so here's the deal...

about 6 months ago, the gore's moved into our house. i thought this was a little weird, but the idea was to help them save a few bucks to get a house downtown and leave them flexible so they could move as soon as they found a place. also i thought it wouldn't hurt to have some extra hands around the house after my surgery. but i told jason this wasn't quite conventional and if, after a month, any of us didn't think it was working out, no hard feelings, no questions asked, they'd move out. well, our house didn't feel as small as i thought it would with 7 people living in it and it's been a lot of fun for us and our kids. and there's something about living your closest relationships out in front of others that provides an unusual but healthy type of accountability. so the thought of them moving out was a bit of a bummer.

so this fall sometime, my wife and i stopped by this big house on edenton st because jeff nielsen was working there and we wanted to see how things were going in advance of his surgery. i remember thinking the house was beautiful and big enough for two families, but under contract. bummer. well, in december the contract fell through and i went and looked at it again and we all started seriously talking about buying a house together... crazy.

this is one of the more challenging decisions i've made in my life. it started out as a nice house that was a good financial opportunity and a chance to live with our friends. but it's on the edge of the really nice and the not really nice parts of downtown raleigh (translated: about a half block down you can get any drug you want any time of day). and to keep a long story from getting too much longer, it came down to a combination of a desire to be downtown where we've planted this church, a desire to live our lives a little differently by living with friends, a desire to be closer to people that have needs much greater than ours in hopes that we'll have opportunity/desire to do more about those needs, and the fact that this seems to be an extremely rare opportunity. a friend of ours is selling the house and doing some things that allow to us sell our current house empty while living downtown and the gore's are willing to live in the hurricane that is our family and we can get downtown while the getting's still good. so here we go...

and as kind of a postlude (right word?), we listed our current house on craigslist on friday, had a showing on saturday, and signed a contract to sell it on sunday. 2 days. really. from what i hear, that doesn't happen...

so in the past 9 months, we've had a baby, had open heart surgery, planted a church, and bought a house in a not-so-great part of downtown with another couple... hahahahahaha