Our house sale was scheduled to close on May 10 but we had to sign the lease on the rental house on April 27. So we decided to spend the first week of May moving into the new house. I scheduled movers to come on May 5 to do all the furniture because I’m old and don’t want to move furniture anymore. ha! 

The new house:

We spent the whole week taking loads of stuff to the new house. Back and forth. There was literally no time for anything else. I cooked nothing because everything was packed. We ate fast food all week. The kids were in heaven. I had constant heartburn and gained 8 pounds. Awesome. 

You know you’re moving to the country when…..you can’t identify the giant farm machinery driving in front of you. Mason said it was a transformer and I tend to agree. 

I literally grabbed all the clothes out of my closet still on the hangers and just took them to the new house. The only clothes packed were the things I shoved into garbage bags when staging the house. 

More trips to fast food. I don’t even want to think about how much money we spent eating out. But it had to be that way. The weekend we got the keys to the new house was busy. We scheduled the cable and internet installation for the Sunday so we ended up at the house sitting in camping chairs while they installed the services. Then we hit McD’s, Sam’s Club, and Dunkin Donuts with the kids (and our bonus child who is Maia’s best friend). 

Watching them tell Matt how to hold the camera to get the best angle was hilarious. Poor Matt. He has no clue what to do with teen girls. 

It was such a nightmare getting the kitchen stuff over to the new house. I used these big reusable tubs to haul stuff so we didn’t have 1000 boxes everywhere. But that meant the kitchen looked like this after I unloaded. It took me 3 hours to get it all put away and situated. 

We knew we were going to fence the yard before we moved in so the dogs weren’t stuck inside. So we went to Lowe’s and bought all the fence material in 2 different trips because I should never be allowed to measure anything ever again. It was a great decision though and took so much stress off our shoulders during move in weekend!

Tyler had some of his football teammates come help us on moving day. We hired movers to do the furniture but these guys (and 5 more not pictured) hauled everything out of the attic and shed and garage for us. They took loads to Goodwill and to the trash. They were so helpful!

Life goes on no matter how busy selling a house makes it. One pro tip- never sell your house and move during the last month of school. It will seriously test your sanity and make you lose your **** on more than one occasion. I speak from experience here. 

Tyler spent most of his time on the lake with friends. Basically he has no poor friends. They’re all rich and they all have pools, boats, and lake houses. So he is living his best life right now. That cutie pie in the picture with him is his best girl friend and she’s amazing. I wish they would date but they don’t have that kind of relationship. Her 2 older brothers are good friends of Tyler’s. 

Zoey had a first grade field trip to the zoo and she loved it. She got to be in a small group with 3 of her favorite classmates and they had a blast. I was originally supposed to chaperone this trip but it was rescheduled due to thunderstorms and I couldn’t do the make up day. I was bummed and so was she but my co-class coordinator stepped in and had Zoey in her group for the day. Her son is Zoey’s best friend. 

Maia hung out with friends nearly every day. Because we didn’t have enough going on in life. I am grateful for the amazing girls she has in her life though. 

Tyler was invited to go to the beach with friends (and 2 parent chaperones) so he spent 4 days partying his way up and down the coast. Fortunately he did not come home with third degree sunburn. 

Mason had a field trip to a local place that emulates a small town. The kids all have jobs within that town and they learn how the real world works. Mason’s job was office manager at the urgent care center. He had a blast and learned a lot!

Zoey had lots of play dates with her best friend while we finished packing up our house. She was bored silly so spending time with her friend was such a blessing!

Maia’s 7th grade English Honors class was fortunate enough to have the man who inspired the book, A Long Walk to Water, come speak at their school. She loved the book and really enjoyed hearing what he had to say. It was a great experience for her!

So after having such a successful open house and first weekend of showings we had received several strong offers. We decided to close to showings and call for best and final offers by Monday at 5pm. We declined all requests for showings on Monday and just waited. It paid off. By 7pm on Monday our realtor was presenting 9 over asking price offers, most with escalation clauses. We knew immediately which offer we were accepting- an all cash offer $5000 over asking price with a short due diligence and fast close! It was like the unicorn of offers- a once in a lifetime kind of offer. We accepted and thus began our week of chaos. Because we had a short due diligence period and short closing date a lot of things had to be crammed into one week. 

We started the week with a second realtor coming in to do a short market analysis. We sold our house to a company who planned to lease it out so they didn’t do a formal appraisal. It was scheduled at 8am so I had to pack up the dogs and drive around for half an hour. I ended up just parking the car up at our neighborhood clubhouse and reading while the dogs barked at every person, animal, leaf, or wind gust that went past. It was a long 30 minutes. 

Then on Saturday we had the first inspection which lasted for several hours. We had 3 dogs and 3 kids in the car and literally just drove around for 3 hours.We got breakfast from a drive thru, drove up to the new house to let the dogs check out the backyard, swung by a dog park to let them get out some energy, and went back home. 

