The last time we said goodbye to a house was in 2002.
Which was also the last time we said hello to a house... until now.
It's so crazy to look back on these pictures and remember moving on to Bent Oaks St.
My children were so young (so was I, haha).
Have you ever wondered dumb things like "How many times have I been up and down these stairs?" I've had those kinds of thoughts a lot the past few months. "How many times have I driven up and down Canterberry Trail?" "How many times have I waited at the stoplight at Parker and Main?" I would seriously love to know the actual numbers.
Our first company came in June of that year.
We still talk about THIS SPECIFIC DAY - Taylor's 13th birthday.
It was a Sunday. He got up that morning and said he didn't want to go to church. I remember thinking "This teenager stuff is actually real." After church we celebrated with everyone, and just as we were ready to blow out candles and give Tay his birthday present - a bike - he needed to go to the bathroom. So we waited. And waited. And waited. 45 minutes later he finally joined us {wink}.
We didn't have air conditioning yet (our realtor had told us most people in CO didn't have it, since it cooled off so much in the evenings... NOT trustworthy advice, we learned), and it was a scorching hot summer that year, so we ate in the cool of the cement walls and floor of the basement.
The kids made immediate friends with the Billat family across the street.
Ahhhhh... such babies!
The first day of school at Frontier Valley - the first year the school opened.
And I can't leave out my saxophone-playing-footballing-middle-schooler, Tay.
Such good memories.
So, yes, our house is sold.
It's really a miracle - similar to the miracle of us moving here 15 years ago.
We put the house on the market Saturday afternoon. I had felt an urgency to get it listed. Bill had suggested we take it slower and not feel so rushed to get everything done, but I kept pushing. After it was listed, we waited. I didn't know what to expect... immediate showings? I thought maybe by Sunday someone would want to see it, but we didn't hear a thing. (However, after thinking about it, our realtor had put that we'd prefer not to have Sunday showings.)
Shilo was home for the weekend visiting (and cleaning her little heart out... thanks, Lo!!), so once we were seated in church that Sunday, she asked if I knew the family sitting on our same row. I didn't know them, and figured they were visiting or new when Bill came down and chatted with them prior to the meeting. Because I teach in Primary immediately following sacrament meeting, I didn't get a chance to introduce myself.
Bill gave a talk that day. Since our home was listed and had a sign in the yard, and his topic was sustaining our leaders (in preparation for General Conference), he mentioned that our house was for sale, and that soon the ward would be sustaining a new Bishop (he's officially served over 5 years, btw... the longest 5 years of my life haha). When Bill got home that evening, we talked about the visiting family - one of the sons was in Mar's Sunday School class; they were from Florida; they would be moving into the ward in June; they had an offer on a house backing the middle school.
On Monday morning I got a text to schedule a showing. Mar, Shi, and I painstakingly fine-tuned the house, Shi headed back to Provo, and Mar and I loaded up the dogs in the car and drove around for an hour and a half. Not long after arriving home, I received another text to schedule a showing within the next hour. Again, I loaded up the dogs in the car and sat at a nearby park. 40 minutes in, I received a cancellation text. AAAAUUUUGGGGHHH. It's a little late for that, I thought. I headed back home, soon receiving another text for a showing an hour later. Once again I went through the same process. Fine-tuning (the dogs bring in dead grass every time they go out), loading up, heading out... to sit and wait an hour or so. It was a crazy non-productive day in my mind and I wondered how long I could keep it up.
Tuesday morning Bill received a phone message. It was from the family that had visited our ward on Sunday. They didn't want to get our hopes up, but had seen what they believed to be our house online, and wanted to come take a look. Yes, they already had a contract on another home which they had signed a month earlier. They didn't want to alarm their realtor, so just wanted to stop by and take a look. We asked them if they wanted us to leave or to stay, and they said they'd like us to stay. Once they arrived, somehow the dogs came up (Bill had them kenneled in the car), and they said they had a dachshund, too, and wanted to meet Jack and Ava. They had a son in the marching band and had just returned from speaking with the band director at LHS (the same band director Tay had at Chap). We took them through our house, and shared all the things we love about it. We told them about our awesome neighbors, too. We weren't being salesmen, we were being deeply sincere. I honestly didn't care if they fell in love with my house - I knew it would sell either way (although I didn't relish the thought of the showing process going on for very long). When they were leaving, they mentioned that they were going to talk to their realtor. A few hours later they called and said we could expect an offer that day.
It came. We countered. They accepted.
Bill and I shed a few tears as we talked about the perfect timing, and how we have been so so blessed. I believe this home is special. We have been blessed to live here for 15 years. I'm excited to have members of the church moving into it... our ward needs them (although they were moving into our ward either way), and I'm grateful to know they will be good neighbors to our dear old and new friends. Our closing isn't until May, so my fingers are crossed that everything will continue to go smoothly for them and for us until then.
Feeling grateful.
