new.beginning@spencercounty.com

(The above is not an actual email address, only my attempt to be as creative as possible and keep your attention for as long as possible!)

As you can see from the picture below, we are now the proud owners of a little piece of land, with a little house on it in Spencer County (for those of you in Alabama, we are just outside of Louisville).

We have purchased our first home!! No more rent down the drain. No more battling for parking spaces. No more dealing with finicky management at an apartment complex. No more white walls. No more quiet hours when the only time I have to clean is when others are already asleep. No more maintenance guys. Welcome to...a mortgage (YIKES!), color galore on the walls, our own driveway with ample parking, not worrying about hammering on the walls or vacuuming at 10:00 pm, a lawn to cut, gutters to clean, and yelling neighbors who already have issues with me missing our driveway and turning around in theirs! (I've only lived here a week...give me a break...it's dark out here!)

I know I promised more pictures, but y'all are going to have to hold your horses because I can't find the cord to transfer pictures from the camera...I know it's in a box around here somewhere...

The story of how we came across this house is nothing short of a God thing...Let me indulge you! We had been keeping an eye out for some time for a house, knowing that we were tired of renting and that we would probably be in Kentucky for several more years while Kenny finishes school. Houses in the area of Louisville we lived in were WAY out of our price range, so in order for home ownership to be possible for us, we needed to get out of the city. We have been attending church in Spencer County since April 2006 and have always felt very much at home out here, despite the lack of conveniences that we have gotten used to being in town...Target, Kroger, malls within 5 minutes, restaurants galore. In Spencer County, we are blessed with a Dairy Queen, Subway, pizza place, Chinese buffet, and the wonderful Country Mart!! Despite this, we had been looking at homes online. One particular Monday night, I emailed about a home that was listed as being open on Sunday for open house. Turns out the listed was old and the house had been on the market since February. (Rewind to February...the youth minister of our church and his family, who we knew, moved to Las Vegas, following God's call to anther church, leaving a home behind...see where this might be going...) The next night a friend from church called me to inform me of a wonderful idea...it had just dawned on her that the youth minister's house was still up for sale and would probably be something in our price range. We talked for a while about it and she gave me the address...turns out, it was the same house I emailed about on Monday night!! What a coincidence!! We ended up looking at the house on Wednesday night because we go to church with the seller's sister and we really liked it. We felt like we needed to look around some more, though, instead of just going for the first thing we looked at. So we did just that and found that no matter how new the house or the area, that we kept coming back to this house because it just felt like home from the very beginning.

Well, in the meantime (I know, I am probably boring you...you can stop reading whenever you want...no one is making you!), someone else put an offer on the house. Bummer! We figured this was just God directing us in another way...but as fast as the offer came, the contract on the house fell through and the seller got in touch with Kenny to see if we were still interested! Well, of course we were...to wrap this up in a somewhat timely manner...the finances, interest rates, lease at our apartment, timing all worked out in ways that could only be described as a "God thing"! We signed a contrac, closed on the house and moved all within 2 weeks! We couldn't have done it without the help of many friends who helped clean, feed us and move us while we endured 2 weeks of chaos.

As I was packing our apartment to move, I found an engraved door knocker that was given to us by Kenny's brother and sister-in-law as a wedding gift. It says, "The Cook's"...I had wrapped that door knocker up almost 3 years ago and packed it away, thinking that I wouldn't have a door of my own to hang it on for years to come, but God has blessed us beyond anything we have ever expected and now, I have a door! We are both thrilled to be in Spencer County and although it means a 25-30 minute drive into Louisville for work and school, we were more than willing to sacrifice to move into the area that we will call home for the next several years. (Don't ask me to define "several years"...it could be 3, it could be 10!! Who knows what God has in store for us!!)

We did have a horrendous experience with our realtor, who has subsequently been reported to the Kentucky Realtors Association and the Better Business Bureau, but that's a story for another post. It was minor when we look at the big picture of all that God has provided for us!

So, if you were thinking about visiting, come on up! The Cook Bed & Breakfast has relocated to a more rural, peaceful location...although if you come in the next couple of months, you might be handed a paint brush or a hammer and put to work!!

I'll post pictures soon...if you would like our new address, feel free to email me.

...as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. Joshua 24:15