Five Facts Friday (3/21) - Solving a mystery and watching God's plan unfold before our eyes...

** I debated whether or not to write today's post mostly because things aren't final, yet, and because I generally like to "look before I leap" as it were, but I decided the story is too good not to be told, and if I'm going to tell it, I need to do so while my mind still remembers the facts clearly. **

1.  Monday morning, our condo had been scheduled to be shown twice, back to back. Around noon, I received an email from our realtor asking if we had moved the wrought iron bench that sits under the small window on our porch. Attached to it is the lockbox that other realtors need to access the key to get inside our place when they're showing it. One of the realtors who had signed up to show it, sent her a picture. 

No bench. No lockbox. No key. 

Our bench had been stolen. 

The showings had to be cancelled until we could figure out how to let people in. We also needed to have the locks changed on the off chance that whoever took it managed to break open the lockbox. My mother-in-law came to the rescue and said she'd go over to make sure everything else was as it should be. 

2.  Around 2pm that afternoon, we got a call that someone was at the gate, and The Husband opened it thinking it was his mom. He called her to check, and it wasn't. We determined it was someone else who had scheduled to see the condo, and he asked his mom to run over there to let them in. Well, they must have given up seeing it, because by the time she got there, they had left. In the meantime, our realtor got in touch with a couple who had signed up to see it that morning and let them know my mother-in-law could let them in if they still wanted to take a look. They agreed and headed over.  She let them in, chatted with them as they looked, and let us know when they had left. She said she really liked them, that this was the only day they were in town, so we were all glad they had a chance to see it after all. 

3.  I got a call from my mother-in-law an hour or so later asking me to look at a picture she had sent. I did. 

It was a picture of our bench, with the lockbox still attached, on a different porch.  The porch that belongs to our neighbor who lives two doors away.  She asked, "Is that your bench?"  It turns out that while she was waiting for her daughter to meet her, she decided to walk around a little. When she walked around the corner and saw the bench, she couldn't believe it. 

Our neighbors stole our bench. 

I stood there staring at that picture in disbelief, and then I began laughing like a crazy woman. Anyway, she brought it back to our porch, and she left a note for our neighbors. Something to the affect of, "Saw that you borrowed our bench.  We'll be taking it back now."  There's so much about the whole situation that still stuns me.  I reported it to the complex manager, but I don't know if anything will be done.  We should have "borrowed" their rug. 

Kidding. Kidding. 

4.  Wednesday morning, we received two separate offers on our home.   Wednesday evening, we accepted the offer from the couple my mother-in-law let in. The people who were only in town for the day.  The people she had the chance to chat with and show off our home to. We are officially in contract with them and are in the process, with the help of friends and family, of packing and getting our belongings into storage this weekend. The sale, pending all goes smoothly with the inspection and that they don't unexpectedly change their minds in the short "option period" they have, will be very soon.  We are a little sad to say goodbye to the first home we lived in together as a family, but we're beyond thankful that God is providing and is doing so with a perfectly-crazy story only He could mastermind. One we will tell our children some day. 

5. And, this little boy. 

Oh this little boy, with his precious delightfulness.  

With his yumminess we could just eat up. 

Melts our hearts daily.