Light at the end of the tunnel

I'm sorry to keep everyone in the dark for so long but there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. It's been a hectic couple of weeks but in the end, it all worked out.

The offer that we received on our house that was a complete joke was just a starting point. I should have known that in this market there would be a lowball offer but I was in a very negative state of mind. I assumed that we would be stuck with our house for the rest of our lives!! Well, we lowered our asking price by $1000 and they accepted our counteroffer. They wanted a quick closing and we were happy to oblige. The closing date was set for 10/20 (today) but was later changed to 10/17 so that they could close before the weekend. We were excited beyond belief but not yet ready to pop the champagne. Many things could go wrong in the interim.

While jumping through thousands of real estate hoops while getting ready for closing, Jon and I were trying to find a new home for the 4 of us and Smokey! It is important to mention Smokey in the equation because I had forgotten how difficult it was to find a rental where they allow cats. We also (as I mentioned previously) are not really excited to deal with the "shopping" process. We had an appointment to see an apartment shortly after my last posting. I wanted to avoid putting everything in one potential place that we hadn't seen yet but I was excited. The location was excellent and the listed amenities were right up our alley. The description is "Country setting. Large yard. 2 family home only five years old. Main floor has a kitchen, dining room, family rm. and a half bath,Washer/dryer hookups. Second floor has 2 large bedrooms a den and a full bath with double sinks." Sounds great, right? Yeah but we needed to wait a few more days before we could see it. I scheduled appointments to see two other places. The first place had more stairs than I ever could imagine. It was quite pricey for a 2nd floor and attic apartment. No thanks! The next place was $100 more than the one I was waiting to see but it was a full house and had a basement and garage. I was willing to see what they had to offer. We didn't even make it that far. We finally got to see the one I had been waiting for. It was pretty much love at first sight. Of course there are things that you'd wish it had but overall it was perfect. Jon and I talked it over for a while but we were sold. We agreed to sign a 1-year lease and the rest is history.

We agreed to take possession on 10/15 which unfortunately was a Wednesday. It isn't very easy to move in the middle of the week. The landlord agreed to let us move some things in before the 15th. I took off from work on Monday the 13th. My mom and Taryn wanted to get haircuts so I spent the day with the kids. Jon also took off from work and we decided to get a truck and load stuff in to the house. Thanks to Taryn helping with the truck and mom watching the kids (after the hair appointment), we were able to empty our storage unit! Unfortunately the apartment did not have electricity turned on so we finished unloading the truck in the dark. I don't recommend moving from a dark truck to a dark house after sunset in October! It got chilly and we had no clue where we were putting things. We literally dropped things everywhere just to get it inside. Tuesday, the 14th, came too quickly. I was exhausted from moving but at least we were making progress. The storage unit was empty! The electric company was turning on our lights and I had scheduled the gas service and the cable. We were getting there!

After a hectic week of trying to get things set for the move, we were also dealing with the closing on the house. The closing had been changed from Monday to Friday (the 17th) and there was a never ending chain of emails from the realtor with forms that needed signatures. Fortunately my step-father has a scanner at home so we were able to sign each form, scan it and email it back to the realtor pretty quickly. It is not easy to close on the sale of a property from 2000 miles away but we had to get it done. There was a lot of insanity that I will spare you. To put it mildly, I was very close to being committed to a mental hospital. Speed ahead to Friday (closing date), I was starting to think that we might make it through the process. Is it ever that easy? Nope, I needed some additional torture. I received a call from the closing agent an hour before closing to say "Hi Lisa, I received the FedEx package with all of the documents, thank you very much. So, did you confirm the wire?" I was dumbfounded for a few moments and managed to squeek out "what wire?" Oh, apparently there was a balance to close escrow. We needed to bring money to closing of which NO ONE had informed us!! After a pretty major meltdown on my part, I needed to scramble. I'll save the details but we were able to wait until today to close escrow and I was able to borrow the money we needed for little while. So.... it looks like we are free at last!! I kept saying that we had signed our life away and now we're signing it back.

This is the beginning! This is a new start for Jon, Lisa, Aidan, Amanda and, of course, Smokey. Jon and I finished moving most things out of my parents house yesterday(Thank you Mom and Oscar!!!) We were able to sleep at our new house last night. It has been an incredibly long path but now the future is starting to look bright again.

Aidan and Amanda love their new house. We all slept there on Saturday night to try to acclimate the kids to their new room. They transitioned well to my moms house so I was hoping it would be the same in our new house. Not very easy. They were super excited to sleep in the new house. They wanted to go to bed an hour early. I was happy to oblige since I was quite busy. We bought the kids mattresses and boxsprings (instead of toddler beds or something designed for kids). They've never slept in their own "real" beds. We didn't get frames to keep them relatively close to the floor in case they rolled. At mom's house, they have a trundle bed which means that they are next to each other. If Amanda rolls out of bed, she lands on Aidan (or his bed). If Aidan rolls, he has the trundle bed drawer front to keep him from dropping to the floor. They both roll around a bit but I haven't witnessed anything dangerous. Their new beds are on opposite walls. I bought all the linens they needed and new pillows. Pillows are a bit more difficult than I imagined. The kids didn't have pillows in Colorado. Babies in cribs usually don't use pillows. When we moved, my mom had pillows on the bed. There was no transition issue. Unfortunately, new pillows are more fluffy than the pillows that my mom had. I spent hours trying to comfort the kids in their new room. Since we had just moved in, there weren't any window coverings. I didn't make a big deal of it because I figured, hey, it's dark, they'll just wake up before the sun comes up (like usual). I didn't think about the headlights from the road which cast weird tree shadows on their wall. I got a nightlight and covered the window with a blanket. Then the pillows were too fluffy and too big for their heads. I rolled up towels to substitute. Then they were thirsty. It was one thing after another until they finally passed out at around 12:30. They did manage to sleep through the rest of the night and they were very happy when they woke up in the morning. It was hard to convince them that they slept in their new house one night and they were going to grandma's the next. It made the most sense. Jon and I were able to get some sleep and get up for work without extra hassel. Mom was watching the kids today anyway so it saved us a stop. Tonight will be interesting. They have school tomorrow so we have to be up and out very early. I'll try to update again soon with pictures...

Thank you for all of your good thoughts! It must have worked!