We Moved!!

I've been absent from the online world and out of touch with anything news related for pretty much the last week as we finally closed on our new house last Tuesday! It was a rough road with more downs than ups, but everything finally went through and we are homeowners. The closing process went surprisingly smooth and we were in and out in an hour. My always helpful brother in law met us at our new house with the truck of all our stuff (prepacked on Monday) and the unloading began. I can't believe how much stuff we have. We were so blessed at our wedding shower last year to receive so many nice things and we didn't really open anything because we wanted to save it for our new house- we just didn't think it would take a year to get! So it was like Christmas as I unloaded all kinds of new treasures. There was a lot of work involved in the last week and more to come, but we are living in our home and I love it. I still sit there like "is this really mine?!" It hasn't sunk in yet- and I think it will take some time- and furniture, but I'm so glad  everything is done. It's safe to say we won't be moving for MANY, many years! Pictures to follow- as soon as I unpack my camera!

Movin' On Up

Well, down rather. This past weekend we moved out of our 3rd floor condo. Oy. To be truthful, it went MUCH smoother than I anticipated, thanks to my take charge brother in law. After spending the week packing numerous bins and boxes (where did all this stuff fit?!?!) I was sure I was in for a horrible moving experience. To say I was freaking out was a small understatement. I never moved a full house before- only moved some stuff to my husbands from my moms so I had no idea what to expect. My husband threw out his back a few weeks ago and has been sick for the last couple weeks as well- perfect timing. We didn't have as much help as we imagined because of changes in work schedules and the fact that I didn't want to use all my resources this time as hopefully we'll be moving again soon when everything for "our" house goes through. And of course, the weather was calling for rain Saturday morning after days of nothing. But, everything worked out great and after starting at 10am the majority of our things were out by 1:30! So for now we have stuff everywhere-my moms, his moms and a storage facility. Sunday we went back to finish taking everything, clean and fill a few nail holes in the walls. That part of the process took longer than the move, but at 8:30 that night, we opened a bottle of champagne and made a toast to the memories we had there and to looking forward to the future. I'm not going to lie, I cried. I may have only lived there a year, but we started dating 2007 so I spent plenty of time there over the years. It's so nice to be out of there, but it's still a little hard. And now, we close on the sale of the place tomorrow!! I'm going to be so excited to have that done with. What a huge weight lifted! Here's hoping everything goes just fine!

Goodbye condo!! Thanks for the memories!!!

On the Hunt

One of the biggest things going on in our lives right now is house hunting. My husband and I will be married for a year on the 26th, and to be truthful I never thought we'd still be without our first home. After marriage I moved into his condo that he's had for five years. It's perfectly nice and I'm grateful we had a place to call home- but we both knew we wanted to get out soon. And- it's full of boy stuff. Because I didn't think we'd be there forever, I never really added much of my own taste to the place. Don't get me wrong, I've introduced Yankee Candles, vases full of flowers and picture frames to the home, but nothing extreme. We have plain white walls as we repainted right before I moved in. It went from this:

See boy stuff. To this:

(Please excuse the mess and the fact that I forgot to cut my head out!)

To say I married a sports fan is an understatement. Now, many will think that I made him remove these things since I was moving in- this is not true. The decision was made solely to make sure all the holes (and there were a ton) were covered so we can paint before putting the place on the market. The condo went on the market in November and after a very slow few months, we're hopefully closing on the sale very soon. In fact we're moving out this weekend to go home. That was a whole other life lesson- buying a house is not easy. We're on house #3 since March, but we're confident this one will go through. The first house we put an offer on in March was a short sale and fell through after 5 months of waiting. Not something I ever want to deal with again if I can help it. House #2 we found and put an offer on the weekend after the first house fell through. After 2 weeks of back and forth with a previous contract they promised would be terminated, they chose to cancel our contract instead and try to move forward with the other buyer even after a host of problems. House #3 we found the next day (apparently we are good at finding houses and agreeing) and we're in the midst of waiting for the appraisal. So we're hoping the third times a charm! Fingers crossed!!! Even though it's been a rough road, we're excited to have our first home on or around our first anniversary!