Bentonville Arkansas

Last week we visited Bentonville Arkansas with the purpose of finding a place to live for the next phase of our life, which is quickly approaching as I starting looking at numbers (3 Achievement Day Girl Activities, 7 weeks with my class, 12 weeks until Mark's first day of work at Walmart).

When you fly into NWA Airport you are coming in on a puddle-hopper airplane. After exiting one of the smallest airports I have seen, you are greeted by about 10 minutes of fields and cows before entering the outer-edge of Bentonville city limits. It definitely makes you feel like you are headed to a small town in the middle of no where. The city is much bigger than your first impression.

Our Realtor showed us at least thirty houses, but we were able to get our list down to five without too much trouble. We really wanted a two story house with a bit of land, but knew it would be worth giving up the double story and acreage to be in a neighborhood that fell into the Bentonville 1st Ward boundaries. We had visited the ward Sunday morning after touching down and liked that it had a variety of ages and life stages. Bishop Chandler and his wife invited us to their house for their son's birthday party Sunday night. We meet the rest of the Chandler gang and another couple in the ward. Both Mark and I felt like we could find our Arkansas family with these people.

We chose to look at houses in a neighborhood that has 5 or 6 other families in the ward, including the family we meet at the Bishop's home. There was one home we both really liked. It is bank owned and is being sold "as is" so we don't know how much they are willing to bargain with us, but we hope they do! Their asking price is in our budget, but the house needs new carpet and paint in nearly every room and the front window is shattered. We may very well end up with a couple thousand dollars in renovations, so we won't pay asking price when there is another home we like in the neighborhood that is "move in ready." We are ready and willing to do the work in this house, but we are just not willing to pay their price and then pay for all the fixes (there could be more after the home inspection).

Even though we looked at a lot of houses last week we still had time to go explore the area. Friday afternoon we went to War Eagle Caverns about 40 minutes outside of Bentonville. It was very cool to go inside the earth and see power of water over time. It is a different world down there! It's beautiful, but I always feel like the outside world is that much more beautiful when I get back to the surface. After exploring the cavern that had been used by Native American, Early Settlers, Civil War Soldiers, and Outlaws we bought a bag of soil and "panned" for gems. We pulled out a few that I would like to tumble and turn into a necklace. If you have a rock tumbler, will you please let me borrow it?

My parents flew out to see the area Friday evening. They were just in time for the tornado warning. We didn't get hit by the tornado but the wall cloud passed right over the top of our hotel. I have never seen clouds move like that before! After we saw it pass above our hotel room we went outside to see if any funnel clouds were forming. We saw the beginning of a funnel cloud form. The clouds swirled around counter-clockwise and we could see the updraft starting to take effect. It fizzled out within the few minutes and the clouds rejoined the rest of the mass.

It was an exciting and exhausting week. We hope to hear back today with the counter offer. From here it is any one's game. Keep your fingers crossed for us!