Crazy-A Week

We bought a house last week all of a sudden. It's on the same road as A1 & A2's school, and when we walked into it, it felt like it should be ours. We've been sensing impending change for awhile, so it's not totally out of the blue. It's just all happened really fast. Our purchase contract has a closing date of 60 days out, so we had to sell our current house in 30 days at most.

As luck would have it, we had gotten a wild hair the weekend before all this went down, and decided to paint the living room, kitchen, hallway, and master bedroom. We chose light grays/blues to brighten the place up. We also cleaned out our storage room, which had looked like a bomb went off in it for quite some time. Thank goodness we did those things!

We signed a contract for the new house on a Monday, spent the rest of the week getting a realtor, de-cluttering, cleaning and staging the house. We listed the house on the MLS on Saturday. On Monday we had five showings and two offers. Tuesday we had another showing and a third offer. Last night we accepted an offer for more than asking price! Unbelievable!

This is most definitely bittersweet. I feel like I could write an ode to Apple Avenue and a love letter to Harvest Hills. I know we were led here 8 years ago, and have been exceedingly happy. I feel like we have grown up here. We've become actual(ish) adults, and learned so much from our little village. We have had non-stop examples of friendship, service, parenting, and of how to be a good neighbor. We've been in amazing wards where we could serve and mature, and gain stronger testimonies of the Savior and the Gospel. I've had intermittent crying spells over the last two days- crying because I'm sad to leave all we have, and immense gratitude that we've had it. At the same time, I can see the Lord's hand in all of this, and know that it's all working out for a reason. And let's be real- we're moving 5 miles away, not across the world, but you know how it is. New neighborhood, new village, regardless of distance.

Financially, this is a blessing. We bought our house at the peak of the housing bubble, just a few months before the market tanked. As much as we've loved living here, we have been under water in our house nearly the entire time. This is our opportunity to get out of our 2007-era subprime mortgage situation. And the kids can walk to school!

I want to post the pictures that were on the MLS, mostly because I never want to forget how clean our house was for 2 days. I love a clean house, but having to pretend you don't live in your house is pretty awful! Thank heavens we only had to keep up that charade for two days.

Thank you, little house on Apple Avenue. In the words of the late Whitney Houston, "I-eeee-I will allllways looooove yoooou!"