We’re Moving!

We’re sad that the blog has been quiet for several months now.  We regularly wish we were able to sit down and share what has been going on.  With our most recent exciting news, we had to make time to share!

I bought the condo where we live in August 2005.  Bethany and I got married in June, 2007.  Josiah and Lilly were born in January 2010 and Noah was born in February 2012.  After all of those exciting memories in this house, we’re moving on to a new home.

Closing for our new house is on April 16th and we’ll move in over the weekend with closing on the condo 5 days later.

We’ve had the condo on the market since July and while we saw plenty of traffic (one or two showings each week through Thanksgiving), we didn’t get any offers.  In January, we looked through all the numbers (our finances, sale history for comparable condos, what we were looking to spend on a new house, etc.) to understand what we could and couldn’t afford to sell it for.  We decided to continue saving for another two months and then cut the price.

In late February, Beth found the new house online though it hadn’t turned up in my daily emails from Zillow.  We looked through the information online and got in touch with our real estate agent to go look through the house.

We took the kids with us so they could have a chance to see another house and help make the idea of moving more real in their minds.  Since the house is new construction, there were no decorations, breakables, etc. for us to worry about with the kids.  They checked everything out, ran around, and enjoyed the open space.

While this house didn’t have everything we had been looking for, it was by far the best fit we had found.  We went home to reassess the finances and were excited to be able to make an offer.  We traded offers with the builder/seller that week but reached an agreement and signed papers by the following weekend.

Immediately after making an offer, we cut the price of the condo.  We had one showing that next weekend and then no showings the following weekend.  While I was confident the bad weather was to blame, it was hard to see the days passing by without activity.  We had decided to rent the condo out if there was no acceptable offer by the end of the month.  The next weekend filled up quick – we had an open house scheduled for Sunday but then added a showing for Saturday.  We got a call for a second, then a third showing on Saturday and yet another on Sunday.  News started to come in from our agent – expect at least one, probably more than one offer shortly.

By Monday afternoon, we’d received 6 very competitive offers.  I was overjoyed that our price reduction put us at exactly the right spot.  We accepted an offer which allowed a closing date of our choice and have been moving that deal forward since.

The condo looks increasingly barren with each day.  Our storage unit is packed solid (we had been packing things up while the condo was still on the market and storing them there to help keep the house tidy).  The TV is off the wall, all of the pictures and decorations are down, closets are mostly empty, and we’ve moved the living room furniture to accommodate a growing pile of boxes labeled “Fragile”, “Kitchen”, “Bedroom”, and the likes.

Our china is boxed up, as is our wedding album and the pictures that have hung on the walls always reminding us of that day.  Another box has pictures of Lilly and Josiah from the NICU and of us with Noah when he was born.  The same box has pictures of all three kids from this past winter.

We really couldn’t be more excited to be making this move.  Bethany and I have been so sad for the kids, being confined to such a tight place.  Like animals in captivity (to be clear, I’m not calling the kids animals!), we see how they aren’t able to be their whole selves here.  We are absolutely delighted to be able to give them more.

Moving day comes in just over two weeks.  The day before we move, we’re planning a “family moving day” with just the five of us to let the kids help load the truck, pack up their last/favorite toys, etc.  That will certainly be one of my favorite parts about the whole experience!

We will make it a point to pass along more pictures of the kids, of the moving experience, and our new place!