The beginning of the dream realized

It all began with a dream. Last year, Jeremy and I had been talking about what our dreams were and we both had a vague dream about owning a house on the water. We weren't sure where or even what type of body of water it would be (lake, river, ocean) or how our dream would be realized. We kept talking about it, flushing out what we wanted. Then we started driving around. The kids were little and seemed to do better sleeping in the car then in their cribs, so we drove. We drove to lake regions (Sebago and Belgrade). We drove down different ocean peninsulas (Bailey Island, Harpswell, Sebasco, Fort Popham, Boothbay, Christmas Cove, Pemaquid, Friendship) to see what the different areas felt like. Did they feel like "us"?

As we talked it through, although ocean front was our ideal, budgetary constraints meant that a more realistic first vacation home would be on a lake somewhere. We loved the Belgrade Lakes area, but we found even there would be too pricey. So we figured we'd start off with a one or two room camp on a lake somewhere within 3 hours of our house, and that would be totally fine. But we never pursued that option very far, as it was more of a last resort.

During this time we owned a 3-unit investment property. We had fixed it up over the past few years, and now that it was "all set" and the market was declining, we had two choices. One - sell it and get out of the real estate business for a while until the market adjustment completes. Or two - plan on keeping it for several years, and keep maintaining until the market adjustment completes. We chose option one so that we could simplify our lives and free up some time to pursue other interests.

Then on October 18, 2007, I got an email from Jeremy that said "Ok, this has me thinking 1031 exchange....just tell me I'm crazy...umkay?" and a link to a Craigslist ad. For the price of an average home, there was a listing for a old farmhouse that was divided up into 3 condo units, with shared waterfront property on Pemaquid Harbor. And the price was for all three units.

So much for simplifying life.

I was in Utah for a convention when Jeremy went to see the house for the first time. I remember he emailed some pictures to me and I checked them from the computer in the lobby of our hotel. I remember feeling incredibly excited and thinking that wow, we were really going to get that waterfront property of our dreams. And that we were going to get it about 10 years sooner than we had planned.

I strongly believe in the power of positive thinking. The secret law of attraction has been all over the web lately, and it's not to be taken lightly. It really does work. We had a vague dream about owning a beach house. We talked about it, trying to work through what we imagined it would be like. Then we took some action, albeit not dramatic action, of driving around different areas, and occasionally looking online to see what was out there.

But the big thing we did was, when an opportunity presented itself to us, we acted on it. We didn't look at the Craigslist ad and say, "yeah, someday this is the kind of thing we should do" or "If only it was a couple years from now when we're ready". We said "thank you" to the universe and accepted the gift that it had presented to us. And we've been exceptionally grateful every step of the way.

The universe has brought us the best investor/partner (Dan), the best lender (DB&T), the best contractor (Jim Dance) that we could have gotten, and a volunteer army of wonderful people to help us with the demolition.