MOVING

Here's the dreaded moving post. Dreaded because it's such a long story, but one that I need to jot down for our own personal history. When we moved back to Arizona in Dec. of 2005 it was right in the peak of ridiculous housing prices. We didn't think we would be able to buy anything. However, we kind of lucked out. My brother Michael needed to get out of his town home & was willing to give us a smoking deal. (Well, smoking deal for that time.) So, we took it. I wasn't overly thrilled because it wasn't a house, but it was what we could afford. It was also not in an area that we really wanted to be in & not the best area of town. However, we were lucky enough to buy something & even luckier that it worked out that we could redo a lot in the house. We worked for weeks before moving in on ripping out the carpet & placing laminate flooring throughout, repainting everything, getting all new appliances, etc. A lot of work, but totally worth it & actually pretty necessary with the condition it was in.

We were excited & loved how it turned out. We only planned to be in this home for a year & then hoped to move to an area where we really wanted to be. Then real estate took the big plunge & we were stuck! We quickly started to feel a little claustrophobic in this place, but made it work. Then, 5 years later, a plan raised that we felt we could get out. We did a lot of searching on what to do & had issues with the whole moral thing on what would be right for us without feeling like we were taking advantage of the system. We were starting to panic because we didn't want Kylie going to junior high where we were & she's getting close to that age.

Then, right before Thanksgiving, we had a slab leak. I didn't even know what that was until it happened. We thought our hot water heater broke & was leaking. We called in the professionals & quickly learned that we had a slab leak. In Jadyn's closet her wood flooring was mush! It was sloshy to walk on & warping fast. It was that point where we finally felt at peace with being completely done with our house! We had had it! We were sick of fixing toilets, garbage disposals, sinks, leaky roofs every time it rained, etc., etc., etc. It was just getting to be too much. It was bound to happen with an older home & we were tired of it.

We have a friend in our ward who is a realtor who was so kind & helped us a ton! We decided it was time for us to put our home on the market as a short sale. Within a few weeks we had an offer to the bank. At the advice of our realtor we hired a negotiator to work with the bank & that was the best decision we could have made! For us, it was completely worth it! A couple of months later (& a lot of back & forth) we had approval to move forward. YAHOO!! After a nerve wracking month of inspections & appraisals it was set to go & we were house hunting for a home to rent.

We found one & put in an application. A couple of days later we were told that they had chose another tenant. Darnet! We were looking again. The first home I wasn't thrilled about anyway, so I wasn't too sad. I told Erik I wanted a home that when I walked in I would automatically feel like - this is it! We found another home that when I saw the pictures online - I knew it was the home for us. We looked at it & again, I knew! We signed the lease on a Monday & were all prepared to move in that weekend. We turned in our deposit money, etc. Our home was scheduled to close on Friday & then we would be moving on Saturday. We scheduled it all!

Then, of course, the inevitable happens. Thursday night we get a call from our realtor that a fluke thing had happened. One he's never heard of before. Again, of course this would happen to us! The buyers on our home had gotten denied for their loan at the last minute on a weird technicality. Bizarre!! Yet, we didn't completely panic. Erik said he felt totally at peace that things would still work out. Either way, we were still moving since it was all scheduled already.

So, we packed up as scheduled on Saturday April 30th & moved to our new rental home. Our girls were not terribly happy about leaving what they were comfortable with. Especially Kylie, she doesn't handle change all that well. Yet, we were excited to see where this new adventure would take us.

It just so happened that a couple that was in the Easter Pageant with us lives just down the street. And the family that lived in the home we rented only moved a few houses down & have a daughter Kylie's age & a son Jadyn's age. They now have friends close by & love playing in the neighborhood! It's been a terrific blessing. They can go outside & play now, ride bikes, scooters, etc.! All the things we never let them do at our old place. Needless to say we love it!

As for our old place. Our realtor was amazing! He wasn't about to let the deal just die. He rushed our buyers into a lender that he knew & worked his magic. After a very nerve-wracking few weeks the new lenders approved the loan & we finally closed! We are so happy it's done & over with! I couldn't walk away without taking a few details pictures of the old place. (We all know I love the details!)

Since it was Michael's home there were still a lot of reminders of him around. In a way, it was hard for me to leave because it was his. At times I felt horrible that I was letting this go since we have so few things left of him. I just kept thinking, at least we have the best left behind - Elliot! Some of the things are not good reminders, but reminders none the less. We have:

**He loved the dog prints in the saltillo tile in the back bathroom. Why a tiler would thing it was ok to lay that tile & leave it is beyond me. ut, it ws pretty crazy!

**REDRUM scratched in the back of Kylie's door. Lucky for Kylie she was completely clueless! (Again, I said not all things were good.)

**The "stain glass" light on the staircase. Michael's wife at the time, Jill, (love you Jill) did a stain glass kit on this light. They left the light on for too long & it melted. Haha! Jill still gets a good laugh from it.

**The fan in the master bedroom was painted when we moved in. Michael thought it had a cool ambiance with it being painted a deep red. Luckily, it was just watercolors & it came off. Well, off the glass anyway. The blades still had a tint to them that we couldn't get completely off.

**I don't have a picture of the living room fan in this, but it was special to him. Apparently, he & Jill went to San Francisco. (CAn't remember if it was their honeymoon or just a trip.) They found the ceiling fan their & brought it home. Michael loved that fan!

**My favorite thing is the view outside of the master window. It's not spectacular, but it had a lamp near a tree in the back grass area. Michael told me that would be my favorite part about the house because it looks neat when you look outside & you see it lit. He said it's like looking at the lamp from Narnia.

Needless to say, leaving was a little hard. We loved our ward & especially our friends out that way. Yet, we needed to move for our families sake. I can't even begin to explain how much happier we are in our new home. For so many reasons! It's already made a world of difference for our girls. Plus, the Young Women in our ward got up to sing in sacrament & I counted 24 of them! 24!! I started crying. That's a lot better than 1 like our old ward. That's exactly what we wanted for our girls.