Moving On....

It's hard to believe how fast this past week has gone. We had 2 weeks after we got home from vacation to pack up the house and be out. I dreaded that moment. I kept thinking how I didn't want the day to come...maybe even to change my mind about moving. Of course, it was a little late for that. :) We still hadn't found a place to move to yet, so I continued my phone calls after vacation. It was about a week before we were suppose to be out of our house when I found a rental home. This nice couple wanted a 1 year lease. I had called before vacation and then again after we got home. The wife called me and said that they would let us rent for 6 months. They said we seemed like a nice family and that it wasn't fair that nobody would give us a chance. It was a little further East than I would have hoped, but it felt good and right when we walked through it. I was grateful that they were kind enough to see that we would take good care of the home. We had to come in and do a good cleaning on the home though. I'm not sure it's been thoroughly cleaned for the 16 years it's been here...in my opinion, it was disgusting. I never knew I was such a clean freak. :)

We were suppose to close on our house Wednesday, July 14th, however it didn't work out as we had planned. There were problems on the buyers end with their lender. Each day would pass without knowing what the outcome would be. The buyers' agent kept assuring us that they still wanted the house and they were worried that we would think they didn't want it. In the meantime we were debating whether or not to even move on the original move date, Friday, July 16th. Why should we have to be out of our house before we even need to be? Part of me wanted to stay a little longer...but we didn't know how much longer it would be. It could have been 2 days or 2 weeks. We realized that we'd have to go back and re-switch all our utilities and that didn't seem reasonable. We also had everything packed up in boxes and we had neighbors and ward members lined up to come and help us. So we proceeded and hoped that it would all work out in the end, after all everything else had fallen into place up until this point.

Friday morning I took the girls out front to take their pictures. Every first day of school or birthday I would take them out in our garden on our rocks and take a picture of them. I wanted one last picture in our perfect spot.
We went and grabbed a U-Haul so we could start loading all the boxes and light stuff that we could do without help. I didn't want to be that person that expected the Elders Quorum to do it all - we just needed help with the heavy stuff. :) It took Ken & I about 3 hours to load the truck. We only had 1 1/2 hours before the muscles were coming and we had to be back, so we hurried over to the rental house to unload the full truck. We made it back just in time! We were grateful for all the help that we got, we couldn't have done it without all those guys that volunteered to spend the afternoon giving service to the Adams' Family...in 100 degree weather. My sweet Relief Society President (and friend) whom I've worked with for the past 2+ years insisted on bringing us dinner that night, even after her whole family came to help us move. I was truly touched by her kindness that day and it still brings tears to my eyes. I wish I could have put her cute and amazing little family in a box and taken them with us. :)


It turns out that there was nothing wrong with the buyers qualification, it was the lender who was putting blame on the buyers' bank. After they decided to switch everything to a new lender on Friday night the 1st lender came back and promised they would close on Tuesday morning...almost a week later, which was better than what it would have been waiting for the new lender. We went in and signed the papers Monday night, July 19th and everything went through as promised by Tuesday night. We had originally asked for 48 hours after we close to be out of the house, so we didn't have to have it all cleaned and ready until Thursday. We still had quite a bit of stuff over at the house. It was kind of nice to have that extra 5 days to clean and also that I didn't have to stress about getting it ALL out by the deadline. Ashlan and Caitlin had Arts in The Park over at Chelsie Meadows Park, so I would drop them off and go clean and load up the van with more stuff. After we knew the closing of the house went through we decided to try to get the house ready sooner than Thursday, we knew they were anxious to get in as they were also put in a bad spot and having no where to live. So Ken and I made a trip to the house without the kids Tuesday night to load up the rest of the house and garage. Ken was having a harder time than I was, probably because it was his last time over at the house, however I was coming back in the morning to clean. That night I also took off the vinyl letters on our mailbox that said "Adams" and I put up one for the new people...that made it official. It was no longer our house.

I dropped the girls off in the morning at the park and headed over to the house with Ellie and Sophie. I took some pictures of them playing one last time on the swing set.
I finished cleaning the house and making sure it was just right for the new family. I know I probably did more stuff than I needed to, but as silly as it sounds, I wanted our house to know that it was loved one last time. I can't help but feel like our house (yes, it's still MY house) is a person...it was part of our family these past 10 years and it will always be apart of our memories. We will miss it A LOT!! I got one last picture of the girls sitting on our stairs inside. They weren't all in the best of moods, but I managed to get 1 good picture. :) As they were getting in the car I ran through the house one more time to make sure I didn't forget anything and to also give it one last touch with my Scentsy spray. I couldn't help but get emotional. It hadn't felt real until then, as we could go back to it whenever we needed to. This was it, no more. I drove off trying to control my sobs and trying not to let the girls see me. Definitely the hardest thing I've ever had to do!