gardener! The dodgy guy had been charging them regularly for gardening, when all he had been doing was occasionally mowing the lawn and trimming some bushes! Dave and I felt so bad, because we had just assumed that all the gardener was supposed to be doing was mowing the lawn, otherwise we would have let them know sooner that he wasn’t doing the gardens properly.

We said that we would be happy to take over the care of the garden as we hope to buy the house off them in the next few years. They were happy with that so Dave and I got really excited about what we could do with the yard – like plant a vegetable garden!

We’ve been renting from them for the last two years and have always planned on buying the house eventually from them, but in our minds that plan was another 12 months away, especially as we want to go to America next year. When we first started renting, the landlords (Mark and Cathy) mentioned that they would probably sell in a few years, and the time frame was perfect for us. It’s a 1950’s house with the original bathroom and kitchen, so it’s in need of a little love and care, but Dave and I have been really excited about the prospect of renovating it as much ourselves as possible, so we were really excited at the prospect of getting started on the yard.

Sunday at church started normally enough, but then following the service, Cathy came up to me with tears streaming down her face. She told me that her mother’s health had gone downhill rapidly over the last few weeks and that she and her sister were in the process of deciding what to for her. Poor Cathy even said that her mother was so unwell that she had prayed that God would take her home and spare her any more suffering.

She asked if we were still interested in buying and what kind of time frame we had on doing that (another 12 months was what we had been thinking) because they might need to put her into care which would mean that they would need to sell the house soon in order to afford the costs of assisted care.

This sent us into a little bit of a panic over if we are going to be able to afford to buy a house where we are financially at the moment. We really love our little house, and right from the very first moment we set foot inside it felt like “home.” We have all sorts of ideas about what we would like to do to the place over the years to make it more liveable and more us. It’s in a great area, quite street with a fantastic sized back yard for extending and making additions to the house. We love it here, but it was quite a shock to both of us to think we might have to push all of our plans forward.

So our first step was to find out how much we had in our savings account to put towards a deposit, and incredibly we had way more than I thought we were going to. Praise God!

We then had a real estate agent come over to give us a quote on how much they think the house is worth – way more than I think it really should be – the Australian house market it out of control!

Our next step is to go and get a loan pre-approved at the bank, and then see how much they want for the house. I feel like such a grown-up, I don’t know if I like it!! :)

On a completely different note, it was my Dad’s birthday yesterday, so we had dinner over at my parent’s house last night.

Happy Birthday Dad, I love you lots! xxx