FINALLY!!

As soon as Nathan was hired by Mayo we decided that we wanted to build a new home.  He was hired in 2010, then we went to San Francisco for 2011-2012.  While in San Francisco we bought the lot between two families in our ward, the Dangerfields and the Fletchers.  Our lot is in Oronoco which is about 10 minutes north of Rochester proper.  As soon as we got back to Rochester from San Francisco in July 2012, we started the process of building our home.  We contacted a builder and had our brother-in-law, Tyler Kirk, draw up the plans for our dream home.  Tyler did such an awesome job and we were so happy with the results of his hard work.  Our builder was excited to work on such a beautiful home.  All that was needed was money (isn't that what it usually boils down to?).  Nathan did his research and found a bank.  We needed to have so much in our bank account to be approved, so we started saving.  We finally were able to turn in our plans to the bank to start the process of getting a loan.  We heard at the beginning of May that the plans that Tyler had worked so hard on were too much for our lot and that the plans could not be appraised.  We started downsizing and the appraiser told us that we would need to start over with our plans or buy a bigger lot.  We were very discouraged and were even looking at homes already built to buy.  But, we both felt strongly that we were supposed to live on that lot.  We asked the kids, "would you rather have the house of our dreams or would you like to live on our lot?"  Unanimously they said that they wanted to live on the lot.  So we went online and found a plan that we liked.  We had Denny, our builder, and his architect make the changes that we wanted to the plans.  We finalized the plans and got them into the bank about mid-July.  Then we had to wait again for the bank.  We finally heard that these plans were able to be appraised and then we heard that they underwriters ordered another appraisal.  We kept running into these road blocks and were afraid that we would run out of time and have to wait another year before the house could be built because of the approaching Minnesota winter.  Everything finally went through at the bank and we finally closed on the loan on September 13 and we were finally able to break ground on September 19!!  I had texts and phone calls from both Emily Fletcher and Adrienne Dangerfield telling us about the "show" that was going on between their lots and how excited they all were that it was finally happening!  We will post more as things progress!