Starting Fresh

The last few months have been among the most chaotic of my life. I spent the last several years fantasizing about buying a house. I really thought it was going to be so much fun! Alas, it was stressful and time consuming and difficult. But, we found a home we're really happy with and are excited to be starting fresh. Here is the last several months in summary:

Mid-March, we started actively looking for a house to buy. I chronicled the first offer here and here. We made offers on two different houses in a matter of two weeks, neither of which were accepted. Then another house we wanted to buy accepted an offer the day before we went to make an offer. We were feeling really discouraged at that point because there wasn't really anything left on the market that fit all our criteria.

I decided we should go look at a bank-owned home that was slightly outside of our target neighborhood (within the right elementary and middle school boundaries, but the wrong high school). It was much better than I was expecting. In fact, I even liked it. A lot. So I called Landon, and he came and saw it later that day. We talked it over and looked at a couple of other properties, and decided to make an offer on the foreclosure we didn't expect to like. After some back and forth, our offer was accepted, and we were under contract.

We thought that dealing with a bank-owned home would be easier in a lot of ways than a traditional sale. We assumed that they would be very motivated sellers without any weird hang-ups or moving issues. Instead, they were disorganized and slow and frustrating as all hell. Landon was freaking out left and right at the seller's incompetence. I tried to keep my cool, but I was definitely nervous about it all falling apart. However, thanks in large part to Landon's pestering, we actually closed early on the house. We officially became home owners on May 11, 2011.

The next day, we started fixing the house so we could move in. Landon gave our landlords our 30 day notice at the beginning of May, so we had a little more than 2 weeks to refurbish the original hardwoods, completely gut and rebuild the master bathroom, put in carpets in the bedrooms, paint almost every room in the house and do about a million other "small" things you have to do to a house so you can move in. Oh my hell, that was crazy, crazy, crazy. I will never give myself such a tight timeline again! Landon's dad and brother did about 80% of the work, with friends and my brother Brandon also stepping up admirably and helping us out.

We moved in over Memorial Day weekend, thanks to our families coming with trucks and a willingness to carry heavy stuff. I've spent the last two weeks getting our old house in decent shape so we (hopefully) get some of our deposit back and getting us all settled into our new home. My sisters, mom and Landon's mom have all come and helped us unpack, clean, organize and generally get settled in. Josh has also been helping out quite a bit around the house and with the kids. It's now starting to feel like home and not just a place where we store our boxes of crap and sleep.

Although my life has not been my own for nearly four months, I am able to see the light at the end of the tunnel now. My kids are feeling more and more settled, and I am feeling less and less like a headless chicken. We love our new home and can't wait to start our life in our very own house -- our home!

I have spent much of the last several months overcome with gratitude for so many people:

We are forever indebted to Gary and Logan for the many, many hours they have given us doing every kind of construction-related work imaginable. They have been here after work, on their weekends, and even stopping by during work hours (but, SHHH! don't tell anyone) so we could get into our home on time. It has been frustrating, time- and labor-intensive work, and they were doing it all for free. How blessed we are to have them in our lives!

We are also incredibly grateful for my brother Brandon, Chris Tolbert and Dave Parker for stepping up and helping us when our scheduled contractor flaked on us, again all for free. They are a huge part of why were able to move in on time, and we feel so blown away by how generous they were with their time and their talents and their labor.

Meagan and Caitlin stepped up and helped do the bulk of our packing (especially Meagan!). Then, they came and did a ton of the unpacking and organizing. So grateful for their time and effort and company.

Both the Bailey and the Rachac families, plus Chris, came and moved us into our new home in a matter of hours.

We are lucky people, Landon and I. We are so blessed to have the families that we do, who give so much of their time and their love and support and their labor to help us. I truly hope that we are able to one day repay each of them, if only in part, for their kindness and generosity.