In high school, I'd play sports for no less than two teams every season, work, do homework, and, of course, socialize. One could only dream to have this schedule now!
In college, there was a year where I carried 18 credits, worked a part-time co op, spent hours working and practicing with the concrete canoe team, and drank my face off. What I would give to have these things to complain about again.
In '05, I planned our wedding, hubs changed jobs, and we bought our first house. Ha, I laugh at myself for thinking it was a stressful year! I was so naive.
In '08, I was flying back and forth every week to Peoria, IL via a layover in O'Hare for the entire summer. The same summer we happened to have eight weddings over a few months. One of which I was in, two for him. And we had two dogs to take care of. Looking back I can't believe I thought this was hard.
Over the past year, I have taken our brood out of our home no less than 80 times at an hour each for people to waltz through with hopes that they would by it. And by brood I mean two puppies, a toddler, and a pregnant belly for the first 8 months, and the next 4 take away the belly (well a few lbs of it) and add a baby. In the rain, in the dark, during naptime, after bedtime, on mothers' day morning before church. In the stroller, on a bike, sitting in the car, driving around, or to my mom's house. Let's add in a new job for both of us in the last year, trying to find a new home, and finally, finally accepting an offer and coordinating moving. I think it's safe to say that this is the most stress our family can handle and hope things never get harder...
We were finally getting excited and preparing to make an offer on our new home when BAM. The appraisal on our house came back ridiculously low and now the bank is refusing to lend to the buyer our agreed price. We have two choices - say thanks but no thanks to the buyer, put the house back on the market, re-live the showings nightmare that has been the last year and hope for a non-FHA buyer; or concede another 8k to this buyer on top of the 40k discount from what we've put into it that he's already getting.
Cue the sleepless nights again.
We have one glimmer of hope with a proposal I came up with, that could help both parties... We'll drop the purchase price down if they let us remain in the house for 10 weeks after settlement, which would allow us to put in an offer free of contingencies and hopefully get a better price on our new home. Not to mention we could move at our own pace after we settle, with the least amount of disruption to our children, dogs, and our lives.
Our lives. When we packed up most of our clutter into a POD a year ago this week, we figured it would only be temporary. We were so eager to get our house on the market thinking it would sell instantly and we could be settled in time for our annual labor day picnic that we backed out of a camping trip with friends. All for what? We're still here. When our grill broke a month later we figured we'll hold off on buying a new one because rather than transport it we'll just get the new one at our new house. I've been craving a charred hot dog for months. We decided that rather than having a bbq for our friends and family we'd let the house show. I miss hosting terribly.
We basically put our whole lives on hold. Every weekend besides the two weeks after the little lobster roll was born there was at least one party coming through the house, so we spent countless hours cleaning, prepping, and staging. We did this to the detriment of our children - throwing barney on while we rushed around the house, rushing them out the door to sit in the car with the dogs instead of going to the please touch museum, and having them eat meals in the car in the pool parking lot near our house, watching and waiting for the parties to show up and leave.
I'm sick of it. Thankfully, we haven't had any showings in the last month because of the accepted offer, we just had the inspection, appraiser, and electrical repairmen to deal with. And we slowly are getting our lives back. We took a random trip to the Brandywine Zoo two weeks ago, and the kids loved it. Hubs and I did some food and wining this past weekend and had a blast. Hoping to make it to the aquarium for fathers' day. We're still filling in at least one day every week with packing and looking at houses, but I'm done being "too busy" to do fun stuff with the kids.
We're hoping and praying that the buyer accepts the proposal we set forth to him, because it would be worth the additional 8k to us to be able to enjoy this summer with our kids - camping, beaching, adventuring, with packing and moving being a side project. It's time to take our lives off hold, and even if that means having a grill to transport, we're going to buy a new one now, and use it all summer.
I am ready to start spending my free days like this:
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| Ready for a day at the zoo! Or, like an hour! |
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| Oh HIII Goat! |
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| I love all of you goats! You can't hide from me! |
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| Here goats - eat the hay! |
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| I am the goat whisperer |
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| Daddy look at the river! And this random kid who wants to hang out with us! |
Good for you. If Ive learned anything from chaos, it does all seem to work out in the end...now that said I dont have a house, dogs, and babies....also looking forward to you hosting again!
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