The Unexpected Move

Ever since we bought our home on Zumbro Drive, my hunting husband has been looking for land in the country. It would drive me crazy when the Homes insert would come in the newspaper and he would pore over it, show me ridiculous properties, and yearn for land. He would call the numbers listed on the for sale signs he saw on his drives in the country and every once in awhile he would drag me to look at a home. I remember one conversation we had after Gabe was born where I tearfully said, "I just can't take the home dissatisfaction any longer and can we just be happy with what we have??" He said that we could but could he at least have a deadline for when we might start looking again? So, we set the deadline of three years. Three years turned into seven years and two more children, which brings us to January of this year, 2011.

Let it be noted that I have always been perfectly happy in our 2200 square foot (including the garage) home with our large, to die for, backyard. After years of bucking Matt's "white walls only" trend, I finally got it painted completely how I wanted it. I was ready to start in on redecorating the basement when we got a link on our email from a realtor Matt had talked to years ago. Usually when we would get these, I would look at it, and quietly delete it. The house was either too old or too expensive and the land was either pasture or farm land, not the hunter's paradise for which Matt longed.

This time, what I saw gave me pause. It was a large house on over 17 acres of woods, right smack between Pine Island and Matt's school on the NW side of Rochester. And, it was a foreclosure. Still way out of our price range, but I called Matt to the basement to look at it anyway. It didn't take long until he was on the phone with our realtor friend (not the same one who had sent us the link) and we were on our way to take a look at it.

I was prepared to hate it. In the picture, the house looked gray and I will NOT live in a gray house! We pulled up the steep, long driveway and I knew we were in trouble. It was not gray, it was a dark putty color and it was beautiful. The land was covered with 2 feet of snow, but we trudged around anyway while the kids went in the house and picked out their bedrooms.

As a foreclosure, we knew that there was a lot to be done, but we could definitely see the possibilities. It was still too expensive. And, I'm the type of person who doesn't decide I like a sweater until I look at the price. If it's too expensive, I won't even let myself consider it,let alone like it!

But really, the house appeared to be made for us. There were two boy bedrooms and a girl bedroom, enclosed lockers in the mudroom (five for the five of us, although Matt tried to convince me that it meant that we could have 2 more children), a huge master bedroom, open kitchen, big deck, I could go on and on.

We decided to put in a low bid (which I originally thought was our top bid). So we did. We bid roughly $50,000 below asking price, which was already about $75,000 below the starting sale price. We settled in to wait for a response from the bank. I mean, we've watched enough HGTV to know that these things can take time. Less than 24 hours later, the bank countered back.

I won't bore you with all the details, but over the next two weeks we countered back and forth with the bank, argued with each other, prayed, crunched the numbers of our budget again and again, talked to our parents and siblings, cried a little, and yes, before we even had a final agreement, we started packing.

And boy did we pack. We knew that if we had to put our house on the market, it had to be on the market yesterday. We cleared major clutter out of the house (22 boxes of toys and clothes out of the boys' room alone)and cleaned and repaired and worked ourselves silly getting the house ready for the sale.

We stored probably about 150 boxes over at my mom's house while our house was on the market. We put our house on the market on a Wednesday, had a below zero unproductive first weekend open house, posted our house on facebook, had a second open house and 12 days later...it was sold.

I still can't really believe how everything truly came together and seemed meant to be in order for the purchase of the new house to happen. Two weekends ago, we moved out of Zumbro Drive and into the new home on 105th Street NW, our own rural paradise. I'll tell you about moving another day. Last weekend we cleaned the old house till it shined. Now, three months after we first looked at this new house, we will say good bye to the old house, turn in our keys, and wish the new owners as much love and happiness as we found living on Zumbro Drive.