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Saturday, April 25, 2015

Moving Update

It's been a month since I last posted!  As the saying goes, time flies when you're having fun, right?  I'm totally being sarcastic when I say that.  I'm a mess right now.  My house is a mess, my emotions are a mess, my sleep habits are a mess, and my schedule has been a mess.  But life goes on whether you're tired or not, I'm finding.  I relate moving with having a baby.  It's a long process but, by the time the big day finally arrives, you are ready to get the hard work over with so you can enjoy the next season of your life.  That is me, right now.  And I really don't know whether to laugh or cry at the insanity of it all.  Things have been such a roller coaster of emotions and happenings.  We found a fixer-upper we were going to buy and even made an offer on it, but hit a road block before we could submit the offer.  The house was a foreclosure owned by Fannie Mae and since our house was technically sold yet, we needed a letter from our buyers' bank saying that they could afford the house and that they were planning to buy our house.  If we didn't have that letter, they would reject our offer.  So we waited on the letter....for 1 1/2 weeks.  By the time we received the letter, our realtor was on vacation in Florida and couldn't submit the offer until he got home.  And before he returned home, we decided to stop by and ask some questions of the owners of the neighboring property.  You see, the house we were looking to buy was located in a valley and we had heard that the basement flooded.  Since we were planning to make a bedroom for our son in the basement, we decided we should probably check into that a bit more.  I mean, he knows how to swim, but it just wouldn't be practical to have a basement flooding often.  The neighbors confirmed our worst nightmares...yes, the basement floods and oh, by the way, the house has black mold.  Oh yeah, and if you buy it we will want to buy 1/2 of the land from you and expect you to widen the creek in the backyard to help with the flooding.  This was among other horror stories they told us about the property's past issues.  So we promptly told the realtor to NOT submit our offer.  It was a frustrating time having to wait on the letter in order to submit the offer, but now I see it as an answer to prayer and God protecting us from making a bad decision. 

So that left us homeless again.  After making a phone call, we finally were able to find a house to rent that is in the township.  It's in the country and has no neighbors to speak of.  We are able to have our pigs and chickens there and there's a creek in the backyard which provides some relaxing background noise when the back door is open.  The owner wants us to live there through the winter so that the house will be heated during the cold temps, which is longer than our plan, however now we don't have to rush to find something to buy.  And we are even tossing around the idea of building a house.  The money my husband receives from the township will pay the rent and we will have the opportunity to save over a thousand dollars each month since we won't be paying our mortgage payment anymore! 

But the whole thing is exhausting.  I now have 2 houses to clean.  I now have boxes stacked up the walls in our current house and the walls feel like they are closing in on me.  And our house feel so unwelcoming because all of the décor items have been boxed up.  We have slowly started moving some boxes and small furniture pieces into the new place and have been contemplating doing the big move next weekend.  But we haven't heard when our buyers' closing date is, so we may wait in order to make sure their financing goes through before moving everything out of our current house.  But if we don't move this coming week, then we will have to wait 2 weeks before we can because I will be super busy at work with Mother's Day.  And honestly I would rather just get the move over with instead of having it hanging over my head.  Tomorrow we are moving a ton of hubby's stuff out of the garage and into storage since there is no garage at the rental house.  That should make us feel like we are making a lot of progress. 

Through this whole process I have struggled emotionally.  I am leaving the house that we have made memories in as a family.  This house isn't my dream home, but in the past year or so I finally embraced my surroundings have tried to make our home more welcoming and to appreciate it more.  And now we are leaving it.  I have realized that my home is not my security.  My family can make any place our home simply because we live in it.  Renting seems like we are taking a step down on the ladder of success because the house needs a lot of work and is smaller and less appealing looking than our current home.  But I have to remind myself that we will be debt-free by selling our house and we will have more freedom financially because of it.  If feels like we're starting over.  Our kids have struggled with their upcoming new schedules, bus drivers, and have even cried themselves to sleep at night because this is the only house they've known and the future is scary.  I've struggled with what people will think of our rental house or even what they will think of the fact that we'll be renting.  We've struggled with fear and feeling like we're making a mistake by selling at times.  Sometimes I even secretly wish things wouldn't work out with our buyers simply so our life would stay normal.  What I really want is for life to slow down a bit so I can catch my breath.  I want to know that our decision to sell will be worth it in the end and that we all will adjust to our new surroundings well, wherever that may be.