A very wonderful amazing dear friend surprised us with dinner one night which was so appreciated. Between the packing and cleaning the kids were pretty much fending for themselves for food. Thank goodness they all know how to work the microwave. Ha!

The buyers requested to do a second roof inspection (on a less than 9 year old 50 year roof still under warranty) so once again we had to clear out of the house. At least we didn’t have to take the dogs this time though since it was an outside inspection. We hit Target and browsed for a couple of hours. 

During this week we also had an incident in our neighbor’s yard. A teenager running from a speeding ticket jumped the curb on our street and ran up into our neighbor’s yard. He took out the fence and just barely missed the deck. Then he jumped out of the car and took off running through my yard. I had come outside to see what the loud noise was and he jumped my fence right in front of me. I’m not sure who was more shocked- me or him! He kept running and soon our neighborhood was full of cops, K9, tactical units, and a helicopter was circling above. Way too much excitement for our neighborhood. All I could think was please don’t let this be on the news and the buyers see it. ha!

We also had all the usual end of the school year events going on during this week. Maia had a party to go to and Zoey had her little best friend hanging out with us while her family dealt with a serious health crisis. 

The poor dogs were so out of sorts. Abby stopped eating and Bailey started losing his fur. So we had 2 trips to the vet that week also. Fortunately the dogs rebounded well and were back to normal quickly. 

We ate out almost every night during that week. I just did not have time or energy to worry about dinner. Steak n’ Shake probably knows us by name now. 

The next 2 pictures crack me up. I’ve been telling Matt about this giant metal chicken that I see on the side of the road every time I drive to the kids’ bus stop. But the ONE time he comes with me, the chicken was gone! So while we were out driving around during our inspections we happened to pass not one but TWO giant chickens. I’m still trying to convince him that one of these needs to come home with me!

After minimal deliberation we decided to use our neighbor and good friend as our realtor. Who better to sell your house than a friend who lives next door? It was a whirlwind of activity. We spoke with her on a Thursday. She had professional pictures done on the Sunday. She listed our house live on MLS on Thursday and our open house was Saturday! We chose to not open for showings until after our open house because we planned to leave town that weekend. Our goal was to not have to deal with any showings while we were in the house and hoped to be under contract before we returned home. It was crazy town! Our listing went live Thursday night at 11pm. By Friday morning we had people circling our house in cars…..repeatedly. We happen to live in an extremely hot market area right now and people are literally fighting for houses. We had several people approach us in the driveway and yard while we were doing last minute things. We got 2 offers sight unseen that day!

Tyler had prom the night before our open house so it was a mad rush to get the dogs to boarding and the car packed up before we had to drive up to the clubhouse where prom pictures were being taken. We planned to leave at 8am on Saturday morning and stay up in the mountains with my parents until Sunday night. Maliah was spending the weekend with a friend and Tyler also stayed with friends for the weekend after prom. 

We rolled out of our house by 8:45am on Saturday morning. We stopped for Dunkin Donuts on the way to drop Maliah off at her friend’s house. She stayed with a friend from her old charter school and got to hang out with all those friends she hasn’t seen regularly since last year. She had a blast! I’m so glad she’s maintaining those connections. Charter school world is very small and everyone tends to know everyone else so I want her to keep those friendships alive. 

We had a blast staying with my parents. It was such a nice break after spending months trying to get the house ready to sell! We just hung out and relaxed!

My parents live in this fabulous neighborhood with huge lots, lots of land, and beautiful views. We spent a lot of time outside enjoying the much cooler weather!

We had a delicious Baked spaghetti and salad for dinner with lots of laughter and fun with some long time friends of the family that we just love to see. After dinner it was a gorgeous night so mom lit the fire pit and the kids got to make smores. 

Sunday was another lazy restful day. We were getting text updates from our realtor the whole time and were waiting impatiently to hear if we would get any offers. She said our open house was insane. I was also getting text updates from neighbors on our street who were amazed by the amount of activity we had on our house. So many people showed up at the open house that they were parking at the clubhouse and walking down to our street! Our realtor had to have her husband come man the front door because it was just too busy! The open house was schedule for 2 hours but ended up running 3.5 hours. Then we had back to back showings up until 7pm Saturday night and all day Sunday until 6pm. While we were at my parents we finalized our rental home and signed the lease. 

Maliah was texting me pictures of her fun times with friends. They went to see the movie, A Quiet Place, hung out at the outdoor mall, and she had a blast. 

We left my parents house around 5pm on Sunday for the 2 hour drive home. Our realtor texted us mid-drive to let us know we should close for showings the next day because we had multiple strong good offers already! It was such a relief! We had planned to show all day Monday because the dogs were staying at boarding until 6pm. I’m so thankful we didn’t have to!