90 days and a lifetime ago...

Wow, almost 90 days since my last post. So much has changed it seems like a lifetime ago. Tim and I went to our counselling and although it ended up only being 2 sessions, it was amazingly effective and enlightening. In the course of the last 3 months we decided to do a couple of major renovation projects on our house, the replacement windows and the deck. Then we talked about moving to a newer house a few miles away. We talked about moving to Raleigh. We had talked about Raleigh before and realized that if we ever planned to move "away", then this is the time. Abbie really wanted to finish elementary school with her friends, so we thought we should stay put and enjoy our recently completed renovations for one more year.

During the "to move or not to move" discussions, I had also realized that it made no sense to be so stressed about making the right or wrong decision. I stopped and gave it back to God. I prayed and asked God to open my eyes to His plan, and help me to see the path He layed out for us. Once I did that, nearly immediately, our whole world changed.

A day or two after we decided not to sell, I emailed our realtor and asked if she would keep us in mind should she come across a buyer that was not finding what they were looking for and she thought our house may be perfect for them. Her response was, "Well, actually, since you mention it..." I did not respond to her right away. Iwanted to talk to Tim about it first and see if he was interested in going ahead and letting this couple see the house. Before I even mentioned it to him, I got an email from a lady through Zillow.com. I had posted our house with a "make me move" price and she wanted to find out if we were serious about selling. After hearing the story of these 2 couples, I realized it was the same couple. They came to see the house and about 5 days later, they made and offer and we accepted.

We had about 1 week to find a house in Raleigh if we had any chance of qualifying for the tax credit. We made a family trip and actually made an offer on a house, but it ended up not working out. Then I made a solo trip. No luck. Tim's schedule opened up on April 30 so we decided to try one more time. This time, the last house we saw, I think it was about the 16th -one that I had previously deleted from the realtor's selections-knocked our socks off. We sat down with our agent to write the offer around 3:30. We headed home and had to pull over along the way to finish our negotiations. We made it back home and waited for our agent to email us the final contract that had to be printed, initialed, scanned and emailed back to her before midnight. Did I mention that the homeowners were on vacation in New Mexico and had to be located in the dining room of their hotel to receive their faxed contract to sign?? I clicked the send button and got the final contract to our agent at 11:55 pm.

So ended the first chapter of the next phase of our lives. The 3 weeks since then have been filled with inspections, appraisals and boxes, dotted with baseball, t-ball, and softball games.

Just under 3 weeks until the big moving day. So much to do...