It started with a phone call with a friend who is a realtor. It's important to have friends that can support your dreams as well. My friend, Dedra, told me that we should apply to be a partner family with Habitat for Humanity. I was confused because I thought that Habitat was a program for people to get FREE homes. Kind of like an Extreme Makeover - handout edition. I was completely wrong, and I'm so happy that I was. We attended an open house after doing tons of research - because that's what we all do in this day and age, we google. During the open house, we received information about the Your Keys event that would be happening in a few weeks. Everything was happening so fast, and we didn't have time to breathe because we WERE APPLYING TO OWN A HOME!

Building our home was amazing. We picked out our cabinets, and had good-natured debates over which ones would look better in our kitchen. We began to see our home as OUR HOME. One memory here is when Shomari and I started laying the hardwood floor in our bedroom. It took us some time to get it right, and at first we felt a bit overwhelmed. I'm a bit OCD with things, while he's more relaxed, we'll say. After having to take up the interlocking wood for oh, maybe the fourth time, we sat down, looked at each other, and laughed. Because we realized right then and there, that even though we weren't getting the flooring just right, we weren't getting the flooring just right IN OUR HOUSE. We were literally watching a dream of ours come to fruition, and it was covered in sweat, sawdust and laughter. Working together in the silence of the afternoon illustrated quite a bit for us: dreams are made to be worked on together, and we did it whether it was one person or 25 people on site. The dream kept building, and those volunteers kept us supported.

We met so many great partner families and volunteer along the way. To be able to be an intricate part of dream building for another family whether through monetary giving, physical labor, or spreading the word, we all work hand in hand to build on the dreams of partner families in the Chicagoland area. This is where I realized that my village will be expanding a lot more than I anticipated, and this is also where I realized that Habitat for Humanity was a lot bigger than just our journey.

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View home floorplans.

Review the qualification checklist.

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