Putting our house on the market has been "the talk" for SEVERAL years now. We were just saving money and waiting for the right time. For a long time we weren't sure where we wanted to go, so that was the hold up. We talked about moving far away and starting over... far like Texas. Then we seriously considered moving to Florida, but nothing just "felt right". We prayed and prayed and prayed for a peace about what to do. Eventually we felt like staying in our home town was what we needed to do... we love our school system and it is nice knowing most everyone around you. Our plan has been to buy land and build a house. I have been studying house plans for a LONG, LONG time.... drawn some out, printed them out and changed them, pinteresting ideas, etc.
Some of you do not know, but we bought my moms house from her and her rentals before she passed. After she passed, my brother lived in it until he got his nursing degree and then he moved to Gulf Shores. He lived in it, but didn't mess with any of her things. Pretty much everything was still just as she left it. We never rented it out after he moved out for a couple reasons... (1) Never was ready to go through her things and (2) we always knew if we sold our house we would move in her house while we built.
So the story starts.....
We listed our house the end of February and closed on it the end of July.
We took some fun photos and boomerang videos a couple weeks before we closed so that I would have them in case I forgot to take them amongst all the moving chaos..
This was the house that we made our home. We knew from the beginning that it wouldn't be our "forever" home, but we also didn't plan on living there 15 years. We were very comfortable and that made leaving harder to do.
This was where we brought all of our babies home from the hospital to, it was the place that we got to watch them learn how to do sooo many firsts, numerous birthday parties, Christmas', the last house that I would be able to picture Mom driving up the driveway each day after work to visit, freeze tag games in the front yard, LOTS of night time hiding go seek outside when Papa & Nana were over..... just a lot of memories are instilled in our hearts from Pearl Drive.
When we listed our house, we had no idea what all was about to transpire.
We thought... OK.... we have been saving, let's list our house and find some land and build. It's now or never. We put our house on the market only a couple weeks before a world wide pandemic hit.
Here is a timeline of our life since we listed our house:
FEBRUARY 26 - put the for sale sign in our yard.
MARCH - had 2 potential buyers, but it didn't work out.
End of MARCH - Covid 19 starts while Kyle is at work & it was a struggle to get him out of Africa and back in America.
APRIL - Kyle got home the middle of the month & on April 19th a tornado came through our small town. Tore down some trees at our house, the fence, and messed the roof up pretty bad. (That's a great selling point right? Tornado damage...)
MAY 14 - my brothers birthday & unfortunately the day Kyle got the dreadful phone call that due to Covid they are having to lay off several employees. It hit us slap in the face. Put a HUGE kink in life. Thankfully, he has been doing construction ever since and we haven't had to worry one bit how to pay for this or that. God always provides :).
First of JUNE - We got a contract on our house.
JUNE - JULY - We got a new roof and we cleaned out Moms house so that we could move in. Thankfully our buyer had some things going on so that gave us more time to get Moms cleaned out and didn't feel so rushed. When I say it was hard cleaning out her house, I mean it was HARD. Each and everything has so much meaning. The dry erase board that we last wrote the date on for her was still the exact same, her coats still hanging where she put them (BTW I still have them hanging there), still had the clothes hanging up where we were trying to decide what to bury her in, her purse was left the exact same.... nothing inside messed with, her last hospital bag still packed, etc.
End of JULY - We closed on our house. It was a happy and sad day.
This is a picture of us after closing..... smiling on the outside, crying on the inside.
Leading up to the closing we started thinking about all of our "lasts" on Pearl Drive. We always played out side from sun up to sun down. We loved all of the concrete to play basketball on, 4 square, bike rides, scooters, the golf cart, took the dogs for many walks around the block, played numerous games of tag and baseball in the front yard..... memories begin flooding your brain when you know you are about to have no choice but to hang on to them.
So we started relishing each one..... one of my favorite places to sit at that house was on the side steps so that I could watch the kids play pretty much wherever they were in the yard.
Right here like this:
We soaked up our last night sleeping in that house..... the last night we all could snuggle in this bed in this house......
Here is a video of us playing freeze tag for the last time there.....
And you'll never guess what was hiding in all of those boxes 😂😂.....
Things were going smoothly with the move. Kyle would work all day and while he was at work, the kids and I would load up my car with all that we could that we weren't currently using and was able to pretty much put that load where it belonged at Moms instead of just stacking boxes everywhere.
Then all of a sudden things got put into fast motion and we had to move things pretty quickly. My Dad was gone to work, but thankfully we had Kyle's mom and step dad, Yana, and The Messer's to help us. And Kyle's buddy Chris insisted on helping him empty the shops out...... that was a huge help. Kyle would still work all day, so we would box up things and load the trailer and when he got off we would bring a load down. At one point Uncle Sonny just took his trailer, got Karter and they loaded up anything that they could outside and brought it down.
Thankfully the Messer's even fed us supper a couple nights.... that took a huge load off. And bless it.... Kyle's Mom was really sick.... she had shingles and colitis and Yana was in a boot. But we still got it done😁. It got to the point where we just had to bring loads and start stacking boxes in the house. There were boxes EVERYWHERE!!!!
We went from a 4 bedroom 3 bath house to a 3 bedroom (but 1 room we have made a "community closet"... so basically 2 bedrooms) 1 bath house. For 5 people. It has been quite the challenge.
Going to share some random pictures of things from that week.....
I love this picture of Meme and Karter going through his baseball cards.....
I thought this was brilliant of how Karter got his legos up.... scooped them into this can and then dumped them into the storage bin....
Here's just some fun videos from that week.....
Our empty Pearl Drive house.....
Here's Moms little house we moved into.... I plan to repaint the shutters and fix it up a little bit.... depending on how long we're going to be here.
And I know the wreath isn't centered. I keep forgetting to adjust it. We just slapped that one up there during the move to have something on the door.
And I must say that when we were finally able to grill for the first time and actually cook a meal in the kitchen was such a good feeling.
God knew the time line of our events long before we did. He knew that when we listed the house that Kyle would lose his job 2 months later. He knew that with him losing his job we didn't need a mortgage payment. He sent the right buyer at the right time that gave me time to go through Moms things and not feel rushed. I never felt rushed until the week we were actually having to move. Then it got hectic.
I am a BIG planner.... always have been. When my plan gets messed up, it is HARD for me to adjust to the new plan. That is just how I have always been wired and not knowing our next step is very hard for me. I don't know how long we'll be here and honestly, I am trying to be okay with that.
His plan is far greater than any plan I could ever have had for us. We just have to trust Him!
