Moving

 July 15.  Moving day.

It came so fast, even though we had prepared for it for months.  Our home had sold two months earlier, and we were sure that an additional two months of renting it back from the buyer would be plenty of time to find the perfect place.

But it wasn't.

We looked at house after house, and nothing felt right.  Well, that's not entirely true.  Nate was pretty sold on a few of those houses, but I just couldn't get on board with it.  The wrong neighborhood, the wrong street, the wrong...I don't know 'feel.'  It was pretty awful feeling like I was the one slowing down the process and making things far more difficult than they needed to be.  Our stress was high, our ability to agree seemed terribly low sometimes, and the whole thing started to feel like a mistake.

I was prepared that things might not go smoothly.  Not finding a house was part of the risk we took when we sold our house.  And even though neither of us are big risk takers it felt right. But what I didn't expect was how much we would disagree.  This whole house decision felt like a big mistake, and I had so much regret.  Oh, it was an emotional time!

But being truly committed to each other has it's benefits and rewards.  Both Nate and I were determined to weather this stressful house hunting storm and get through it.

Back to July 15.  I didn't take a single picture on that day.  What a wonderful whirlwind.  An army of men from our ward showed up to help with the move.  As one person was moving out furniture another two were taking the doors off of the fridge so we could get it out of the kitchen.  On a hot, sweaty summer day these awesome guys showed us so much love.

They delivered all of our non essentials (pretty much everything) to a storage unit, and a few basics to   Grandma and Grandpa's house.  Dave and Shauna had generously offered for us to stay with them until we found a home.  We felt thankful, and I think all of us wondered how long we'd be there. ;-)

I tried hard to make our stay there an asset: cooking meals, keeping dishes out of the sink and in the dishwasher, cleaning whenever Leah wasn't getting into stuff.  It was amazing how fast we settled into this new normal, and it just felt good to be there.

 The boys loved having a pool in the backyard.  They swam three and four times a day and were so happy that we didn't have to pack up our stuff to go swim.

All of the kids loved that the freezer was well stocked with popsicles and fudgesicles.

 Just two weeks into our stay a house came on the market that was the right size, right price, and in the right location.  I'll never forget walking in there for the first time.  I had just stepped in the entryway, looked around at what I could see from there and said to our agent, "O.k., so what do we need to do to make this happen?"  He laughed and said "Don't you want to see the whole house first?"  I had prayed for months that I'd know it when I saw it, and this house just felt right.  Our agent worked hard to make it happen, and two days after coming on the market, we beat out the other offers and the house was ours.