What might have been...

I was just thinking the other day about how different our lives would be if just a few small details had been changed in the past couple of years. First, two years ago we had made several offers on houses in Rye, Colorado and Beulah, Colorado. We had been to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, on vacation and loved it, but figured it was out of reach for us and too far from family. We actually made offers on four different houses, two in each town, respectively, and with each one something fell through and we didn't end up moving there.

In Rye, there was one log home built in the 1950's that was in very good condition and we were very excited about it mainly because the piece of land it was on was incredible. But we knew they were asking way too much, and when the inspection came back with lots of electrical and utility updates required, we just wouldn't have had enough money to do all that, plus pay a large mortgage. So we went opposite, and made an offer on a home priced really low right on Main Street. That one turned out to have asbestos siding, and several other problems that come with very old homes that have very little updating. If it were just my husband and I, we probably would have gone for it, but since we have small children, the risk of Mesothelioma cancer and who knows what else was just too much and we walked away from that one too.

In Beulah, we made offers on two different log homes. One was basically a shell that needed work in all aspects and the seller wouldn't budge on the price, and the other one had evidence of a fire in the attic with unremediated damage that we weren't comfortable with.

That's when we realized that we just weren't meant to be there. Something was keeping us from living there. So we decided to look at Eureka Springs again. One more vacation during the winter and we were hooked. Our next trip was a house-hunting trip. We found a suitable house for about half of what we would have paid in Colorado and have lived here fifteen months now with no regrets. Strange how forces beyond our control can sway us in different directions.