We put our house on the market a little over a month ago. I was ready to get it sold and got so excited when we had showings. But sometime after the second showing some things changed. The weather got nice and we spent a lot of time outside...in my beautiful yard. And we saw our amazing local friends quite a bit. I was starting to wonder if I really wanted to move. I realized how great we have it here, for so many reasons. I am finally in a good routine and life has been nothing but fabulous for me for the past few months. I was almost completely ready to pull the "for sale" sign out of the yard. It was a Saturday and James took the kids with him so I could have some alone time and it was exactly what I needed. I just felt so recharged and amazing and decided I love my life just the way it is.
Then James called to tell me we would be having our 3rd showing the next day. I had zero excitement about this news. Zero! I almost didn't even want to clean the house. But I did. We left the house during the showing and I told James, "We are going to get an offer today. I know because I'm second guessing this move." We went back home after the showing and I was messaging my local friends and told them I was thinking about taking our house off the market. About 20 minutes later I saw the email come through...."House Offer" was the subject. My heart sank. I told James, "I knew it. We just got an offer." We took a look at it and neither of us really said a word. We just kind of sat doing whatever it was we were doing (it was 9pm and kids were in bed). About an hour or so later James said, "I'm not even excited about this and I should be." Neither of us had an ounce of excitement. We talked about our options a little bit and then decided to sleep on it.
In the morning we discussed and decided this is what we intended to happen, so lets just move on. We countered their super ridiculous offer and they countered right back. Part of me was hoping they wouldn't be able to get to the amount we wanted. We countered again and then received their final offer on Wednesday afternoon. I didn't even look at it until 9pm that night and I wasn't really sure I wanted to sign it.
I hadn't full on cried yet, but I had been nothing but sad since we got their first offer. All of my thoughts were centered around how much I love my house and our life and that my kids don't know any other place and we have so many memories here, etc. Every time I would think about it, I would get more and more sad about leaving. Then I would think about future things, like Rylee wanting to have her birthday party at our house and thinking about not being able to do that would upset me so much that I couldn't even entertain the idea of moving. I had completely forgotten why I even wanted to move in the first place.
We looked at a few rental places that Wednesday and I was so disappointed in what we saw that I felt like we were going to have to live in a dump and I wasn't going to do that to my kids, so it would just make the most sense to stay where we are. I was really down. I told James I wasn't sure I wanted to sign that final offer. In so many words he pretty much told me to figure it out by morning because we needed to get it signed. I talked with my wonderful friends for a couple of hours (we joke that we are going to blow up the internet with all of our chatting we do on facebook messenger) and they said some things that made a lot of sense and I slept on it. I still wasn't 100% positive of the decision in the morning but I went ahead and signed it. I figured "what if I really do love living closer to Ames like I've always wanted? And, if I don't...we still own land that we can build a new house on by our current one."
While our house was on the market we had decided that if someone only wanted the house and 10 acres, we would just keep the rest of the property for recreation. Luckily, these buyers only wanted 10. So, knowing that we can still come down here and enjoy the beauty and the land we have called home has given me something to look forward to.
On Friday morning I started making some phone calls to possible rental possibilities for us in the Ames area. The first call I made was to a sweet girl who, unknowingly to either of us, had to listen to me cry for 5 minutes. The second I started to tell her our story I got all choked up and then I just lost it. I couldn't even catch my breath to talk. I was super embarrassed and was not expecting that to happen at all!! The poor girl was so nice though and let me finish. I hadn't had a good cry about this move yet and unfortunately it happened at such a random time. Anyway, by the end of Friday I had a few rentals lined up to go look at on Sunday. Later that evening James and I discussed the possibility of building a small cabin down here so we have a place to stay when we come down. That got me excited. We also started looking online for some land and found an existing house for sale that we wanted to go look at.
I woke up Saturday morning with a new view on all of this. I finally had some things to look forward to! Because we will be greatly downsizing for awhile, we had posted several pieces of furniture on Craigslist to sell and had 4 different people in our house buying our things. As stuff was leaving our house I started to realize just how real the process had become and decided to just keep looking forward.
Sunday was fun looking at that house, a piece of land, and some decent rentals. We still don't have a place to live yet, but I'm feeling a little better about the possibilities. Plus I know every single one of you reading this will let us live with you....right?!?!!? It's definitely a little unsettling not knowing where we will be in 5-6 weeks. It's hard to sign a lease though when you don't know for sure that the sale of the house will go through....it's not sold until it's sold (closing). We will have some inconveniences with this process....having to move our things to a storage unit for 2-6 weeks and then move it back out of the storage unit to the rental place. But, it is what it is.
Yesterday we had the inspection on our house. This was another step forward for me as I realized it's become less our house and closer to becoming someone else's house. First, the inspector just unlocked the door and walked right in...he wasn't expecting anyone to be here. Then the buyers were in my house and it was very awkward at first. I just kept thinking about building my next house for the whole 2 hours they were here so I could stay focused on the future. I hated though when, at the end, the inspector told the buyers "you have a beautiful house"....ugh!! I was like, "Yo, over here...this is MY house...I designed and built it (okay, James did, but...)...tell ME it's beautiful, not them!!!" But as my friend said, "once you put it on the market it's pretty much not yours anymore."
I will definitely be very sad to leave here, there will be tears. I will probably cry during the first year in our rental home every time I realize we don't have room for visitors, can't have the kids' birthday parties in our house, only have 1 bathroom for all of us to share. I will TRY to remember how blessed we are to have a roof over our heads no matter how small it is or how many "extras" it's missing. It's short term and hopefully I can keep my eye on the prize....a new house that we get to design again. Plus, being in Ames we should have so much more to do to keep us busy...even if it's just visiting Grandma and Grandpa.
New Chapter...I hope you're awesome! I am coming to you with an open mind and will try to make the best of you. Your challenges will probably get the best of me though and I can't promise I won't break down....but, I'm ready for you.
A quick fun story -- the girl I cried to on the phone (whom I've never met) called me yesterday and asked if I would like to join their play date and she could introduce me to some moms in the area. How incredibly sweet!!! Not only did it make my day, but I now know things will be OKAY!
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