Clarke Family Update

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Hi Friends,

It has been too long. It has been way too long since I have shared about our personal journey here. It is funny how life just gets away with you. This year has not been an easy one for our family, I have shared some of our journey here publicly, while some of our year has been private. We have had huge blessings in our life like moving closer to family and unexpected struggles as well. While the next few months hold a lot of unknowns for us thus some anxiety, we are clinging to our faith and each other. One of these exciting unknowns is that we are officially building a custom home!

We honestly weren’t expecting to build when we moved. Once Kevin accepted his new job, we put our San Antonio house on the market and it sold in less than 24 hours. After that, our search began for a new home in our new city. I spent hours online and we spent days looking at homes with no luck. We just couldn’t find exactly what we wanted. Finally, we decided to consider building and started looking at available lots. Once our lot search began, we were very limited in terms of neighborhoods, however, when we drove through our NEW neighborhood, we both knew we wanted to live there immediately.

Once we decided on the neighborhood and got all of the POA information, we started narrowing down lots in the neighborhood. We narrowed down our choices to two lots and started looking for floorpans that would fit. This part in the process was brutal for me. Kevin is not a researcher, so I took to the internet to find a house plan. I think I looked through over 4000+ pages of plans. Simultaneously, we narrowed down to one favorite lot and plan. We put in an offer on the lot and after a few days of negotiations we went under contract.

A family friend of ours is our contractor and will be building our house for us so that part was easy. Our new neighborhood is fairly strict, so we had to fill out paperwork for him to be an approved builder. Thankfully, we received that approval Tuesday and are all set to move forward. We close on our lot today and are meeting with our designer next week to make modifications to the plans we like and have new ones drawn up.

While this whole process has my Type A planner self in full anxiety mode, I remember day dreaming with Kevin when we were younger about building a home, so we are very excited that we actually get to go through this process. I keep telling myself it is a PROCESS and we are still in the beginning stages. We are currently living in Kevin’s parents house (and they are living in their lake house) so we are VERY thankful to have a place to live while we are building. I am for sure missing our bed and some other things that accidentally got put in storage, but we will manage.

When we finished our last house, I did a few home updates so I am planning to start those again as we proceed in the process (especially when we start breaking ground). For now, comment with all your HOME BUILDING TIPS!!! I know I am going to need them!