Answers!

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures for this post...yet but hopefully some will be coming soon!

Today we went and looked at some more apartments. Ben looked at one for me yesterday and came home with glowing reports! It was a 3 BD apt on top of a Starbucks! We called the agent with a few questions and he said if we were serious, we had to meet him at 9:30 this morning and write a check right away because someone else was about to beat us to it! So, we prayed so much last night and asked that if this wasn't right, God would put an obvious stop to it. We raced around this morning and bustled out of the house during a downpour and went to see this apartment. It was so pretty. Old and cracked (as a lot of Chicago apts are) but the living space was HUGE. It had a built in hutch, a bay window, decorative fireplace. We were a minute away from saying "yes" when we hear a soft knock at the door. The real estate guy opens the door and there's this late 20s something guy standing there.

He proceeds to tell us that he lives upstairs and since he heard children (our boys were racing through the empty apartment being boys!) he thought he'd come down and warn us that he and his roomies were DJ's that like to play LOUD music at all hours of the night and day and this wasn't the place for kids. He also added that everyone in the building likes to party and smoke in the hallways. We kind of stood there in shock as our hopes went flushing down the toilet. The real estate guy looked shocked, too and after some awkward moments, the party-dude left and then we left shortly after to talk about what we were going to do.

I started crying when we got to the car because I really liked this place and we had been SO close to getting it before "Mr. I-don't-want-to-grow-up" had to ruin it! After some moments of tears (all mine), we realized that we had prayed for a very clear sign about whether to rent this place or not and that was pretty clear. We are thankful we found out before we moved in!

My mom reminded me that God must have something even better for us and to keep hoping and trusting.

We dropped S off at school and went to another appt to look at 2 apartments. We turned down a quiet tree-lined street to find nice brick houses, pleasant looking people strolling by and thought, "Hmm. Maybe..." The agent showed up and told us that 1 of the apartments (they were next door to each other) had been rented this morning. He took us up to see the other one. It's on the 2nd floor, 2 bdms plus an office, large living space, beautiful hardwood floors and a front porch all of our own!! It was so well taken care of and so pretty and we felt really peaceful about it so after negotiating to get them to drop another $50 in rent, we filled out a backround check application and left to wait.

We just got the call that we are 99% approved to get this apartment! We feel really excited and hopeful, nervous and sad because we will miss our place and really thankful that God is answering our prayers and watching over us.

So thankful today.