For 13 years, we lived on S. Amy Drive in Deer Park, Texas in a big suburban house. We loved our neighbors, the schools, parks, shopping, restaurants and just about everything. It was a great place to raise our kids. We celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, holidays, weddings, births, and we endured sickness, financial difficulties, tropical storms, numerous flooding, and even a hurricane or two...and we were safe. It was our home. Period. On the flip side though...it was falling apart...we had our very own money pit. Every free moment and dime we had went into replacing something, repairing, painting, cleaning, maintenance, yard work...the list goes on and on. Somewhere along the way our American dream was crushed. We became such slaves to our home that we no longer enjoyed just living in it. With most of our kids raised and leaving the nest we questioned the purpose of keeping such a large house. Financially it made no sense, but it was our dream to always be homeowners... we thought.
When Steve was in Nursing School, he first found out about the travel nursing careers. It seemed highly unlikely at the time but as the years went by he could finally see a glimmer of hope for future travel work. Finally I got on his bandwagon and I realized the house would have to eventually be sold. We were far from even listing it as it was in need of so many repairs at the time. We would flip flop between selling and staying. As we began seriously remodeling, I loved the way the house was coming together. The kitchen remodel had me staying. However, Steve stayed the course and just saw $$ in every upgrade. Then one day as I was painting the hallway and Steve was tiling the bathroom counter, we had a knock at our door. You can read more about what happened here http://thehallhacienda.blogspot.com/2013/06/god-sent-realtor-to-our-house.html
We never listed our house on the market, we never saw it coming...wow!
It blessed us beyond measure, made us debt free and launched us into the travel life immediately.
The buyer...The City of Deer Park
The purpose...to make way for a new drainage system
Shocking, I know. The city will raze the house to make this happen.
It has been almost a year and finally just this week the demo work began.
One of my neighbors was kind enough to send me these pictures. It was quite an event for our little neighborhood. It looks really bad at the moment but we are expecting that it will look like an empty lot once the work is complete. I am in Washington, so I haven't actually seen it. We plan on being in Houston this fall and we will make a drive over to Deer Park for a visit. We pray that this will eventually be a big blessing to our neighbors and prove to be a good outcome for everyone. I am saddened when I look at the pictures of our once loving home. The letting go of our past life, the only life we knew, was really hard. We cannot know what the future holds, but we live by faith and have hope in what is unseen. This means that today we look forward and continue on our journey we call Plan A.
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