Homeward Bound Part 8 - Thoughts on Moving

Moving sucks. Plain and simple. It sucks if it is your family, your friends, or your self moving. There....there are my thoughts on moving.

Anyway, Christmas has come and gone. I'm sad to see it go so soon. John's friends and family have hefted our furniture to the new place for us. We tried so hard not to bother people during the holidays to help us but it is unavoidable.

Having Bean run around makes it so that basically only one of us can do anything at a time. She's taking it all in stride. I'm sure things are confusing to her, seeing her bedroom in shambles and being emptied, but she's still her normal happy self. At one point she even tried to help us pack and put her huge blue ball in a box. SO CUTE!

Back to packing...John and I made about 1,000 trips back and forth with our cars filled to the brim with boxes. I'm sure that made it easier on the movers. Luckily the new apartment is a 1/2 mile from our condo.

I underestimated how much stuff we have. I bought 2 bundles of boxes from UHaul (foolishly) thinking we'd only use half...Ha! People have a lot of junk under their roof. But it isn't 'junk' in the sense that we can throw it out. It's just stuff that you need eventually. I'm not about to throw it out for the sake of convenience and then have to buy it again when eventually comes around because it always does.

You can tell when moving gets old...at first I tried to carefully label boxes and neatly pack everything, but now that it is down to the wire I'm just throwing random things in a box. We'll sort it later. I'm over it.

So am I sad to see an empty-ish condo? Not really...I'm too busy to be sad.

What happens next? Well, we get settled into our new apartment and then start house shopping.

Homeward Bound Part 6 - Memories

Now that the contract is signed and the closing date draws near, reality is setting in.

I thought I would be thrilled at finally leaving this house that has suffocated me for the past two years. Unexpected is the rush of sadness as I take mental inventory of all the wonderful things that have happened here in this little condo.

~ Mom and I lived here together for a little stretch of time while I tried to sort out my life. I remember how on Friday nights we'd get a stack of movies from Blockbuster, ice cream, and a bag of peanut M&Ms. Good times.

~ My sister and I lived here together for about 2 years. I'm sure there were frustrating moments but right now all I remember is how much we laughed. I miss her a ton.

~ This was the first house I ever bought. I bought it from my mom back in 2002.

~ This is where John and I serendipitously ran into each other out in the parking lot. I was leaving from a visit with my mom and he was coming to visit a friend next door.

~ John and I lived here together after we got married in 2003.

~ I finished my degree in 2005, after many evenings spent studying and writing papers here within these walls.

~ Rocky, that little scamp, lived here for a long time. He was the first dog I ever owned as an adult. He might also be the last, but he's definitely worth remembering.

~ This is where we brought Brooklyn home from the hospital. Her first smile, word, step, bath, bump, bruise, tooth, Christmas, tear, giggle, all of it happened here. *sniff*

~ This is where friends and family warmed our hearts by coming through our front door. Some have passed on and some have moved on, but I remember them all.

Enjoying the Process

Have you ever wanted something so bad that you thought you might die if you had to wait one more day? And every day you had to wait you'd grow more cranky and grouchy, ostracizing your friends as you search for something or someone to pin your frustration on. You are so grotesque with impatience that women shield their babies from the horror that you've become. Until finally, you are shunned from the community like an old testament leper, with the life-sucking black hole as your only companion.

You've never felt this way? Weird.

Well that's what I felt like while on my "I need a new house NOOOOOOOW" tirade. Poor John. Poor Lisa. Poor friends & family. Poor grocery store cashier. I'm so sorry to have dragged you into my depravity.

But the dark clouds are starting to clear because, though the house hunt has been put off for a few months, I've learned what it means to enjoy the journey.

For example, it's actually fun to dream about what our next house might look like, what kind of people will fill the neighborhood, the different things we'll be able to remodel, the new memories we'll create. Sure, moving into a tiny apartment for a few months might suck at first but I'm looking forward to the coziness. And hey, having less to clean and repair is a huge bonus.

So yes, life is more enjoyable when you change your outlook. Hmmm, I wonder if this is part of why in Phillipians 4:8 God asks us to:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.

Just sayin'.

Homeward Bound 5 - Rental Setbacks and Successes

Okay, so we have to be out of our condo by Jan. 4th. Where do we go from here? We had 3 ideas of places to rent and all those doors have been shut.

I was starting to get nervous but then another random conversation lead to me signing a lease for an apartment in a nearby neighborhood that is everything I was looking for:

Clean
Bottom floor
Has all the appliances (our washer and dryer went toward the sale of our condo.)
Rent includes cable & water
Small security deposit (I got the security deposit WAVED!!)
Affordable rent
7 month lease

How's about ya now?

Homeward Bound 4 - Houston, we have a contract.

Today was amazing. I can't believe how quickly this is all happening!

The New Jersey couple came to visit our condo on Monday. They would be in town for a few days so they figured they would order an inspection to be done on our place before they left. This happened yesterday. The inspection went really well and we only have a few minor things to fix. Yay!

So I have been scouring the web to find a real estate contract to use for this transaction. Not knowing the difference between a good one and a bad one, I decided to go see a real estate lawyer. He drafted one up for me in about 1.5 hours, I paid him an obscene amount of $$ for 1.5 hours worth of work ($250) and met the NJers at my house to go over the paper work.

I thought they'd want to take their copy of the contract back up north with them to look over it more closely but they signed right there and then! Oh happy day!

