Very appropriate...

We moved to Surprise 5+ years ago thinking we would be here a few months and then move to Peoria when Jeremiah finished the academy. Well its been 5 years and we are still here. We have longed to buy a house to call home for so long. Last month after waiting for so long it finally looked like it might be our turn to buy a house again. We had a contract to buy a home in a neighborhood we love. It was in the town we wanted and it was closer to family. We were excited. It was short lived though. Somehow the paperwork from our fiasco of a house ordeal in Pinetop still wasn't over. I'm not going to go into great detail here, but the dates were wrong. So we have 2 different closing dates on the house we had up there. So instead of us being able to buy the house we were under contract to buy we have to wait another year to buy. It was really disappointing. Even more disappointing is that home prices are rising really fast again.  I was pretty upset about it for a few weeks. I felt cheated by a crappy realtor who talked us into a buyer who ended up really screwing us over. It has taken us 3 years to recover and for it to be so close but so far is hard to swallow.

Last week in General Conference, Elder Stanley G. Ellis gave a great talk that was meant just for me ;) One thing that stuck out so much was this quote.

 "One thing we have often been taught is to bloom where we are planted. Yet sometimes we are tempted to migrate to some new area, thinking our children will have more friends and therefore better youth programs.

Brothers and sisters, do we really think the critical factor in the salvation of our children is the neighborhood where we live? The apostles and prophets have often taught that what happens inside the home is far more important than what our children encounter outside. How we raise our children is more important than where we raise them."

We live in a good neighborhood. We have great friends and a loving ward. I guess really, we could find those things anywhere. It doesn't matter where our house will be in the end, it really matter what we do in our house. What we are teaching our children. Sure, one day I will be able to paint cabinets, paint walls, landscape a back yard and do what we want because it is our house. But it is so much more important to have happiness in our home. So we will keep blooming here, where we are planted.