I've had one of those "Are you kidding me?!" moments this week.
The back story - for the past couple of years when we have gone to visit Dan's parents we have rented a condo in Park City. It's cooler (temperature wise) and lots cheaper than hotels in the valley (more than half the price in difference).
So this year when our dates were set I contacted the people who have the condo we've rented from the last couple of years but it was already booked - big disappointment! I went to the website where I had found the first condo and started searching. That was over a month ago. I just wasn't having any luck. I've found places but people weren't responding, or they were booked, or they just wouldn't work for us. Not so lucky for us, there is some big baseball tournament the weekend after we are there and apparently people are going early to play or something but it's been very frustrating.
Sunday afternoon as we were talking about our options Dan mentions that maybe it's time we pray for help. The cynic (in my head) says I'm pretty sure Heavenly Father doesn't care where we stay and that we shouldn't bother him for this & that this is one of those "take care of it yourself" kind of things - for the record I never voiced any of this out loud. Anyway, during family prayers that night Dan mentions in his prayer what is going on and asks for help. We put the kids to bed and I don't want to sit in front of the computer so I pull out my smartphone and start looking on VRBO
AGAIN for a condo - find 4 in our budget range that will fit out family, 3 wouldn't be our first choice but I'm starting to get desperate we are scheduled to leave soon! So I send off inquires to all of them, thinking that with our track record this year I'll be lucky to hear back from just one of them. I was getting super frustrated and starting to cross into the "just forget it let's stay home" relm, but NO Monday morning there were 3 replies in my in-box. I couldn't believe we might actually have a choice to make. As I looked more at them to see which one would work best I get an email from the 4th place. It was PERFECT! Too good to be true kind of perfect. I went and looked again at the website and the offer they sent us, the price had changed and there were extra fees in the offer that weren't on the website (that would have turned me away) and put it out of our price range - yep too good to be true. I emailed the people and said thanks for reply, but with the extra fees it's out of our budget range, etc. but their place looked great. I went back to the other 3 trying to decide which one would work for us, but with the "one that got away" feeling. Long story short, the owner of the it's too good to be true condo - emailed me and we worked out a deal & it's ours for vacation!!!!!
It's more than we need for sleeping spaces, but it's got plenty of kitchen/table space so Dan's family can join us while we are there for meals and to play/spend time together. None of the other condos even came close to meeting out needs in this area and it was starting to stress me out, but this will make things so much easier. I think we'll have a great time! So the moral of this story - there's no problem to small that we can't take it too our Heavenly Father for guidance & direction. We have to do our part & we certainly had done our share of searching and trying to take care of it on our own, but it just wasn't working we needed extra help & thank goodness Dan was willing to ask.
Seriously - check this place out! (Hover on the sentence below - it's actually a link, time to figure out why my links don't look like links.....another thing to add to my to do list)
Our perfect vacation condo!
Super cool note: As I was talking to the owner in working out our deal she told me that although they've had the property for several years they've saved it's use for family & close friends and this was the first time they were going to rent it out & that they had just listed it on the VRBO site the day I had found it & emailed in requesting a quote. There are a lot of things that I could say, but in the end it all boils down to prayers were heard and answered in a way better than we could have ever expected, and I wasn't even going to ask. Consider myself reminded. With Him ALL things are possible. All things, no exceptions.
