A big change

For a while now Shane and I had been thinking about whether or not we should sell our house and move.  There were several reasons why.  We never thought we would be in this house permanently.  We wanted to take the equity and get a smaller house payment, we wanted to be in a neighborhood that has more kids our kid's ages.  We didn't think we would ever put the money into finishing our huge basement and I was so sick of trying to maintain our yard that always had more to do.  Plus we had a hard time even enjoying the backyard cuz it was west facing and always so hot and our neighbor was a little...ok a lot...nosy and liked to lecture us on what we were doing wrong with our yard.  None of these reasons alone were a reason why we would up and move but put together we started seriously thinking and praying about it.  We thought we might sell over the summer before the girls started Kindergarten but hadn't decided for sure.

Well the week before Christmas we got a letter in our mailbox from a realtor that had some clients moving from out of town and couldn't find a place to buy and so she put letters in mailboxes of a few neighborhoods and wanted to know if anyone was thinking of selling.  When I read the letter I just got this feeling like we have to call her and see.  We had been praying about it so I felt like we needed to act on this, but what were the chances it would really happen.  So I called.  The day she was coming to walk through the house I went to lunch with Stacy and got this fortune....I'm not superstitious but thought it was the most appropriate fortune I've ever gotten before.  So she came and walked around it by herself, then 2 days later she did a facetime tour with the family (who were actually moving here from Australia) and the day after Christmas she presented us with an offer from a family in Australia who only saw our house from their computer.



So there we were, our house under contract and no idea where we were moving to.  We started looking online, driving around different cities and neighborhoods and we could not figure out where to go or even narrow it down to a general area.  We couldn't even decide if we maybe wanted to build or not.  We didn't tell our kids (or anyone for that matter) for a while so the kids couldn't figure out why we kept going on drives and ending up back at home.  Meanwhile the inspection went through, the appraisal was done and still nothing.

We eventually told the kids when they kept asking why people kept coming to our house and looking around (inspection, appraisal, the realtor, etc.)  I told them that there was a family from Australia that needed a place to live so they wanted to buy our house and we would find a new place to live.  I told them they could help us find a house and pick out their rooms.  They all seemed totally fine and even excited about it.  About 20 minutes later Aria came up to me and in tears told me how sad she was that she would miss this house so much and could we please take a picture of every room in our house.  It broke my heart.  I got all teary as I knew we had so many fun and great memories in this house from bringing our kids home from the hospital to having dance parties and all the milestones each kid had accomplished here.  After that little cry she was totally fine and everyone seemed on board with our move.

The first week of February, Shane and I had a trip already planned to Mazatlan.  More on that in another post but we spent it looking at homes on the internet each evening.  The Monday we got back, The Mannings, who were buying our home had arrived from Australia and came to see the house in person.  We decided to drive over to a neighborhood in Highland, Skye Estates, that we had driven by hundreds of times on the way to my parents house.  We thought the houses were out of our price range but decided to stop by the model home and ask.  It ended up they have 3 different areas of this neighborhood, an over 55 double homes, an expensive home area and then a section of homes right in our price range.  We looked at 3 different homes that night that had been built as spec homes and were all but ready to move in.

After going back and forth between a couple homes we put an offer on a house.  It only had 3 bedrooms which we really wanted 4, but we loved the loft upstairs and the backyard has some scrub oak and a little stream that runs through it.  We loved the natural feel of the backyard, the walk out basement and all the kids we saw running and playing right outside our front door.  These pictures are the pictures the builder, DR Horton had posted on the MLS.




February was all about packing and cleaning out.  Each week we made sure our trash can was completely full and I made a weekly trip to DI as we cleaned out closets and drawers.  It felt good to have some time to be able to clean out and really analyze what we needed and didn't.  I also ended up selling a ton of stuff on KSL.  There were some things we wanted to change and some things we just didn't need.  Some of the stuff I sold...bedroom set, washer dryer, play kitchen, 2 sets of couches, bouncy horse, doll house, file cabinet, bookcase, chaise lounger, and my desk.  I only got scammed once when a guy was on his way to buy something and told me it was raining where he was (it was a very clear sunny day) and then told me his car broke down and could I please give him $200 that he would pay me when he got there.  He then sent a picture of him with his car in the middle of nowhere...probably in Mexico.  haha, it was crazy and pretty funny.  We gave our piano (that is my grandpa's piano) to Jeff and Whitney.

So we moved out of our home on the last weekend in February.  The kids were so excited cuz we 'let' them have a slumber party on the floor all together the last night in our house.  
Our new home loan wasn't quite ready for us yet so my parents were nice enough to let us move in with them.  My dad cleaned out his 3rd car garage to store all the stuff that didn't fit into our Pod we had.  It was so nice to have a place to go for a few weeks.  And now I just realized we didn't take a picture while we were there! (Mom, we're coming to take a picture to add in here!)  We thought we would be there about a month but they pushed our loan through and we moved into our new home exactly 2 weeks after moving out.  It was a crazy few weeks but it felt good to get into our new home.  The other crazy thing that happened was we closed on Thursday, moved in Saturday and then Sunday morning I got on a plane out to Maryland for a work trip for 3 days.




So we're in our new home.  We are loving it.  I was worried about moving to a smaller home but all our stuff fits and I love having a smaller home to take care of and it just feels right for our family.  I love that I have white walls again and just some updated floors, carpets, etc.  The kids love the red door in the front, they love their Pokemon rooms (we put Pokemon decals up since they wanted Pokemon rooms), the girls love that we put their beds next to each other in an L shape so their heads are right next to each other, they love to play in the front yard, have made some friends and love to play at the park at the top of our street.  I'm still taking the kids over to Draper each day for Preschool (the girls go MWF and Jaron goes T/Th)  so that's kind of a pain but just glad we were close enough I could keep them in preschool there since they love it.



So it's been a crazy few months, not what we planned on doing in the middle of winter but I feel like everything worked out the way it was supposed to and we're happy with the way things turned out.