I neglected to say in my previous post that our first home was named by the Porter's, "Stony Hill". There was a sign claiming that (I wish I had more pictures from then). When we decided to sell "Stony Hill", we were anxious about the timing of selling and buying a new home. We were afraid of getting stuck with two mortgages, which we could not do.
We researched towns, the school systems and location in regard to where we worked and where family was located, and my heart was set on Barkhamsted. When a buyer was jumping through the hoops with the bank to buy our house, the closing date kept getting moved. We hadn't found a house and we were too afraid to be too serious about buying and were afraid this buyer was not going to be approved.
We came close to just forgetting the whole plan. We could just add on to the house to make room for our bigger family. Our realtor suggested that we find a rent for six months and then buy a house. So, we decided on that path. We found a rent in Colebrook and started packing.
One week before the closing, the landlord of the Colebrook house changed his mind for some reason. We had to scramble to find another place to live. That is when we learned there was a two-bedroom apartment in Barkhamsted available, that was fortunate because Barkhamsted does not have a large number of rentals.
We went from "Stony Hill" to "Rocktree Apartments". For apartments, I was so pleased with the setting. There were three buildings, surrounded by trees. Our apartment had sliding doors to a deck with a view of Ski Sundown when it was lit up at night. It wasn't perfect--there was a mildew problem in the lower rooms. Although we got along with our neighbors, one sometimes liked to have late night parties when our kids were sleeping. But for the most part, we were pretty content at Rocktree.
There were two favorite memories for our children. First was the gazebo. This was a large, rectangular, covered wooden structure, with built in seats all along the edges. The kids loved playing there and it was the perfect place for both of our kids warm weather birthdays. We were so grateful for that.
The other was the proximity to the woods where there was a brook that led to (or from?) Stanclift Cove and Goosegreen Pond. In the winter we walked out on the ice. One summer we found a huge, deceased turtle.
There were also other kids around for the kids to play with in a big backyard. I believe my kids made good memories there. That's the good news. The bad news is shortly after moving in, George lost his job.
Here is the raw, transparent truth: I worked part time at the post office and George did whatever he could to help keep us afloat. He worked at several part time jobs. Time kept passing and we ended up having to pay capital gains. Six months turned into years--eight years to be exact. There were tough times and we started building a little credit card debt. I remember buying juice boxes and some other food items at department stores so I could use my credit card. It is good that grocery stores didn't accept credit cards at that time or I probably would have gotten us into deep credit card debt. We went from a house within our first year of marriage to being in debt a few years later.
One of George's part time jobs was working for a cleaning company. It was then that George thought about having his own cleaning business and he told his boss, Bill Babbitt, that he was thinking of getting a cleaning account on his own. He didn't want to compete against him. Bill Babbitt was more than generous helping George and mentoring him into starting his own cleaning business. What a blessing! And Minuteman Cleaning was born and we started crawling out of our debt.
As we lived through those times, we never stopped praying for our own house and had many people joining in our prayers. And in 1993, our prayers were answered better than we imagined they could be. Thanks to finding a little newspaper article , about this organization that wanted to help people build affordable homes, we were on our way to answered prayers, Like the rest of the journey, it had its problems. When we went to purchase the land, there was a town meeting and it was hard to hear some say, "Not in our neighborhood." They overlooked the fact that our home was going to be bigger than one of the other homes in the neighborhood and about the same as a couple others. There were several much bigger too. It was a diversified neighborhood. This program had only 2 plots of land for sale.
We bought our land in Barkhamsted (--answer to prayer!) We chose a ranch because we wanted one floor for when we got older. We said we wanted it to be a home we could retire in and over 20 years later, we did just that.
Our home is not huge, but it's in Barkhamsted and over 30 years later, I still find myself thanking God for this home that I love. I could have thought the appendicitis mentioned before, or the long delays for the buyers (who I believe are still living at Stony Hill), or the rent in Colebrook falling through at the last minute and then George's job loss, our money problems, were signs that we should not have moved, but we persevered. We are fortunate to have lived in Barkhamsted since 1985 and we never dreamed we would have had a house built. We have never had past due credit card debt again. Sometimes blessings take the scenic route that we didn't expect to get there and when they do, we are all the more thankful.
"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens"
Ecclesiastes 3:1
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