When Life Gets Too Boring

Just when life was starting to feel a little boring, when I told myself, "I finally have time to pick up the guitar!" I planned a million things to do over summer to fill our weekends, we started the planning phase of rebuilding our deck. Life was comfortable!

And then we bought a new house.

And the house is glorious.

It needs some work, but it is just simply glorious. It is in our favorite part of town, has so much character (built in 1934), and is covered in wallpaper. So maybe that last thing isn't necessarily a sell, but everything in the house is high quality and so well maintained that we can be happy with some wallpaper while I figure out my vision (pronounced with a French accent).

We will now be living in a house that has some legitimate history. I feel nervous and honored to take over the care of the home, but we need to carefully maintain the integrity of its original construction, or run the risk of being chased out of the neighborhood by purists wielding vintage pitchforks.

To start, we are having the wiring updated. Once that is done we can officially move!

I am definitely not looking forward to moving. I have been avoiding moving for years. Please send all positive vibes my way.

So why did we choose to move? I was driving home from church with Alice a few weeks back and saw an open house sign pointing in the direction of my favorite neighborhood. I drove past without stopping or acknowledging, then a few seconds later something told me to turn around. Alice was overdue for her nap, but we would just be there for a couple minutes, right? We got out of the car, walked up the steps, went inside, and I knew I was home. The more I went through the house, the more certain I became that this was where we would be for the rest of our lives.

I went home and gave Jeff a flier for the house. I didn't say anything, I simply told him he should check out the open house. At that time Everett woke up from his nap and Jeff said he wanted to go with ALL of us. You guys, I cannot begin to describe how odd it was for Jeff to agree to this in the first place. We were not looking for a new house, and he hates doing silly things like going to open houses. In fact, we had firmly decided we were going to live in our house forever; never moving. If Jeff could have chosen to do anything at that moment, I bet it would have been to eat a turkey sandwich and take the kids to the park. But defying the laws of logic, he went to an open house instead. And he loved it. I watched his face go from mildly grumpy, to neutral, to excited, to ecstatic, to DESPERATELY NEED. And after 10 minutes exploring the house from attic to basement, Everett told us which room he wanted.

So we did not exactly choose to move. I think the house chose us. The previous owners were thrilled to have another family move in, and they cried when they watched Everett play in the tree house (yes, there's a tree house). By the way, it has only been occupied by 2 families since it was built. The place has been loved and cared for, and we will do our best to care for it too.

We put our current house on the market a couple weekends ago, then sold it in about 5 days. How did it sell so fast? Well...we are really good at staging:

Now we talk about owning two houses. Yesterday we did yard work at our current house, then packed the lawnmower and the kids in the car to do yard work at the new house. Fun stuff!