So we have, in less than two weeks and without a realtor, found buyers, gotten our asking price, gotten a signed contract & deposit, and established a closing date.

Giddy-up!

Homeward Bound 3 - They Like It!!

So the New Jersey couple came to see the condo today. They seemed to really like it. The only thing that is killing me is the constant haggling.

"Can you take $4,000 off your asking price?"

"No. I already told you our rock botton price."

"Can you throw in the washer and dryer?"

"No."

"We really like your bar stools."

"No."

We'll see what happens though. They want to come back by tomorrow or Wednesday for another look around.

Exciting but stressful.

Homeward Bound Part 2 - Are you kidding me???

Okay, this is truly amazing. Yesterday we busted our butts getting the condo cleaned up and ready for listing. I even took Friday off to pack more things and haul boxes to the storage unit.

I have been in touch with a handful of realtors, trying to find someone agressive and optimistic enough to sell our place in this hopelessly saturated market.

This morning while in church, I started feeling overwelmed by the thought of having to keep our house clean every minute in case a buyer wanted to come take a look. I know, I know...I should have been focusing on God and his infinite goodness, but I couldn't help it. During the music I prayed "Lord, we need a miracle. This is too big for me to handle while being a full time employee, a full time mother and a full time wife. Please send a miracle to help us sell our condo."

Well, God sent us our miracle. We finish lunch and head home to do more cleaning and prep work. John gets a phone call from a neighbor who has the phone number of a couple in New Jersey who have been trying to buy a unit in this neighborhood for YEARS. I call them. Yes, they are interested and want to see pictures. Thank God I just happened to take pictures yesterday!!! So I email pictures and they call to say they want to drive to Florida right away to see our condo in person.

They are coming 12/6.

You can't even believe how excited I am. I keep trying to not get my hopes up too much. You never know how things could turn out. But I can't help thinking these are going to be the people who buy our condo. Why would this happen so randomly and so mysteriousy out of the blue? Would God really answer a prayer only half way?

Homeward Bound Part 1 - Prep that House!

We are on our way to buying a house big enough for our current and future family. Oh joy!

But first we need to sell our condo.

Before I met with any realtor we eliminated the clutter in all of our rooms. This meant finding a storage unit to put any of the crap that we didn't need for the next few months. And by 'crap' I mean anything that would remind a potential buyer of the itty bitty 1067 square feet of living space.

Things we put in storage?

~ Our recliner. This opened up the living room, giving a nice flow to the combined living/dining area.

~ A tall bookshelf crowded with books. I felt the open wall space would give buyers the ability to visualize different uses for this part of the living room.

~ Two of our dining room chairs. Six chairs and two bar stools really suffocated the small dining area. With the leaf in the table removed and only four chairs, you see more space around the table.

~ We emptied the attics so the buyers could see how we finished the attic flooring and how much of their own crap they could shove up there.

~ Any kitchen appliances that haven't been used in 6 months went into storage. We didn't want buyers to see that the kitchen couldn't even house our own normal sized appliance collection, leaving them to wonder where they'd put their own stuff.

~ One of the dressers in our bedroom was removed for the same reason as the recliner and dining room chairs.

We polished up the kitchen (since it is the crowning glory of the property) making sure to take any clutter off the beautiful granite counters.

John tackled any projects that were left unfinished from years past.

I had to take pictures for the realtors to use on marketing websites. Well, I didn't have to , I chose to because I don't trust other people to take the best ever photos of our property.

But I have a confession to make. Despite all my efforts to de-clutter, I still had to move junk from one room into another, take a picture, then move the junk back. Repeat for each room. I think the resulting photos turned out really nice though.

Telling his family

So we told John's folks last night at Mimi's restaurant. I'm so glad John abandoned the whole 'let's wait til Christmas' farce. Neither of us can keep a great secret for very long. Who were we really fooling? Not even ourselves. Exactly.

Anyway, I bought a onsie that said "What happens at Grandma's stays at Grandma's" and wrapped it in a Christmas bag with pictures of the pregnancy test. It took Linda a minute to comprehend but we could see the light bulb go off. It was so precious. I have it on video and will upload it later. John's dad wanted to stand up in the restaurant and ask for all the patron's attention as he shared the news. I wish he would have. That would have been SO COOL.

*** Update: Here's the video***


My sister wants to know when we can start shopping. I'm not really into buying baby stuff yet. As I was picking out the onsie I felt so out of my element even being in the baby section. I'm sure eventually I'll want to go crazy on baby supplies. Right now we don't have anywhere to put anything. So higher on my list of priorities is getting rid of useless crap we've been hanging onto forever. I've already dumped 2 big bags of clothing and I have a huge box of scrap supplies that I'm going to offer to some friends. I'd really love to have a 4 bedroom house rather than try and figure out how to stuff a baby & all the accessories into our condo. As I prayed for God to open that door, I heard from 2 people in 2 days of nice houses currently in foreclosure. Hmmmmm. Interesting.

Another thing to think about is what to do with the dog. Ugh. I don't even want to imagine how hard it will be to relocate a dog with an attitude problem. Anyone want a persnickety 8 year old Jack Russell Terrier who growls, snarls & bites the hand that feeds him, wants to fight with every other dog when on a leash, eats cats, follows you around the house to the point where you either step on him or trip over him constantly, and goes crazy when you vacuum or flush a toilet or turn on a flashlight or have visitors? You sure? He's really really cute.