I used to say to Chris that I would never move again unless a company moved me. I should have heeded my own counsel. This moving stuff is for the birds. We put our house up for sale in March. We figured that since we would be gone to the Philippines for two weeks, it would be ideal to have showings then. Turns out it didn't really matter. Our house was listed on a Friday evening. We had our first showing on a Sunday afternoon and those are the people who submitted an offer (above asking price I might add). Their offer was contingent on them being able to sell their home in Arvada. We gave the buyers until April 20th to have an offer on their own home, or we would consider other offers.
We did have other viewings during this time and others who expressed an interest in our home, I think they were waiting to see what would come of the initial offer. We began to pray that the original offer would go through and that the buyer would be able to sell their home. Success! They signed a contract the weekend before April 20th.
It was a snowball effect from that moment on. We had to find a rental, secure a storage area, and begin packing in earnest. Ugh! I hate packing. Add to that Kristen's birthday, Kristen's baptism, my parents coming for Kristen's baptism, and life in general. The snowball was getting bigger fast. Our biggest stress was where to live in the interim while our new house would be built.
We put the word out. Most of our conversations with friends ended with, "if you know of any rentals in the area..." I was amazed to find out just how many people were actually searching for us. Our piano teacher told her mom who in turn sent out an email to her church friends. A friend from Kristen's school said she was scouring Zillow, I had friends respond to my comment on Facebook with rentals they had seen, and our next-door neighbor brought us up in conversation while at the dog park. We were so touched by everyone's kindness.
It was our neighbor who was chatting at the dog park who helped us find our rental. She stopped by one evening with a number of a young couple who were hoping to move to Austen, TX and had had three renters living with them since they got married last year. They were tired of the situation. I called Luke and set up a time to visit his home on April 27th.
It was after a long day of Kristen's baptism and then packing and moving stuff to storage (I'll get to that story in a bit). Misha and Amy were with us as we moved our last load. We stopped by Luke's house. It was a lot smaller than we were used to and would definitely need some cleaning, but the price and timing were right. Luke's life just took on a snowball effect as well as we needed to be able to move in May 16th. He and his wife were willing to make the change. Yay!
Now the storage. We had started looking around and found that many of the nearby rentals were full. We were, of course, praying over the matter and for a solution for our needs. Chris was working at home, and he and I were chatting during lunch. All of sudden he thought of our good friends who had a huge second garage built in their back yard. Chris called them immediately, and they were more than willing to let us take over some of the space. Our friends were amazing. This was on a Wednesday or Thursday and we started moving stuff on the Saturday following. So grateful for answers to prayers.
My parents were a huge help to us as well. They had originally planned to come for Kristen's baptism. We didn't know when we began to plan for their visit that we would also be in the middle of packing things up. Their visit probably wasn't very fun, but they were so blessedly helpful. After Kristen's baptism, we came home and changed. My parents and I began packing up the remainder of the storage room while Chris and Amy began moving all of the food storage Chris had already moved to the garage. Our amazing home teacher, Craig, came and helped for a couple of hours of heavy lifting. (Our other amazing home teacher came another weekend and worked side by side with us for over five hours!) We worked all afternoon until our final load around 5:30 pm.
So the moral of the story; if you say you aren't ever going to move again unless a company moves you, stick to your guns. Moving sucks! Friends and family, on the other hand, are a blessing.
