The Story of Our New House and Moving

Hey friends!

So, July has been a whirlwind.  Life just never seems to slow down much for us, does it?

We accepted an offer on our house in mid-June... can't remember if I already shared that here?  We are currently set to close next week and it's looking (at this point) like that will probably happen on schedule.

You all know that we were trying to relocate closer to the place where M teaches-- the girls have been attending school in his district this year.  If we were going to move that direction, we decided, we didn't want to just get closer-- we really wanted to get *in town* so we could use the bus system for the girls and have all the perks of living in the same town as school.  And a five-minute commute for M was certainly appealing after the amount of driving he had to do this year, with kids in tow.

Back in May I had reached out to a realtor friend in town.  (She is actually the Mom of L's BFF from school and they have had a couple of playdates this year!)  At that point, the idea of renting rather than buying was feeling right to both me and M, for various reasons.  We felt overwhelmed at the prospect of buying and selling at the same time.  We didn't want to make a hasty decision or "settle" for a place that wasn't exactly what we wanted, because of being crunched for time.  At times, we were still conflicted about whether we did want to make a permanent move to this new town-- we LOVE the community and the school district and everything about this place, but property is SO expensive.  We are selling at a great time and making a decent profit on our current house, but that also means that it's not a great time to jump into a more expensive housing market, because prices are the highest they've been in a while.

Anyway, it seemed providential that our realtor friend happened to know of a rental house that was coming available and hadn't even been publicly advertised yet.  She offered to show it to me and I jumped at the opportunity, knowing that rentals hardly ever come available in this town, and single-family homes for rent even less often.

We fell in love with the place, despite the fact that it's nearly 500 square feet smaller than our current home.  It's cute, charming, the yard is beautiful, and the neighborhood even better.  We hardly ever see a car go by, we're right on the bike path that goes to all the beautiful historical places surrounding us-- Lexington, Concord, etc., and we're minutes away from so many stores we didn't have before (Whole Foods and L.L. Bean have been my favorites so far!).  Add to that that a new teaching gig that pays really well and is 20 minutes from our new place just fell into my lap, as well as a new singing opportunity 15 minutes away, and we decided it was meant to be!

So... the moving story.  My parents joined us for a 4th of July celebration, and then the next day (Friday the 5th) we picked up the UHaul and moved to the new place!

Last fire in the fire pit at the old house...

Our brother-in-law Adam (who, incidentally, is acting as our realtor to help us sell our house, and has been amazing and soooo helpful) stopped by Friday morning to help us move some of the heaviest things.  M and I spent the rest of the morning loading up the truck together.

As we were loading, we kept being surprised and pleased by how easily all of our things fit in the truck.  M had rented the largest possible truck because it was the same price as the next size down, but we definitely could have gotten by with a smaller truck.  This was a good feeling for both of us because we have done a lot of purging over the years since our last move, particularly in the last six months or so.  The last time we moved we had 4-5 people helping us load *and* unload, and it still felt like an endless day and tons of work and sweat for everyone.  This time, M and I were able to move everything ourselves, with the exception of those few things Adam helped us move.  And he wasn't even there to help us unload-- we were able to carry everything out of the truck and into the new house ourselves.

I should add three things that I think also helped:

1) The kids were totally out of the way.  My parents were amazing helping out with them.  The day we had the UHaul they took the girls to our local splash park in the morning, and then visited with some family friends in the afternoon for a pool party and pizza.  It was so, so helpful to have a clear space for moving things on both ends, and we knew the girls were having a blast while we were doing it.  Win-win.

2) We had a more flexible timeline for our move this time... we didn't absolutely have to get *every last thing* in one day.  So we took about 80% of our stuff in the UHaul the first day, and then we took three more carloads of stuff the next day while Grandma and Grandpa were still around and could offer their van.  I also had pretty much everything in the house except for our clothes and a few bathroom and kitchen essentials packed before we even put our house on the market, so we didn't have to use much time for packing during the actual move.

3) I am much stronger and have more endurance, thanks to Fitness Blender!  Only when we were moving our couch into the new house, which was almost the last thing we moved in, did I start to feel pretty fatigued and had to take a lot of rests.  I'm still not as much of a beast as M, naturally, but I did pretty well, I think.

After getting loaded up we took the slightly scary drive down Rt. 2 to the new place:

Those big tall trucks just feel sooooo wobbly.  It feels like you're going to tip over every time you drive around a curve.  We also had some interesting times trying to back it out of driveways too because it's just so hard to see and that thing is so tall and long.

M had me google "bridge heights on Rt 2 Massachusetts" as we were driving.  Thankfully we cleared them all no problem.

Anyway, we did arrive safely, unclenched our butts, straightened our new gray hairs, and enjoyed being done with the drive to our new house!!!

That first day loading/unloading the UHaul we took about 24,000 steps, according to my iPhone!  So it was a lot of work, don't get me wrong... and we were tired and verrrrry hungry by the end of the day.  But we ordered some Chinese food for delivery so it was all good.  First meal in the new house!

We had the girls' beds set up before they even arrived home from their pizza party:

Obviously we didn't bother with bed frames... just camped out with our mattresses on the floor for the first few days.

We were able to just crash that night with Grandma and Grandpa in the new house.  We all slept pretty well!

M was up early the next day (Saturday) to drive the UHaul back out west and meet Adam for the appraisal which was scheduled for that morning (our buyers needed to go through this step for their FHA financing).  Grandma and Grandpa helped me unpack a few boxes at the new house (we were out of boxes to pack in at the old house) and then we met M at the old house later in the day with the girls. We all had our last meal at the old house:

We packed up a few more things and then loaded up the three more carloads of stuff I mentioned before, and headed back to the new house for good!

First dinner in the new house... ordered pizza again!

Grandma and Grandpa slept over one more night and helped us yet again the next morning, starting to get unpacked and organized.  They left around lunch time (Sunday) after lots of grateful hugs.

That's pretty much the story!  After that Sunday we had only three more days before departing for a trip to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary!  Can you believe it?!?!  I'm hoping to blog about that very soon because it was epic.  Epic is kind of an understatement, really.  Anyway, you'll want to stay tuned for that!

Have a great weekend, friends :)