Home Sweet Home

We spent the next twenty eight months dealing with the lawsuit. Between depositions, court dates, meetings and paperwork, this proved to be the most daunting thing either one of us had ever been through. Countless times we wanted to throw in the towel, but we kept saying to ourselves, nothing in life is not worth fighting for. We struggled, we fought, screamed and cried; many nights we sat in bed and wondered "Why me?". Finally we saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately at the time of the settlement we both signed a confidentiality agreement, we cannot talk about the outcome or what transpired throughout this time. I can say that the person who caused this pain on Ben will one day have to answer to his maker. I am forever grateful that we chose to file a lawsuit against him so it could be brought to light the horrible things he has done. God have mercy on his soul. I wish we could have put him away forever, or at least make him suffer the way Ben has to everyday, for the rest of his life. I wish I could say more, and I hate to leave you in the dark, but that is how it has to be.


We did reach a settlement which we are proud to say we were able to pay off those horribly expensive medical bills. What a relief that was, we spent many nights stressing out about that. We were now at a point in our lives that we were ready to move on, put this behind us as much as we could. First thing we wanted to do was buy a house! As many of you know, this is one of the most stressful things you will do in your lifetime. At times we were overwhelmed at the thought of buying a house, but with everything we had already been through, we figured we could get through pretty much anything at this point. We met with a realtor and looked at all of our options. I grew up in the city and we both decided we would like to stay close to where we were. If you don't know, Seattle is WAY overpriced in the housing market. Although we the economy has tanked in recent years, when we were looking, houses were still marked high and many were out of our price range. In the city the average price for a home is anywhere from 250-300k, the thing is, that is for an older home (1960ish) and almost every home would need some work in one way or another. Our goal (mainly mine) was to stay in the city, but we were realizing that just might not be an option. We started looking elsewhere, if you went north of Seattle the houses got a lot more reasonable, but took you more and more out of the city. I was willing to give it a try and at least see what was out there and what options we would have. We found some really nice, newer homes and would send them to our realtor. By the time he would get the information and we would meet to go take a look, they would be already sold! These houses were flying of the market faster than you could say SOLD! I think this had a lot to do with Obama, at this time he was giving a first time home owners bonus, so many people were jumping at the opportunity and buying, which made houses go fast. Ben's dream had always been to build a house from the ground up, as much as I would love for him to be able to do this, I knew that too would be out of our price range.


House after house, we never found one that we felt like we could call home. The realtor took us out in his car one weekend and showed us around to some places he thought we might like. He had taken us to a new housing development, I liked the looks of it right away, cul de sac's, kids playing, pretty landscaping, I hadn't even seen a house yet and I was excited! They had a few model homes for us to look at, we found one that we really liked, but was out of our price range yet again. I was loosing hope, maybe we would never be able to afford a house? We got back into the car and headed off to see what else we could find. A couple more houses later, the realtor suggested we go back to the new housing development and talk to someone at the office just to see what they had to say. We went back and talked to someone, we told them that we were in love but that the prices were too high, we told him what our price range was and he said "I happen to have another model home down the street in the price range, let's go see it!" I did not want to get my hopes up but this excited me. When we walked into the house it was the first time we felt like it could be our home! We loved every single thing about it, and we could afford it!!! Ready for the best part?? You watch them build it from the ground up, you pick everything that you would like and get to be apart of the whole process!! We couldn't have asked for anything better. Ben was in seventh heaven!

The building process took almost six months. We picked everything; the carpet, flooring, paint, cupboards, lighting, the roof, front door, sinks, toilets and even the electrical! I am so glad I had Ben to make all those decisions, I had no idea where to start or what to pick, there was so many choices to make! They had a showroom that we could go to and you could see everything set up, you took a computer tablet with you while you walked around and input the options you picked. We went to the site of the house every weekend to see the process, it was neat to see the things you picked on paper and watch them come together right in front of your eyes.

Our house was finally finished and we moved in on Halloween of 2009! We feel so blessed to have built our dream home, when I look around our house I feel so much pride in knowing Ben put his heart and soul into building our home. To date I am still getting use to the area, this is definitely nothing like the city! I miss traffic and rude people! Frogs come into our garage for crying out loud (makes my skin crawl). I know that this was the best for us and I wouldn't change it for the world. Home is where the heart is.