Well well well.

Indeedy. Remember this list??

The address in which I’ve lived the longest we sold on July 16, 2010. We said goodbye before that and are now on an vacation from responsibility for a few months while we build a house.

I’ve got all kinds of emotions wrapped up in this. The house that we brought our children home to. I distinctly remember bringing a very new baby girl down to our basement after bringing her home from the hospital and feeling a gush of pride that this (THIS HOUSE!!) was all hers. She was born into this. This lucky little girl. It was hers because it was ours.

I felt that pride for almost 4 years and then it was time to leave. The pride in home ownership never went away but the feeling that we weren’t where we were supposed to be didn’t either.

We tried to sell on our own and when we finally came to terms with the market and what we really wanted for our family and for our life … we sold.

We finally did it.

I had a conversation with someone very close to me recently about the things they wanted in their life. Could you name them? Do you ever do something for you because it’s IN YOU to do them? Not for someone else. Not because it was said that you should, but that you WANT TO?

Selling this house would be one of mine.

Moving out of this house was another story. It was a process of boxes and trucks, helpful friends and family. We were surrounded with love the entire time but this was the last house my dad saw before he died. In a month he’ll have been gone for 6 years.

There were quite a few strings keeping me there. Wanting to hold on to this memory, that memory … him a little longer.

However, it was past due. It was time. I’m still working through letting go of most of that and I probably will be for some time. But here we are … for the first time in almost 7 years of marriage – 10 of being together – doing something on our own. Our very own. No parents helping, guiding. No relatives attached.

We did this.

We’re doing this.

We landed on two feet, we’re gonna be OK. That feels fantastic.

Here it is. Our living room in the apartment. I just uploaded the first photos of the apartment … the day we moved in and stayed the night for the first time. The very first time the kids see their beds in a new house, their couch in a new living room and their toys in different places.

Coming home. Again.

Carrots from The Holland Farmers Market.

I’m writing again. Not blogging … writing. Writing to me is putting pen to paper and opening my wounds for the linen beneath me to change. For the tree pulp and water, for the little blue lines to make sense of.

How appropriate that our last address was on a literal dead end road. I was so scared to leave it, so scared to change it but I was clawing my eyes out trying to convince myself that it would get better.

Life in a fish bowl, in a box that is taped shut, isn’t living.

Here we are in a 2nd floor apartment with a view of trees and buildings and it’s breath taking for me. Healing in all kinds of ways to change the present so we can change the presence. It’s small and the kitchen has absolutely no counter space but we have blankets and chairs and food.

But really, it’s larger than anything I’ve ever had. It’s full of possibility and chance. It’s waiting for me, for us, to make the first move. It doesn’t ask anything of us. Not to mow it’s yard, not to take care of it’s cracks and it’s leaks. We just have to be here.

We just have to breath.

that some times you just need to get the negative out there. write it down, say it out loud …

to be able to move past it.

Welcome to the other side.

As we’re busy uprooting our lives over here and deciding on the next best thing, we’ve also been busy actually living life and not freaking out about every detail. (most days)

Tangent: Weekends have proven to be the most difficult because that’s when I have help. I have someone there to tackle this task of moving with me, another set of hands. Another parent to parent and to read books to young children so I can clean a room, box up a memory and price away possessions. However, the details are still so fuzzy. We haven’t inked a contract other than the one that says we’re homeless in less than 2 weeks and things are starting to feel stressful. Aaron asked me tonight after seeing a commercial for depression how I was holding up in the area of my life? Which is funny, how they know when to ask those types of questions, because I was just thinking about that earlier today as I was washing dishes by hand, even though our dishwasher works … and we’re out of detergent. Because I don’t know if our new-to-us rental house will have a dishwasher and I’m dutch.

So I start thinking; if I let myself I could be really really unhappy right now. This whole ordeal has the power to break part of me again. To tear me down and keep me in the alley of my own thoughts, my own deafening thoughts about how bad it is. How it’ll never get better. How many mistakes we’re making, have made, will make. I could get really really sad and then really really angry right now.

