:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

As of this evening my beloved Jeep will be gone!

I am having some serious mixed feelings about it so I just want to get the less happy parts out so I can move on and just be super thrilled for Erik and I!

Um...

I'm selfish.

I guess that is the only problem in this scenario, huh?  Ha!

Now that is over...HOOOOOOORRRAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!

God is so wonderful.  We have been trying to sell that dang Jeep for MONTHS!  Seriously!  For several thousand dollars less than KBB. Not a single response or serious inquiry in all that time.  So Sunday we had enough and relisted it for considerably more than we were hoping to get out of it and guess what?  Within a few hours, someone emailed!  WOW!  Said potential buyer was from Texas looking to get a Jeep for his son and ours was pretty much the best bargain he had found.  (Seriously?  Even after our jacked up asking price??  LOL)  After a few emails we found out that he was taking a trip to OKC for work already and wanted to take a look at it and maybe for a test drive.

That is when panic set in.

Uh, we have a serious buyer who is going to travel a couple hundred miles.  This is getting real.  Where the heck did I put the title???

You would have thought that in the MONTHS we have had it for sale that one of us would have thought to locate said title.  Um, no.  We didn't.  So after hours of looking through things while I was refusing to take cover during the crazy tornado laden weather I came to the conclusion that it was just lost.

Really??  Really?!?!  A quick Google search and I quickly knew that it would take 3-4 weeks for me to file for a lost title and get it back.  No way was this guy going to wait that long.  No way was he not going to think that we were some crazy crooks trying to swindle people into buying stolen title-less vehicles.  Crap.

So in defeat I typed up a quick email to him telling him that in all my airheadedness, I had obviously lost the title when I moved in with Erik after our wedding.  I apologized profusely and quickly hit send truly not expecting to ever hear back from him.  (Because that is what you do when you encounter crazy people, right?  You run???  Ha!)

Within minutes he emailed back.  He didn't care.

Say what now??  I suppose in Texas, the lien holder keeps possession of the title until all debts have been paid and then it is released.  So since he is getting it financed through his credit union, he didn't care!  It won't cause any problem with him registering the car or anything.  He called his financier the next morning and so long as we have proof that we filed for a lost title and sent it to them when it arrived, they were fine with it!  WOW!

Only God could have planned it like that.  He found a buyer for us out of state who was already traveling here anyways who was kind and sweet and wasn't trying to cheat us into selling the car to him for as cheap as possible.  (He offered us a VERY fair price which was more than we were hoping for.) He came from a state that has laws that fit perfectly in with my forgetful flawed nature so that everything would work out despite my inability to appropriately file important paperwork.  He brought us someone who offered us a price that would not only pay off the car, but leave enough cash to pay off my only credit card (not a small number embarrassingly) and STILL have enough left to fix the body damage and the air conditioning in the car I will be now driving.

So tonight.  Tonight it leaves.

A quick tally of the math and after we pay off the Jeep,  Erik's Yukon, (which is now my Yukon...lol since it is what I will be driving) pay off the credit card, and include all the smaller things we have paid, we will have paid off over $22k in debt over 4 months!!!  We should be completely debt free (besides our house!) by the end of the summer.  It feels like such a big girl step (or big boy in Erik's case) to be making and I am so entirely proud of us.

My selfishness-wanna-keep-it-cause-its-mine-and-I-do-what-I-wanna attitude can get over it because this feels awesome.  :)

Have I mentioned I love my husband?

Because I do.  So very much.  :)

Last night I was looking through the different children available for adoption through Reece's Rainbow (like I do every week!) and came across the sweetest face ever:

This is 'Helen' - more information about her can be found here.

And of course, I instantly fell in love.  (I am blessed to fall in love quite often!)  What a sweet girl!  

So I tell my lovely husband who is in the next room watching television that if she is still an orphan by the time we are able to adopt (January 2012 at the earliest!) that I think we should go get her.

And he just looks at me and says, "Okay."  Okay, I think?  Just..."okay??"  I would love to say that I responded with the poise and grace befitting the fact that I am speaking with my dear beloved about something so important.  But no...no my friends.  This was not my shining marital moment.  Patience is a virtue that I struggle with frequently daily.  So I look at him in all my indignant glory and am like, "Uh, do you even want to see her??" And it is sooo obvious by the tone of my voice that I am offended that he brushed me off so quickly.

And then he said something that completely broke my heart in such a fantastic and necessary way.  Oh my.  My husband.  He just looks at me and says, "Does it matter?  She needs a home."

BAM.  Straight through my heart.  Of course, I am immediately guilty for getting annoyed with him so quickly.    But wow.  It just caught me completely off guard.  So rapidly blinking away tears I ran over and hugged him tightly since no words could top the absolute and unconditional love that he had just so casually uttered.

Goodness.  I am just endlessly blessed.  My crazy husband, who is rarely serious about anything, just taught me such an important lesson about what it means to truly love.  And I doubt he even knows it.  :)



Oh.  And I definitely hope that Miss 'Helen' is not still an orphan by the time we are looking to adopt.  I hope she has a family tomorrow!  I just want her to go to a family!



::EDIT::  As of today (Monday the 9th), Miss Helen has a tentative family!  WOW!  God works quickly!  :)