Pack It Up & Move It Out

I last left you on Day 1 of packing and it was quite the week.

So as not to bore you with dinky details, I'll just tell ya about the important parts. After all, this is one of those posts that's more for me and my memory than for you.

• I had grand plans of packing up carefully, going through and purging things as I went because we were losing 300 square feet of space. I also wasn't going to stress out about it and would work that way as long as I could, and then resort to throwing things where they fit.
• I had a hard time figuring out what to pack because movers weren't coming for a full week. I didn't want to crowd the apartment with boxes making moving furniture in difficult.
• I worked evenings and late nights packing up the boxes we had, taking them to the apartment, unpacking what I could, bringing the boxes back to the house, and repacking. I moved the kitchen first as it could be put away at the new apartment.
• If you put the seats down in the cube, you can fit lots of stuff in there.
• Thursday came and I was completely overwhelmed. Jim had been unable to help with packing and fully handling Jacob (more on that tomorrow). I wanted to just sit and cry multiple times, but there was no time for that.
• The movers that were a gift to us from my Father in Law were AWESOME. They came in, took anything apart that needed to be, saran wrapped and blanketed everything, moved it out, and took it to the apartment. They unloaded it, put it where I wanted it, and put beds and such back together. They came at 9 that morning and were completely done before lunch.
• The rest of the day I was just taking things over by the Cube. We ended up using my Father in Law's truck to move as I was running out of time.
• At 3:45, we went to sign over the keys. We asked, and were given, an extra couple of hours because I still had an entire garage and driveway of things to move. I am not exaggerating. 5 truck loads to go and the house wasn't even technically mine anymore. 
• We pulled away with the last load at 6 pm. There was no time to be "bye first house" and emotional. 
• We left a lot of things there that we had intended to take and sell (microwave, grill, a couple of pieces of furniture).

Getting to the apartment Thursday was the biggest relief that we had made it and also the biggest stress because I had so much to unpack and finish going through to decide what was making the cut. In our time crunch, we literally crammed things in available garages (my Mom and in-laws are awesome).

At this point, I still need to go clean out our storage unit, get the things from my Mom's and in-law's garages, and take everything to storage or Goodwill, accordingly.

Packing Day 1

Packing has officially begun. We got word yesterday that the buyers are asking for no repairs on the home and that the inspection went well. The other kickers was that they wanted to move the closing and move out date up even further. We now have less than one week to pack and move.

Yesterday, my sweet friend Melissa (and Skylar) watched Jacob while I went to sign the lease on the apartment and they graciously let me bring the keys and lease home so that Jim could sign it upon returning from out of town. We dropped it in the box this morning. Now, once electricity gets transferred to our name, moving will officially begin.

All For Nothing

Yesterday, I left my house at 8 am and drove to my in-laws with my dogs, husband, and kid in tow. He unlocked the door and made sure the alarm wasn't armed (it wasn't) and then we dropped him off at his office. About 200 yards down the road, he calls me and says "keys." We made a U turn and headed back to the entrance to get his set of keys so I could get back into his parents' house.

I made a stop at McDonald's for a large coke and then we dropped of Jim's cleaning. I dropped my dogs off in the backyard, got Jacob out of the car, changed his diaper and laid him down for his morning nap. I went to move my dogs from one side of the yard to the other only to discover that Josie had squeezed through the gate to a busy street (the reason I was moving them from that portion of the yard). In a panic of coaxing and reaching, I was finally able to barely reach her and drag her back through the gate. I'll have you know that the gate was automatic and the only openers are in my in-laws' vehicles, so that's why I didn't just open the gate.

After a high stress morning of barking dogs and a non-napping kid, I got in my car a little bit early, chancing that driving around would be better okay for 20 minutes. I drove by my house 45 minutes before I was allowed to and saw that no one was there. I let the dogs in and brought Jacob in to change clothes and diaper. The house was oddly exactly the way I left it. Either the home inspector and family were awesome at putting things back JUST the way they are or...

THEY DIDN'T COME. They rescheduled it for today and told no one. So, that's my house selling complaint in a blog post. It actually isn't that bad. It was just a stressful situation and it wasn't even necessary. If you ever buy a house, be considerate of the people living in it.

Blog Maintenance + House Selling Update

I just completed some blog maintenance. Does anyone else get overwhelmed with the whole labeling and tagging posts in categories? I'm afraid I won't always write fitting in those categories and then I'll have so many specific categories that it's overwhelming to look at. So, I edited some down  (made them less specific) and took some out completely. Since I've committed to making the blog more personal and less project-y, I took my Project Life posts down. No one looks at those for inspiration for Project Life.

Today is day 6 of the 10 day option period in the house selling saga. We will have an appraisal and inspection done this week and negotiate getting any necessary repairs done. If all goes well with that, we'll pay our official deposits for our apartment on Monday and moving day is April 4th! I have the incredible urge to pack (and will start boxing up non-daily needed things this week) but don't want to get too ahead of myself just in case something happens with the deal.

I think I'll be having an impromptu garage sale to sell some things we won't need (lawn equipment) or that we won't have room for (wardrobe, office/craft comes to mind) so that I can raise some money to buy a VACUUM. Yes, we'll now have carpet so I need a good pet hair vacuum to keep things clean.

