Moving Day turns in to Three Days of Moving

We started moving on Tuesday when we got a surprise by getting the keys to the new house a couple hours after closing. It was supposed to be the following day, but we took it.  We have been packing for over a week now and today we get to move our stuff into our new home.  Moving, as most of you know, isn’t a fun chore, unless you make it fun. One day turned into three days and I think I lost about four pounds just from moving.  I am pretty sure that at the age of 51, I am hoping this could be my last move. I counted at least forty moves in my lifetime and this one was the hardest. Too much heavy and big stuff to move out. Our new house has a garage/shop/storage area so much of our “stuff” gets to live their days in there. 

The unpacking is almost complete and arrange the house to be our lifestyle has been fun.  The kids have their rooms all set up to their liking and mommy has her kitchen arranged.  Our life in our new house has commenced and other than going back to our former home to clean it, we are moving on. I will try not to use the word “move” any more. Except when my kids need to move. Then I will hire movers.  Well, except for when they go off to college and then I will gladly help them with that. But that’s a long, long, long way away. Right?

We’ve Bought a New House!

On Tuesday we signed papers on our new house.( I wanted to post this on that day, but our internet service got cut off and Century Link hasn’t done their end of the deal and hooked us up at our new house). A house that was actually born in 1927.  We are excited to move in and start a new life in a new place.  This will be about my 40-something move, but only the fourth for my daughter Anika. We are moving from a three bedroom, one bath rental home to a four bedroom, 2 and 3/4 bath, so essentially we all get our own bathroom. Yay!!!  It doesn’t have much yard (to mow) but it has a cute swing in the backyard and a huge deck running along the side of the house. We actually have underground parking as one of the former owners added a huge addition and built the garage under the house.  We also have a carport where we can get to and from the car without getting wet, should we not park in the garage. 

Our new house is within walking distance of my two children’s elementary school and next year Isaac only has to walk two blocks to junior high and maybe five blocks to high school. We are looking forward to getting moved and we will be able to celebrate the holidays in our new home.

Yesterday I did a final walk through with our agent to make sure the work we requested got finished. Weird to see the house empty. Looks way bigger than the 3300 square feet that it already is.  820 feet of that footage is our underground garage. 

Now the packing and moving begins.

Buying a Piece of Idaho History

In just a few days my wife and I will be signing papers on the purchase of a piece of Idaho History.  We are buying a home built in 1927.  I am sure there have been many families who have lived in this house. Many people have come in-and-out its front door. Many dreams were dreamt in its rooms, and in this house’s case, many renovations.  The most recent renovation came 80 years later when they added a huge addition to the back of the house.  This house has been through a lot of changes.  For my family it brings a change that marks a new chapter in our lives.

Six years ago we bought a brand new house. In the Bothell, Washington area. We watched it being built from the ground up. Picked out the many options that we wanted to see in our house, and enjoyed having the interior painted in “our colors.”  We enjoyed a few Christmas’s there and even had a lot of snow in the few years we lived in it. But change would come and we uprooted our family and moved to Idaho.

With the economy being in the tubes like it was and still is, we felt we just needed to rent for a while and wait and see if God would open doors to homeownership in the future.  Earlier this year, we visited a local bank and found out good news and delayed news.  The good news was that they could definitely get us a loan, the delayed news was that it wouldn’t be able to happen until October of this year. So we put buying a house on the backburner and started attending several open houses, waiting until the day we could offer on it. 

We had chosen three homes during that six month span, only to watch two of the three become sold and the other was still out of our price range and it’s owners pulled it off the market for a while.  That left us with searching for a house that we would like. 

There were some really good things that happened for us while we waited. One was that we were able to know exactly what we wanted in a house.  Like how many rooms we really needed and since we are not fixer-upper people, we needed a house that was basically done for us.  The second really good thing that happened for us was that the interest rate had fallen a full percentage point and that made our house a lot more affordable.

What we’ve learned through these past few years is to “trust God no matter what.”  To really depend on Him to comfort us, provide for us, and direct our steps.

Good Neighbors

In the back of our house that we are renting are two very large walnut trees.  So large, that earlier this summer, one branch came crashing down on our minivan.  The heaviest part of the branch fortunately hit the ground and spared us any repairs to the van.  These large walnuts overproduced this year and the many squirrels had many nuts to harvest. 

But you got to know that with large walnut trees comes thousands of leaves.  Today as I look out the window and see these two trees, they are all bare of leaves.  Those leaves have all fallen to the ground.  We’ve spent a bit of time raking them up and bagging them, and the yard waste guys have been good picking the bags up and hauling them away. 

One recent day my next-door-neighbor was using his gas powered blower to blow leaves away and while I was gone, he blew even blew ours into a big pile.  I had told him that when we got back from our trip to Spokane, we’d be picking them up and bagging them.  Well when we got back from Spokane, “someone” had already bagged and disposed of eighty percent of our walnut tree leaves. 

You gotta love good neighbors.