Matt and I had played around with the idea of moving for several months now. We weren't sure if we wanted to move into a similar house to our own that had another bedroom, or stay put and try and save for what we really wanted long term (since a decent house outside of town was not in the current budget). We looked a little bit but had decided to go ahead and refinance. Our house was fine... a little small for our growing family, but we were content and happy with our humble little Hawthorne house. Then a friend of mine forwarded an email on to me from a friend of his who was selling his house. I took a peek and called Matt at work. All I said was, "Can we afford it??? It has a chicken coop!!" All Matt said was, "Maybe.". To make a very long story short, we walked through it a few days later and fell in love. We worked to convince the owners that we would be able to sell our house quickly (which wasn't even on the market) and they accepted our offer. The next week and a half was a bit crazy. We worked day and night (literally) to get our house ready. We DEEP cleaned, rented out a storage unit, finished a room off in the basement, moved furniture out (T slept on the floor, poor guy), and listed it on facebook, craigslist, and veridian. We had a couple walk through it the next day and bought it. We couldn't believe how smoothly everything was happening. Then, we hit a wall. When the appraiser came to appraise the land he eventually found out the a piece of the lang that connects us the the river was somehow owned by the seller as well as a neighbor. It makes it a bit tricky to appraise a house when the land is not showing up as completely yours. We spent many hours working through this issue, but in the end it was resolved (literally hours before our closing). We moved in and have not had a single regret yet. Amongst the craziness of attempting to move at this stage in life, we are absolutely loving our new place and have felt like we are simply on a long vacation. I am SO thankful to our family and friends who practically did the moving for us and was amazed at the sweat that people put in to help us out and all they got out of it was a free lunch or dinner. I'm not sure what we were thinking but we definitely would not have been able to do it without them... literally, it would not have happened.
The kids love it too but are still adjusting. When we first moved in, the kids wouldn't go anywhere in the house without me... including the bathroom. They are still quite freaked out about being in there room by themselves and Matt usually spends half the night sleeping on the bottom bed of the bunk. With that said, they love being here too. Many times Eliott has said, out of nowhere, "I yike our new house." They spend many hours of the day picking apples and walnuts from our trees, watering their gardens, and making mud pies in the back yard. Between the craziness of moving, we have found time to try out an industrial sized slip and slide, make many fires in the back yard, plant a decent size vegetable garden, fish in our backyard (and caught lots of fish!), caught snakes, frogs, and turtles, climbed trees, jumped on our tramp, and gone on walks and bike rides. I have actually not unpacked a single box of toys and the kids haven't asked once to get out a toy or watch TV. I'm sure winter will bring some of that back, but for now we are enjoying the simple pleasures in life.
We feel very blessed and look forward to using our new house as a blessing for many years to come. Come see us soon!
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