the story leading up to our move

We’ve lived in this wonderful home for a year, and now here I am writing a post explaining that we are moving / we’ve moved.

Like most things in our life, it’s a crazy story. Ha. ;P

Back at the beginning of August, we went with Rick & Michelle (Aaron’s parents) to look at a 36-acre property that had a pond + two modular homes on it. We all liked it a lot and it fit so many wants, needs & dreams each family had, but there were so many other things going on at the time & the probability of us owning it was so unlikely (to me), I honestly didn’t think much of it.

In November, Aaron randomly brought it up one night and shared how it was still on the market. In fact, the realtor contacted Rick specifically to say it was still available & they wanted to help us purchase it if we were still interested. Aaron expressed his deep desire to pursue it so they put in an offer. After some negations between the owners & the men, they accepted our offer. I was with a friend when I got the text from Aaron “time to start packing!”

After some more papers were signed and a closing date scheduled for the end of January 2021 (I was very thankful to be at this house for one more Christmas), Aaron and I contacted our realtor to get a feel for our next steps. The next day (12.7.20) Aaron and I decided on a price and within 48-hours our realtor scheduled a time to come over to take pictures. Little did I know, “taking pictures” meant complete staging which took all day (12.10.20).

The big girls were super involved and loved helping out.

The next morning (12.11.20) a sign was put in our yard, now giving me a conversation piece with our neighbors.

That night our house went live on Zillow and the next morning (12.12.20) we had three viewings scheduled that day alone. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were all packed full with 2-4 showings each. Aaron worked those days so the girls, dog and I spent a lot of time at Rick & Michelle’s and friend’s houses. Needless to say I was exhausted and ready for the “showing the house” season to be over.

On Tuesday evening (12.15.20) we met with our realtor again and he presented us with three offers. Two of them were blind cash offers from investors who hadn’t even seen the house in person and one was an FHA loan from a family that had seen the house.

We told our realtor we’d pray about it, but Aaron and I agreed we both felt the FHA was the one for us. The next morning (12.16.20) we informed our realtor of our choice and papers were signed putting us “under contract.”

Inspection was set for the week of Christmas (12.23.20). When we got the list of repairs back, we weren’t too surprised with what they requested. New Years Eve & Day were fully spent making those modifications for the appraiser who was scheduled to come Saturday (1.2.21). Annoyingly, I intentionally left the house for the whole day to accommodate this appraiser only to find out that evening he “forgot to come” and had to reschedule for Monday (1.4.21). We were hoping this lapse would invoke him to extend us a great report on our home. Unfortunately, he appraised it for less than what we were offered leaving the number to be exactly what we had listed it for. With his own list of “must-fixes,” we got in contact with the buyer of the home (who is a contractor and offered us his services for free if we provide the supplies) and got a decent amount of the “must-fixes” crossed off the list. However, we still had to hire two other contractors to get the jobs done.

Meanwhile, our lender delayed our closing date for our new home (don’t get me started how annoying that was) but God blessed us with some incredible news. The owners of the property we are purchasing said we could move in prior to closing. Aaron & I jumped at this opportunity and spent an entire week moving our belongings from one house to the other (2.1-5.20).

We finally closed on our old house on Tuesday (2.9.20) and plan to officially close on our new home later this week.

I know this story sounds crazy – mainly because it is.

I’m still in shock that it happened. I knew in the midst of the insanity that I would one day look back and it would just be a distant memory (not negating the real, overwhelming & stressed out feelings I had), but now that we’re there, now that we’re done, now that we’re home, all I can say is “wow” and “I need a some rest!” hahahaha