Riverdance--Our Dream Home

Well, we are moving again. We just think moving is so much fun and wish we could do it every single month, so we do it as often as we possibly can!

I'm lying to you. I hate moving.

HOWEVER! We are so excited about this new house, it's hard to get annoyed at the packing, cleaning, stress, change, etc. that comes with moving. Every. single. time.

Here's the deal, this house we're in is pretty small for our growing family. We needed to live in it for a while in order to get an FHA loan. But we never intended to stay here forever. We also wanted to get a better idea of how long we were going to be here. It's looking like another 5 years or more, so we want to live in a place where we can grow, because we are. :) Probably around the end of December we started looking for a house. We considered all our options, and looked all over. We realized we couldn't afford the kind of house we want here in Anchorage, so we moved our search to the Mat-Su valley. Eventually we decided we liked Wasilla better than Palmer. We weren't in a rush, just wanted to start looking so we could get a good deal when we saw one. We drove out to the valley probably every single weekend during the month of January to look at several different homes every time. Our realtor was so great and patient with us. We thought we had found one that we liked. We didn't love it, but it was definitely better than what we're in and thought it would be a good location where we could sell or rent if/when the time comes. I think it was the morning we were about to put in the offer, I got online one more time just to look. And there it was. The most beautiful home we had never seen, and it was at a really great price. I quickly sent the link to our realtor and asked her to check it out. Was it too good to be true? Was it even available? It wouldn't be the first time we found a house we really liked and it was off the market the very same day, or was never really available to begin with. I didn't want to get my hopes up again. But it was available, and we asked to go see it that very night as soon as Kenny got off work. This was a Monday night. We loved it. It was even way better in person than it was online. It's located at the end of a cul-de-sac in a nice, and quiet neighborhood on a half acre of land. We couldn't do much that night because it was after business hours. The next morning, (my birthday, actually) I drove out again with 5 kids (I was still babysitting then) and met with Betty, our realtor. Between scanning and faxing documents to Kenny, we put our earnest money down and put in an offer. We crossed our fingers and said our prayers.

The next day (I think) we were notified that someone else had also put in an offer the same day we did. So now we both had one chance to give our best and final offer. This was a tough decision. We had offered exactly their asking price, not a penny less. But we had no idea how much the other people had offered. Either way, we really wanted to win this. So we did what we thought was best and raised our offer quite a bit. Then we crossed our fingers and said our prayers again.

It was a few torturous days before they told us if the seller had accepted us or them. But he did indeed take our offer, and we said even more prayers of gratitude and the kids and I did a big happy dance in the living room :). Of course, that wasn't a done deal. This was a short sale, so we still had to wait for the final approval of the bank. If anybody knows anything about short sales, it's that the name is very deceiving. They take longer to go through than ANY other kind of sale. We had no idea how many months it would take to hear back from them. The more people we talked to, the more nervous I got. I was going back and forth a lot between whether I actually wanted to move or not. Should we just stick it out and stay here? We could make it work. It wasn't too late to get our money back. We could continue to be happy here, even if it's tight. I really liked the area, I really like our ward, and I really like all the things Anchorage has to offer, that Wasilla doesn't. (The parks/trails, library, museum, YMCA). Not to mention the charter school that's close to our home that we've waited over a year to get into. At one point I was completely serious and told Kenny I wanted to stay put, that we should pull our offer. It took me 2 years to build up the friends I have, and I was scared to start all over again. To top it all off, Kenny's brother and his family are now moving up here, and they found a house in our ward!! We finally get a chance to live by family and we move an hour away! It started to seem like it was never going to happen anyway, so we should just accept it and start making changes for the best to make this house work when the new baby comes.

WELL. I was at an in-between point in my indecisiveness. Not really strong one way or the other. Poor Kenny was so sick of my fickle behavior, and so was I. His compromise (he's very good at compromising and a smart man, let me just say that) was to tell me that I could choose whatever we were going to do. He didn't care, and it was up to me. But, he was still going to buy the house regardless. He still felt like it was a really good investment to make, regardless of whether or not we lived in it. I thought it would be ridiculous to own two homes and live in the one that was literally half the size.

Then, last Thursday, March 27th we found out that the bank accepted our offer and we had to close within 30 days!! Holy cow! All my thoughts of staying here were gone, once that was solidified. I was so excited to be in a house that was big enough (probably way too big) for our growing family. We went out again on Saturday, and our friend Mike met us there. He has built many homes and helped us do an inspection so we could save some money there. We were all so happy to be there, and it made me very anxious to get into that home. There's 4 bedrooms, so we even have somewhere to put people when they come see us! We'll actually be able to put our cars in the garage, and our stuff in the house, like normal people :).

So now the work begins again. I've already started organizing and packing. Not to mention spring cleaning--we've got to get this place ready to rent. So we are scheduled to close April 25th. I'm very much looking forward to it!! We feel very blessed. Although I'm still sad to leave the great people here, the good news is we will be in Anchorage a lot! Costco, the temple, and family will bring us back here quite often. Poor Kenny has a long commute now (especially considering we live only 5 minutes from his work right now!) but he says he doesn't mind. He's glad this will be so much better for our family as a whole. So that's the story of our new home on Riverdance Circle.