It's been a whirlwind the last few weeks with getting the house ready to go on the market, the house going on the market, a house-hunting trip of our own, and more. Let's dive right in, shall we?
1. The house officially went up for sale two weeks ago, on Wednesday, April 25th. It had been cleaned out, fixed up, sufficiently de-personalized (😔), and I had to admit that it looked great. The photos turned out nicely, including some cool drone shots to show the land and surrounding area, but I was unhappy with the underwhelming listing description that our agent wrote, so I re-wrote it, but it took days to upload to Zillow, along with some changes to the photos, so for the first few crucial days our listing on Zillow didn't look good at all. The listing on MLS updated a lot faster and was good, but Zillow was a bit of a disaster that I hoped wouldn't turn out to be a bad omen.
There was an open house scheduled for Saturday the 28th. Nobody came. 😯😢 Bad omen indeed. Our agent blamed it on the beautiful weather that day. I blamed it partially on the crappy Zillow listing. Peter and I were concerned. We realized that just like our last experience with selling a house, this might be an uphill battle for the long-haul. But then...
The first showing was after the open house that day. It turned out to be our golden ticket. The couple had friends in the neighborhood and they wanted to move here. They have young kids. Our house was perfect for this situation. The next day they made a full-price offer on the house! We couldn't believe it! Of course we accepted it. What a great relief and a blessing to sell the house so quickly! (Take that, Zillow!)
2. We went on a house-hunting trip to Massachusetts from April 27th-30th. My mom took care of the boys while Peter and I went through around 20 houses over the course of two days. We settled on a few finalists, picked a favorite that was practically perfect in every way (to quote Mary Poppins), and we made an offer on it on Monday the 30th. Someone else had made an offer the night before but the owners of the house were waiting to hear from us. So we got into a little bidding war. Fun for them but not so much for us! Our agent recommended that we write a letter to sweeten up our offer, so--talk about pressure--I wrote one on my phone while waiting at the airport in Boston with my mom and the kids. The offer was submitted and then we had to make our best and final offer soon after that. We didn't hear anything back for hours and it was getting late into the evening, so I figured they'd gone with the other offer. I was so disappointed. But then...
Right before we boarded the plane in Chicago, as I was standing in line with the kids and my mom to get on the plane, the text arrived from our agent: "Congratulations!!! They accepted!" 😲😁😂 I couldn't believe it! Was this real? Did I need to pinch myself? We'd won! The house was going to be ours!!
In the course of a day, we'd sold our house for full-price and bought another one, the one that we liked best in the town that I liked the best (my hometown) for less than the asking price. I'm here to tell you that the blessings of paying tithing are genuinely real.
A side note: It turns out that our offer and the other one were extremely close. Their agent told our agent that the letter I wrote helped a lot (thanks to the terrific suggestion of our awesome agent) as well as the fact that I was from the town originally and we're a young family. It all worked in our favor, as well as the fact that there was an accepted offer on our house and so there was no contingency. Everything came together so well. I feel so thankful, and in addition to the blessings of tithing and of living the gospel, I believe that some of this good fortune may very well have come about from some angelic wrangling on our behalf.
If I'd been looking for a sign that moving was the right thing to do (because I've really struggled with the idea of moving for over a year now), I certainly received it.
3. Last Wednesday, May 2nd, I had surgery done on my right leg to treat some bothersome veins that cropped up during my last pregnancy. Everything went very well, other than at the beginning when both the nurse and then the anesthesiologist had trouble getting the IV in (because unlike my leg veins, my arm veins are small, but like my leg veins, they are uncooperative). I was fully sedated for about an hour during the surgery and am still amazed that meds can knock a person out so quickly and completely. Peter couldn't be home last week so my mom was here and she was a great help as I recovered and couldn't drive. My leg seems to be healing nicely, although right now my calf is bruised and ugly and kind of scary-looking. I have to wear a compression stocking over it which is not cool but with the way my leg looks right now, I'm thankful it's covered up!
4. This week I bought pool things for the first time in my life. The house we're buying has a heated in-ground pool, much to the boys' delight. Wanna see some pictures?
In the past I didn't want a pool because of upkeep and safety issues, but now that the boys are older and are both good swimmers, I can deal with it and hopefully even enjoy it.
5. We're moving next month. In less than six weeks. I can't even.
