Whew.

It hardly seems possible that it’s been almost four months since I last posted, but then that’s par for the course around these parts lately.

So, a brief update, in order of occurrence and not necessarily importance:

March 9, 2015: Posted on the blog saying we’d be listing our house soon.

March 11, 2015: Listed our house

March 12-19, 2015: Had a freaking ton of showings, one (stupidly low) offer, one counter-offer, one counter-counter offer, one rejected offer.

Duration of March: Not as many showings, but still at least one or two almost every week.

March 28, 2015: Shared some exciting news with Poor Kyle: I’m pregnant! I’m due December 1st and we hope to find out the sex of the baby in a few weeks.

April 2015: Continued with house showings. Somewhere in here I went to San Francisco for a work trip.

Early May 2015: Told my boss I’m expecting another baby. She’s been supportive.

May 18, 2015: While staying at a fancy hotel in Calgary for the long weekend, we got word from our realtor that we finally got a second offer on our house. We counter offered, they counter offered, and eventually we came to an agreeable price. They wanted possession date of June 19, a month away, but we pushed it back to June 24th on account of being out of town through the 19th. (We would later kick ourselves, HARD, for not pushing it back an additional week still.)

Duration of May, 2015: Started looking for houses to buy in bigger city 30 minutes from Mayberry.

Early June, 2015: Continued looking for houses to buy. Experienced the roller coaster of real estate when one house, then another, and another ad nauseam got scooped out from our twitchy hands before we could even say the word “offer.” We were looking in a very specific price range, and apparently in our new city houses that cheap just…sell. And quickly.

A Little Less Early June, 2015: Realise at this point there’s very little chance of a) finding a house we like, b) getting the chance to make an offer on it, c) haggling for a price, d) agreeing on a price, e) buying it, and f) moving in before our move-out day of June 22. Start looking for rentals.

Mid June, 2015: Find a great rental that will allow us to rent month-to-month in case our perfect house should suddenly come on the market.

Later-Mid June, 2015: Begin selling stuff in house like crazy, and packing everything left. Also start packing for week-long trip to Utah, two days after which would be our move date.

Two days before Utah departure, June 2015: Realtor notifies us the first house we ever liked had the offer fall through. Hastily make offer, get mortgage approval, start lawyer process, and buy the house within two days…leaving us 9 days to prepare for the move (7 days of which would be spent in Utah).

Mid June, 2015: Go to Utah. Spend a blissful week in the Provo mountains with family and daily childcare. Read books, nap daily, eat meals prepared by other people, clean nothing ever. Heaven.

June 19, 2015: Leave Utah at 9 a.m., arrive back in Mayberry at 10:30 p.m. Fall into bed.

June 20-21, 2015: Do all the things. ALL THE THINGS.

June 22: Open doors for movers, Poor Kyle signs final papers for house we’d be moving into within four hours, scramble to pack last-minute items in any random box or bag within sight, move move move, acquire keys to new house, move move move, crash on couch in new living room.

June 22-Present (5 days later): We’ve slowly been unpacking and trying to make order out of chaos. This must be what God felt like when he was creating Earth…

So, about our new house: We bought it for the location, not for the house. The house itself is actually pretty ugly. Straight from the 70’s (the worst era of all time). Think patterned carpet, wood panelling, orange linoleum, poor lighting, you name it. It’s smaller than our old house, which we were anticipating, but just because we anticipated it doesn’t mean it has been easy to adjust to it.

Also, it’s hot. As in, we’re having a heat wave and we have no A/C. We had no A/C at our last house either (it’s not common to have it up here because it’s only really hot enough to rationalise it for a couple of months), which was unpleasant enough, but at least that house had been pleasantly upgraded, which made the heat more bearable. This time around, in the chaos of our boxes and disorganized kitchen and lack of storage space, it just feels impossible to handle. (Sidebar: after three days in this new house we just couldn’t deal, and called the A/C company for a quote. Many many thousands of dollars later, we should have it installed by this time next week, and not a moment too soon if you ask me. It’s worth it. It just is.)

Hutch has had a bit of a rough time adjusting to our new life. He’s been cranky and clingy and even a little sick, but we’re trying to be extra patient (not easy when there’s so much to do around here) and hope he starts feeling better next week.

Kyle loves the house. He loves it. It’s not the house so much as the location that he loves: it takes him 6 minutes to get to work in the morning, and he’s come home for lunch every day this week. Plus we’ve been able to order delivery right to our door, a luxury we never had in ol’ Mayberry. It’s the dream.

As for me…I love living in this city. It’s been all the convenience we hoped it would be and then some. The house, I’m having a harder time loving. But I have to remind myself (daily, hourly, minutely) that the house we left took us 8 years to spruce up the way we wanted it. It feels like we’re starting over, that’s all. If we had had more time before possession, I would have liked to get some initial upgrades done before we ever even moved in (flooring, paint, trim, etc). But we were crunched for time and it just wasn’t possible. So we will do things like we did in our old house: one step at a time—though I sincerely hope it won’t take us 8 years this time around.

Anyway, that’s the news.

Godspeed.

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