Life is crazy right now. Good, but crazy. In the past few months, all that was is now different.
Around February, Ian found a job posting in my hometown and decided to apply for it on a whim. He went through the hiring process but we were purposefully not being optimistic in order to avoid disappointment. We didn't tell many people about it while he was mid-process just in case things didn't work out. And we decided that if things didn't work out, then it was not meant to be.
Fast forward about three months (it all went very quickly) and Ian started his new job which is 4 hours away from our current home. He moved in with my parents while I finished out the school year. He came back on weekends for the mad rush to wrap up all of the projects that we had started before listing our house on the market. And if you know me or read this blog... there were a lot of projects. I have a thing for starting but not finishing projects. While he was gone, I tried to manage keeping the house spotless since it was now on the market, searching for a new job, and wrapping up the school year and packing up my desk, belongings, and all the work junk I've accumulated over the past two years. Then I moved on to de-cluttering and deep-cleaning the house before heading back to my hometown for a few weeks.
Our clean and sale-ready house.
It may sound like I would be relieved after leaving our current house, being that it is clean and not lived in therefore it is actually staying clean! However, I am so stressed about the fact that we are not in our house right now. It has been shown a few times by a few different realtors and I keep having nightmares that the doors are left unlocked or something is left on that starts a fire! Horrible, right? But being four hours away and feeling helpless can do a lot to your imagination. Luckily, we have some wonderful friends that have been helping out! One day after our house was shown, I had a strange feeling so I asked one of my friends to go over to our house and check to make sure everything was locked, lights off, etc. She called me after she left and informed me that ALL of the downstairs lights were left on and the FRONT DOOR WAS LEFT UNLOCKED!!! My nightmares were coming true... I mean come on- when showing a house, if you only do one thing, lock the front door!!!!!!
I was really upset and it made me feel even more uneasy about not being there. I can't imagine how people feel who transfer to another state or across country. Needless to say, we will be taking a trip to the house in the near future to make sure all is good on the home front.
We are very blessed to be able to stay with my parents while we are in limbo but we are actively searching for a house while waiting for ours to sell. The unfortunate thing is that we can't really do anything until our house sells and the houses around here that we like go very quickly. We have been going back and forth about where we ultimately want to end up. We started with the idea of looking for houses outside of the city, about a 30 minute drive from family and friends. We went and looked at one about a week ago but it was a "flip" and it was pretty sloppily done. So it was a no-go.
Then, we started to think about buying a lot and building our dream home. We found THE lot the other day but found out it doesn't perk for a typical septic system so it would be quite expensive to do a more non-traditional mound septic system. And that expense might take it out of our reach. If we do buy a lot and build, we have been looking at building a modular home. Ian's granddad used to sell them so he has been a great resource for us. Modular homes are just like stick-built homes with a foundation but are built in sections in a warehouse and pieced together on-site. They are much less expensive than a custom built home and have so many wonderful floorplans and options to choose from. The only thing holding us back from this option is not being sure what the final price would be. It seems like there could be a few unexpected surprises that pop up during the process and that makes me feel uneasy!! So we may have to get a little deeper in the process before figuring out if it is the right option for us.
The lot we fell in love with!
We really are trying to explore all of our options. So next, we found a brand new neighborhood a few days ago that is in our desired area outside of the city. We visited the model home and the available lots and found out that our absolute dream home could be built for about $20,000 under budget. I'm talking every single upgrade (granite countertops, stainless appliances, hardwood floors, etc) and the floorplan is to die for. It has everything I would ever want. It is 2,200 square feet with a separate office, formal dining room, and a loft space upstairs for a playroom someday. I was in love. I only snapped a few pictures of the model because I was too busy "oohing and ahhing":
walls to make the office and dining room. And add the second garage.
So, what are we waiting for?! The problem with it is... the lot. It is a new neighborhood where they are trying to maximize their profit, I'm sure, so they have crammed in as many houses as possible. The lot, once you put the house on it, is very small. There would hardly be any yard and our neighbors would be right on top of us. And although it was tempting and we seriously, seriously, considered it, we aren't sure that we would ultimately be happy there. Although Ian kept talking about buying a golf cart with a beer cooler on the back to ride around the neighborhood on and swore he would be happy with that...
So right now, we feel like we are back to square one and we are feeling a little discouraged. We are trying to be picky because we want our next house to be our forever house. We are just praying that our current house will sell so we can get more serious about looking. We will be having an open house after the holiday weekend so hopefully someone will fall in love with our house the way we did! Ultimately, we are trying to keep in mind that God led us in this direction and has a plan for us so we have to be patient and stop trying to make our own plans and do things according to our timeline.
I am trying to "relax" during this time off. I am fortunate to have a new job that will start at the end of July. In the meantime, here's what we've been up to:
...and likes to take selfies.
They snuck up on my mom's couch- sorry mom! 
On a side note, when we go back, I will try to take pictures of the stair project which I had to finish finally and any other projects I can think of that I did... :) Sorry for the long post but there were a lot up updates!
