Since my last blog post we have moved to a new home! It is pretty much the last thing I ever thought to happen. Here is how it went down….
Towards the end of the summer I was feeling very unsettled and anxious. A dear friend had moved and I was quite sad about it. It left me feeling a little displaced in the area I had called home for 5 years. In August we were driving home with our new-to-us minivan. Mister and I were chatting and he blurted out “What if we buy my grandparents house?” I replied, “I think I’m going to throw up.” We had just built our home and put in many hours of work (and some tears) about the design and layout and managing a lot of the work on our own with four children. We hadn’t even been there for 2 years yet. We had literally just finished unpacking the last box not too many months ago. I then realized that this was an amazing suggestion and something we proceeded to pray and think about. I had so much peace and that unsettled feeling was replaced with excitement and planning. We initially said that we would make this our plan for 1-2 years from now. I spoke with our realtor and asked some questions. Because he is a faithful reader of this blog and has seen the home, he felt very confident that we would be able to sell our house very quickly and for a high offer.
We continued to pray for the Lord to line things up. Mister found out he would be working from home for the time being we planned to take the next step and talk to our realtor and show him our home. We discussed a few projects we could do to boost showing quality and for a future inspection and we got to work. Once those were done we went ahead and prepped the house for the listing photos. The listing looked so fantastic and included a drone shot. It was so cool to see the aerial view!
We continued to pray for for the Lord to line everything up. Once we went live with the listing, things got crazy. The listing went up on a Tuesday and by Sunday we had had over 20 showings and took our pick of 10 offers. It was amazing! We chose the best offer for our situation and signed to move to under contract status.
The house we are now in is Mister’s grandparents home. It’s on 30 acres of land and has a big red barn. This is a home Mister has many family memories at and knows the woods well as he has hunted on them since he was a young hunter. It is a very well taken care of home and stayed with current decor quite nicely. This home puts us within 15 minutes of both of our parents homes. If there ever was a time to be closer to family, in my opinion, its now. We are now close enough to help when our parents need a hand more often and for our boys to truly grow up with their grandparents. The sale of our new home and purchase of this family would hopefully allow us to be debt free in less than 10 years. There are many factors that pointed us towards moving forward with this move.
As we moved towards the closing we spent most weekends bringing two vehicles of stuff to the new house. 4-6 weeks of that and we had boys who were already tired of moving. They were champs though! At the selling house we were busy packing and eating down the fridge and pantry. I strongly dislike moving food so it looked like an episode of “Chopped” for a bit but we ate well.
We scheduled a painter to have the upstairs bedrooms, bathroom, and living room painted. We also had the carpets in the upstairs bedroom replaced which was a really nice refresh. We got a new couch which was very exciting as our last one was 13 year old and very loved. As I write this we have been in the house for a week. The move went really well. The boys were big helpers and we had groups of friends on both ends of the move ready and willing to tote boxes. The basement is the landing zone but after school each day this week I tackled a few boxes so it’s starting to feel like home. I just keep reminding myself, ‘One box at a time…..’
We have plans for chickens, a garden, a dog and maybe pigs. House projects will include updating the basement and renovating the kitchen this summer. For now, school is going well at the kitchen table . We have a small book shelf next to the table to hold our school materials. Curtains have been ordered and will hopefully work with the space. The sunshine we get to enjoy here, especially with the views over the hills, are so lovely! The boys are loving the great sledding hill too.
We are leaving a beloved church and neighborhood. We are also being welcomed by family and a loving church in our new community so it is very bittersweet. I am excited to blog more in 2021 and to share our new home with you. Thanks for reading!