20 Days

I honestly flat ran out of time to blog yesterday. The last 36 hours have been a whirlwind of activity and once I finally had everything done that had to be done last night, I was out.

For the sake of coherence, I'll back up to Sunday. We got a call at noon from our realtor that someone wanted to look at the house that afternoon. That night, he texted us and said the same buyer wanted to come back first thing Monday morning. Great news!

They made us an offer around 5 Monday afternoon and it wasn't great. We talked it over and with help from our realtor, made a counter offer. I went to Bible Study and got a text from Jim that they had countered and we'd discuss it once I got home. Our leader was closing out the study time with a prayer and when I opened up my eyes, I had this message:

Greater news! So, while it isn't done until it's done, it's a little crazy because they want to close on April 8th. That gives us 20 days to find an apartment and move. To complicate things a bit more, they have the 10 day option period to get the house inspected and can back out at anytime. We don't want to wait until March 30 to see if everything goes through, but we also don't want to jump all in and then something happen and we end up not actually selling to this buyer.

I spent yesterday making cookies for a church function, calling around for available apartments and prices, signing papers to officially enter into contract, teaching two dance classes, letting Jacob nap, preparing for another home showing this morning, touring an apartment that may be "the one" and watching my siblings in between. Exhausted, but in a good way.

Today, we had another house showing, (and I totally missed the memo that you show your house even under contract- so I made a huge mess making those cookies and then paid for it later) are touring two more apartments, turning in applications, keeping the siblings, going to church and doing the homeschool thing with Alijah!

Selling Our House : Day 1

Our house went on the MLS listing service yesterday morning. We still had a lot of things to do to get it ready to show but we're hopeful that we could get it done by Thursday. That project list includes:

• We've got a few more things to haul off- dog house to my Mom, chairs to my in-laws, and old fence to the dump.
• We've got to the garage cleaned out.
• We've got to touch up paint in Jacob's room, our room, the living room, the bathroom and kitchen.
• We need to get a kick plate for the bottom of Jacob's door.
• The Hall closet needs cleaned out
• The bathroom needs recaulked (and I stink at it!), the sink stopper needs fixing, and the toilet runs. Oh, and the lightbulbs need to be the kind that match when they're exposed.
• The sunroom needs to be packed up. Lots of unnecessary things in there.
• The hot water needs fixing in the kitchen and some holes patched up.

We signed the papers Monday and our realtor said he'd be by on Tuesday to put up the lock box and put the sign in the yard. Imagine my surprise when I got a call that an agent wanted to show our house at 3. It was 1:30. I was leaving in 10 minutes to go get Jim from work so he could watch Jacob so I could teach my dance class.

I called Jim to see if he was up for the list of things that had to be done before the house could be shown. Not only did we have all of the above projects, but the house was "lived in" a mess. Dishes needed to be done, I was washing bed linens, I think Jacob had played with EVERY toy in his room, and I needed to sweep. 

I did everything I could and headed to get Jim. My thinking was that I'd come in for as long as I could to help get things ready. We drove up in our driveway, and Jim said, "so you want to get Jacob out for like 5 minutes and then put him back in his car seat?" Yeah, that didn't make much sense. We drove to church (about 5 minutes away) to drop me off for dance class and I realized that I had planned on going in and so I hadn't brought ANY of my dance stuff. Back to the house, I ran in and got my stuff, and went back to church. That was 2:10. Poor Jim had been having a rough day at work and I totally unloaded a list of things to get done in less than an hour and he had to do it all while watching Jacob.

2:20 comes and no one is at dance class. I ran up to the office to see if there were any notes or anything for me. I stayed until 2:30 and texted the girls' moms. Turns out that due to a fever and car trouble, no one was coming. So, I sat and talked to a friend while Jim slaved away at home. He showed up at 3 with the dogs, Jacob, a laundry basket of dirty dishes and another laundry basket of clutter that we don't really have a place for. 

We stayed gone for an hour. I came back and dropped the dogs off, went to get the kids from school. While I was at my evening dance class, Jim texted me and said that the people wanted to COME BACK AND SEE THE HOUSE AGAIN THAT NIGHT.

They ended up not coming back, but will be back, hopefully! They needed to get some things lined up before coming back. 

She Said Yes and Selling Houses

Yesterday, I posted a general life update. Some of the mundane things that were going on that aren't life changing, but hey- it's what we do here. We live ordinary lives trying to be a little bit unordinary doing it.

There are 3 other major updates though. In order of occurrence:

Number One: My little sister (who is 21) Emily got engaged just before Christmas! She has asked me to be her Matron of Honor and I'm very excited for her. Her fiancé's name is Albert.

The caption of this picture was "these are our excited faces!" So fun!

Number Two: That weekend, my little brother (who is 25) James popped the question to his girlfriend, Alexis, on the ranch where he worked.

It was so cold there (so I'm told and one can see that in the way that they're dressed).

And finally, Number Three: We've decided to try and sell our house. We don't have to, but for some personal-ish reasons that I won't be going into on the blog (privacy, ya know?) we're just going to see what happens. If it sells and we don't owe anyone money after it, wooho! If we can't get what we need we'll stay right where we are for the time being (or forever- whichever we're supposed to do!) We met with our realtor on Tuesday and we have a pile of paperwork to sort through and go over as well as some projects that need to be done. Of course, I'll keep you up to date.