Help Shelly and Shawn Buy Their First Home

Hi! I'm Shelly. My husband, Shawn, and I are the parents of 11 children - 6 of them still living at home.

We're reaching out to you in the hopes to raise money to help us purchase our first home. (That's right. We have never owned a home).

One of our daughters has ulcerative colitis and has been in a flare up for almost a year and a half. This means that there are days she is in the bathroom 10+ times a day. Our rental house only has ONE bathroom. Needless to say, with 8 of us living here, our situation has become almost unbearable.

Having so many children means that most people will not consider renting to us, otherwise we would gladly search for a rental house with more bathrooms.

We've discovered that closing costs in our area are far out of our reach. We were scheduled to see five houses this weekend, but once we were told what closing costs will be, I'll admit that we lost hope. My husband is 50, and I'm 49. We're starting to feel like a house of our own will never happen for us. My husband works so hard to provide for us, and I do what I can to help him. We aren't on any kind of government assistance and pay everything on our own. This economy hasn't made that easy, and I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about.

The bathroom situation is honestly the tip of the iceberg. I would love to have a house with a yard for my very outdoorsy children. We also usually have to park 3 blocks away from our house. We have very little room in our house. Our entire first floor consists of a small kitchen and an apartment sized living room. That's it. We're like sardines in a can.

Those details, though, have been manageable. I'm a firm believer in blooming where you're planted, and we have. With my daughter's medical needs, however, it's unfortunately no longer enough.

Thank you so much for reading our story. God bless you, and have a great day!