And I could feel it. I could feel the anger and needed a distraction. I needed something ELSE to happen in my mind because walking these halls and seeing the empty walls, watching the boxes collect dust bunnies because we’re still here when we should be there was making me feel INSANE.

I felt powerless to the situation in which I thrust myself into.

Life, y’all.

I am [re]learning lots of wonderful lessons through all of this. I will frame this house when the time is right.

Until then, I’ve also been busy else where …

Taking photos of Aaron’s offices at Elevator Up for The Garage to highlight for Steelcase.

You can see all of the photos here. I’m just sharing some of my favs.

I’ve been busy with the garden, harvesting my sugar snap peas and trying really hard not to eat all of them right off the vine. I do try to save them to put into meals, but they. are. so. good.

I can’t wait to tell you about making cyanotypes in depth – I did this a few weeks ago with a reader turned friend (Hi Katie!) and she writes about the process here.

Summer is flying by and I am really am loving all of it. Even the stressful days, because in-between wanting to scream and being frustrated and figuring out how to deal with huge life changes … I’m beyond blessed to see this face.

and this face.

And the Summer Jar has kept us occupied and happy as well. More to come …

** I am still super excited about everything and don’t want to whine and complain about the decisions we made, but I also sort through those decisions and emotions here. I have been for 10 years. This is what keeps me from going to that dark place. This is my therapy.

Sorry for all the confusion today. I am not pregnant and we are moving, our house is sold, we are renting for a few months while the house we’re REALLY moving into is being built.

We are building.

This has been a roller coaster, no?

There are times I think I should just not talk about certain things because I know we change our minds or other/different opportunities present themselves which helps us make a better decision for our future.

Insert Build A House.

Here’s the skinny:

We sold our house for less than what we still owe on it and we are not doing a short sale – a short sale is when the you sell your house for less than you owe on it and the bank “forgives” the rest of the mortgage. You have to prove that you cannot pay it back and it also ruins your credit for a couple years and you cannot obtain a mortgage for 3 years following a short sale.

So, that’s not an option for us because we can pay it back, over time.

However, we can’t just keep paying on the existing mortgage – we have to close that when the house sells, it all makes sense … kind of. We would have to obtain ANOTHER loan for the amount in which we still owe and the bank wasn’t willing to loan us that.

Here’s where I might start swearing, because here’s where our plan went out the window.

Also, I am not pregnant.

Our hopeful plan for getting real with the market and wanting to move was to sell the house knowing we were going to take a loss on it – but then just be able to move forward. Not buy anything, we wanted to build … DOWN THE ROAD. We wanted to rent for a year, maybe more, just paying off the debt, trying out new places in the world and in life and not being so grown up for once.

We wanted some freedom.

However, with that loan we were going to need to pay back the loss on the house we wouldn’t be saving a darn penny by renting and it would take us at least 3 years to get out of the hole we were willing to dive right into.

Fuck.

Shit.

Cock.

Balls.

And, I’m not pregnant.

It was always an option for us to build right away – our realtor presented that little token before our house was even sold knowing that we’d end up taking a loss on the house if we did sell. We’ve been aware of the opportunity for months, have driven out to the lot and talked at length about it, prayed about it.

But we still wanted to exhaust all other options before saying yes.

Which we did. And last night, officially this morning – we said yes. Officially. We’ve been saying “Let’s talk” and “How about this?” and “I think that could work” for the last week.

We’re building a ranch 3 bed room home with a basement in a nice subdivision and in a few years if we decide we want to try being “free” all over again, we won’t have to owe. We might even turn a profit.

Once again, there is not a bun in the oven.

So here’s the thinking: 3 years renting, not saving anything and in the same place (location and financially) in the 3 years that we are now or 5 months of “freedom”, a new house that actually costs less and in 3 years if we wanted to move or do it all over again … we’ll be ahead. Not behind. Not in the same place. Not stuck.

The Lord willing, of course.

We’re doing a lot of trusting through this process. It’s brand new to Aaron and I. My parents built homes when I was younger but being on this side of it is EXCITING. I’m having a blast.

