We have some changes happening around here. Big changes, and I can finally talk about it and publish this backlog of blogs that I've been sitting on for a while. I hope you'll bear with me as I break it up a little. :)
Chris and I have felt for a little while now that it is time for a change for us and our family. After many many discussions, we decided that it was time for us to move on from our life in Lincoln. We did not have a specific place or job in mind, but we knew that if an opportunity were to come up that required us to move quickly, that home ownership/ a mortgage could be a real burden. So we decided to put our house up for sale.
Chris talked to his dad one evening before we listed the house, and his dad commented, "Yeah, you could put your house up for sale and that would be like you putting out the fleece."
That is kind of what we thought too.
We tend to be Do-ers more than Trust That Things Will Work Out-ers. We also are Have Everything Completely Planned Out-ers, so this was completely new territory for us.
That weekend, we called the realtor who had sold us our home and told her that we would like to sell it. We told her that we would like for it to be "unofficially" on the market, meaning that if she knew of buyers who were looking for homes in the area and our price range, that we would like her to show it. But we didn't want a sign in the yard or a listing on the website. We live in a small town and we didn't want people asking a lot of questions or getting the wrong idea, so this was our way of "kind of" puting it on the market.That was on a Sunday. On Wednesday we would be leaving town for the next 10 days for work and personal reasons, so we gave her a key to get into the house if neccessary.
On Tuesday afternoon Chris called to tell me that there were already people interested in seeing the house.
Me, laughing: Well, they'll just have to wait about 10 days and they can look all they want.
Him: Well...I already told her it would be okay for them to come by...
Me: You have no idea what you're asking.
I thought for a second about how I needed to finish packing the kids and I for our multi-stage road trip, which included 28 hours of driving time (not including stops), a race, visiting both families, and culminating in the kids' birthday bash that I was planning. My mind was fully on the trip, and our house was a wreck getting ready for it.
My mind was not on getting the house show-ready. It would be a struggle to get it tidy, let alone deep cleaned with sparkling bathrooms/floors/countertops, de-cluttered, de-personalized and beautifully staged. It was just not going to happen. Not in a day, not with two kids at home, and not with everything else we had to do that night.
But Chris assured me that he had warned the realtor that we were unprepared to show it so quickly and that it would look very lived-in. We gave it a quick tidy that morning in between loading the car, (leaving very much to be desired, in my opinion), and rushed off for our trip.
While we were away, we were informed that one of the couples had come to see the house twice and were very interested.
When we returned on Sunday, 10 days later, we were told that the couple were listing their house with the intention of buying ours.
On Thursday, the couple made us an offer.
On Friday, we countered.
On Saturday, they made us their final offer.
Sunday was Mother's Day. I asked, for my gift, that we do not discuss the sale or non-sale of our house at all. I didn't get my wish.
On Monday, we accepted their offer.
On Tuesday, we signed the paperwork.
Whew!!
I mean, seriously?! What in the world? In less than a month, without advertising that our house was for sale, without putting our best foot forward in showing it, and in the middle of a "real estate slump," even when other houses on our street had been for sale for months, we sold our house.
And then we held our breath, because now what? We were out of our house, a home that we loved, and had no idea what was next.
Hannah was sick on Tuesday when we signed the paperwork. She and I had picked up Jayce from school, came home to meet the realtor and Chris at the house to sign the papers. As I tried to put my hesitations out of my mind, I fretted over how she was burning up in my lap. (It turned out that she had a 103.9 fever. Yikes.)
She ended up being fine, but I threw myself into panicking over this fever and it kept me from thinking about the huge decision that we had just made, and what we would do next. Luckily, I didn't have to wait too long to.
The next morning, I was at McDonalds with a friend when Chris texted me that he had been shortlisted for a job. I mentioned it in passing to my friend, and we went back to talking as our kids played on the slide. I barely gave it a second thought.
I didn't know that this opportunity was the "what is next" for us.
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