IT'S OFFICIAL!

Praise the Lord!!! I am believing that the Lord lit a fire under Connie's rear this week for us - and things miraculously moved way faster than normal. As I had posted before, our appraisal came back at a great number, and Connie (the USDA lady) told us it'd take about 3 (working) days to allot the funds for us. Joe called her this afternoon with a question about our title insurance and she told us that we already got the money!!!! Hallelujah! We have a confirmation number for the funds, and there's just some more paperwork (of course) that needs to be taken care of and we are done the process! So we went ahead and actually placed the order for the house! So, it looks like the processes will line up really well, with the basement walls coming, the concrete, the electric, the setting of the house, etc. so we will hopefully be able to MOVE IN to our new house at the end of August (or very early September)! So, basically it's comparable to the "accepting the offer" part of buying a house. As excited as I am, it's still rather surreal, and I think it will be until I actually walk into this thing I've been dreaming about and planning for for the last 10 years! We went out as a family to celebrate tonight - to the Big M Steakhouse for dinner, went to the mall looking for a shower curtain and towels, which we ended up finding our favorite at Wal-Mart - but exciting none the less! We even popped open a bottle of champagne and toasted to answered prayer and our new house!
** Note - I realize that there was a lot of exclamations in this post - but I don't know how else to convey my joy! **