Any questions?

I’ll pin down our Realtor for a video chat on this one – so bring your questions, all of them! We’ll answer via video soon.

And we’re not pregnant.

Yesterday was a crazy emotional day – in the morning I was STRESSED about banks and where we’re going to live for the next few months while the house is being built and then an amazing banker called me and talked to me like I was a person with a real life situation happening and she cared more about the story of “Us” than she did about the information that was mandatory.

After that conversation, the day turned around. Oh, plus I saw this lovely lady and made a random stop at a friends house and it turned out that another friend did the same thing! It was a great pick me up to the middle of the day to see some of my favorite friendly faces.

There will be more on this Life List item at the end of this week – but I HAD to share our exciting news.

Hello, New Day!

It was good to just sleep on all those feelings last night. To wake up this morning, look at a few houses, discuss a few more options and meet some potential new neighbors.

I won’t go in to all kinds of details about our thought process on this decision because it’s very involved, but I will say that now we’re looking at building sooner than we thought. It has to do with loans, banks and where we stand to be (in a number of scenarios) in two to three years.

Tell me a story about your favorite house as a child … could be a grandparent’s – the house down the road from you, a tree fort … or something you drove past every morning but never got to see the inside of. I want to hear about it.

This past January I talked about having a Real Estate Reality Check.

Now we’re checking in, finally.

We wavered on the decision of what to do – crunching numbers, talking through expectations and worrying about the next step.

I did some soul searching and then some confessing and then some major freaking out because everything was possibly happening, and happening at lightening speed.

It was frustrating for me, for us. The first offer on the house went stale – nothing came of it. And then we had a couple more showings, and then none at all. All the while I was planning Gleek Retreat and then attending – so the quietness of the house and possibilities was such a blessing at the time.

A couple weeks of detoxing emotions and cleaning my house- relearning how to menu plan and take control of my schedule and we get another call … another showing.

We had previously talked with our Realtor about the reality of our situation, a price reduction was going to happen – we were ready to say good bye to this house, to figure it out. To move on.

Only … we never got that far. Another offer came in, low, but with the price reduction in mind – and back to crunching numbers – the offer was essentially pennies from our rock bottom – a few minor adjustments and a counter offer later …

I tell you, with increasingly great pleasure that we ARE MOVING, God willing everything goes well with inspections and a few contingencies are worked out on our end. Oh, and that we find a place to live in the next 30 days.

We’ve been through all kinds of emotions the past 5 days, wondering what if’s and where’s and FINALLY’S! It’s exhilarating and exhausting and oh my god, I haven’t packed a box in 6 years … and why do we have SO MUCH CRAP!?

A garage sale is in the works, as is a craigslist bombardment of things we don’t want to carry around with us for the next year … or that we just don’t know if we’ll have room for.

Good thing we ordered a new couch for our living room last week.

Now … what exactly are we doing? Why are we moving again?

And … are we MOVING MOVING? Like, away? Forever?

Oh friends. I just don’t know. We don’t know! Isn’t that WONDERFUL!??? It’s so freeing. So amazingly wonderful to sit here and not KNOW anything. Because when it comes right down to it, we don’t any way. We don’t know if we’ll be in California for a couple months, Oklahoma for the summer, Michigan for the next year or, heck, Spain!? Maybe we’ll stay in someone’s house while they’re traveling for a year, or we’ll rent – we won’t buy.

Our options have just increased from “Sit in the back yard for the next 15 years cursing the lack of underground sprinkling” to “EXPLORE THE WORLD AROUND US”.

This decision makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to most people. On paper is doesn’t make a whole lot of sense financially … only … it really does. But this decision wasn’t up to most people, it was up to us.

This is what we’re doing for our family. We’re not even 30 yet – and I’m not ready to commit the rest of my life to one house. To one city. I’ve been committing myself to things and people for so long, and un-regrettably so, but there’s still room for some exploration. There’s room for the unknown. There has to be.

It’s time for a new pair of shoes. My soul needs a little help learning how to walk again. We’ll start with a new sidewalk.