End of an Era

This is mainly some pictures of our last few days in our house...

 

Girlies playing outside.  We were too busy to take them swimming during the many, many inspections and packing up so the girls took matters into their own hands.

Grandma Tietjen wasn't too happy when we sent her a picture of an afghan that someone else had made for us, instead of the one she made for Ginger.  When she came to visit us in the Spring we weren't able to find it either.  When Grandma got home from her travels she sent us a picture of Ginger's and when we were packing up we found it!

Ginger was so happy to have her "true" blankey from Grandma Tietjen.  All these years we were thinking it was a different one and when Ginger found out it wasn't the right one she wasn't very happy with me either.

As part of my goal to be a fun mom this year I decided to try decorating for every holiday.  I didn't get very far.  We put this up in the middle of January and forgot to take it home while selling our home.  In fact we just left it up for the new owners.  Sadly, we drove by and they had gotten rid of it:-(

The girls were awesome at packing up the house.  Actually our whole family was troopers!  We went from not having a single box packed to having our whole house packed and moved into storage and our rental within 4 days.  It was crazy but I am super proud of our hard workers!

When we were cleaning out the attic we found a box of little boy clothes.  We had put 6 big plastic tubs filled of our boys' old clothes in the attic when we moved in 7 years before and totally had forgotten about them.  I guess it's a good thing we never needed them.

I made the boys hold them up so I could take their picture.  They have grown just a wee little bit:)  I know they think it is strange but here's the thing: I can still picture them exactly how they looked like little babies.  Lots of sad tears for me:(

 Then they tried to put them on and that was just hilarious!

Goodbye House! 



I never shed any tears over moving or selling our house.  I know it is a shocker to all of our friends and family.  Everyone keeps asking us if we miss our yard or our pretty house and I don't.  I bawled like a baby when the moving truck pulled away from our house in Utah.  But I will not miss this home.  It was beautiful and we made a lot of memories here, but it also caused us a lot of frustration and wasted time.  It simply did not function well for how our family lives and what we need.  I think I was afraid to admit that for a long time because it was large and beautiful and our children (and everyone else's children) absolutely loved the backyard.

I should probably write down the whole story of leaving this home:
We tried to sell our home two previous times and Ken was really not in the mood to list our home again.  We have been constantly looking at homes in the area, although this was the first time when we knew that if we sold our house that we would stay local.  All the other times we had thought of moving out of state.  We went to the temple to pray about because Ken really did not want to sell our home and we both felt a confirmation that we should list our house for sale.  BTW- this was 3 days before we left to go on vacation for a month in Cancun.  It was also when a family with 10 kids was visiting from out of state and staying in our house for  a week.  It was beyond chaotic!  We worked as hard as we could but it wouldn't have been able to happen with out our good friend Melanie Morgan coming and helping me deep-clean our kitchen and house and another awesome friend Erin Belanger taking care of getting people in to clean our carpets and wash our windows.  She basically sat at my house a whole entire day while we were at the beach.  Talk about feeling major guilt!

We had other friends' step in with their teenagers to keep the house clean and mow our lawn and weed while we were gone.  Thankfully all this time and effort worked and we had a written offer on our house 2 days before we came home from Mexico!  It felt like a miracle and an answer to many, many prayers (some soft spoken throughout the years and others almost cursed:(

We didn't really hold our breath that this was happening when we got home and we continued to play around with our kids as much as we could.  Our buyer extended their option period for backing out and having inspections so we were really thinking it may not happen, we didn't even look for a place to live or another home to buy.  The buyer had three inspections and had wanted a 4th, it was ridiculous!  By the time the option period expired the buyer notified us three days later that they could close at any time and in fact they wanted us to close before the weekend.  Our scheduled closing still wasn't for another 12 days.  The bonus was that we didn't have to clean a single thing in the home (which we didn't, we had no time at all).

We got to work in a hurry and signed a contract to build a house on a large, beautiful lot by an elementary school in our ward boundaries.  Then we worked to get a rental in the elementary school boundaries so that the girls could start school there in a week instead of having to move halfway through the year.  We had 2 homes to choose from and both of them were asking for a 12 month lease, there are no apartments or townhomes in the school boundaries which is one reason I love the school.  We negotiated (ahem--BRIBED) the owners to only have a 6 month rental.  We said lots of prayers and even though our agent kept trying to tell us that it would be impossible to procure either of these homes, it worked!  It was such a blessing and just one of the many prayers that were answered during this crazy busy time!

We got the keys to our rental one week before school started and was able to move in during the next two days and close early on our old house the 3rd day.  It was a whirlwind.  Oh, and did I mention that Ken and Nathan went on a campout with the scouts that 3rd day!  Pure craziness, but at the same time it feels like we have been so blessed by our Heavenly Father that how could we not do our callings to the best of our ability during this time???

We had a number of young men help us move over those two days and they did a fantastic job.  They worked super hard.  Ken was a little suspicious of hiring Deacon's to help out but they did a great job, in fact it was the priests who had signed up that forgot.  The last night was a little hard but our home teacher and Brother Larsen helped us out a ton!  Especially Brother Larsen!  Later when we were talking to our boys they were so thankful for him because he came through when they didn't want to go any further. It was a good experience for our family and I think the YM were happy to earn money for all of their activities.  We had lots of friends bring our family meals and help clean.  I don't think someone else's food has ever tasted that yummy to us!  Since we only got the keys to the rental hours before moving in we had no electric or gas in the house.  The electric was turned on that first day but the gas took 5 days.

We feel very grateful that we were able to sell our home so quickly and move.  It has been busy but a great transition for our family!