12 Weeks Post Op

There’s that.

Recovery update: 

Still hurts to cough and sneeze, but not as much. Laughing and singing also still hurt, but it’s greatly improved. Yesterday, I became aware of the fact that bumps in the road, when I’m not driving, no longer hurt! Hooray!

House update:

Selling side. We closed yesterday, so we are now officially renters. We are allowed to be here until September 26th.

Buying side. We saw around 20 houses (I probably lost track of the exact count).  House #19 looked really promising, but the night we went to see it, a rain storm knocked out power. Even seeing it in without electricity, we thought it was a strong possibility.

We set up another viewing for the next day along with house #20, that popped up as a new listing. Honestly, house 20 looked just ok online, so we figured might as well take a quick look at it in person before we go back to 19. We recruited my husband’s brother to join us because we wanted his opinion on 19 (and as the carpooling worked out, he saw 20 as well).

To our surprise, 20 was so much better in person than in pictures. It had a great layout and was more move in ready than 19. House 20 was also located in our preferred side town. By the middle of the day, house 20 became our new favorite.

We wasted little time and put together an offer on 20 by the end of the day.

Because of this market, we knew it they would probably get multiple offers. We were told they would be deciding at 7pm on Monday.

We didn’t hear anything yesterday so went to bed thinking “I bet they chose someone else’s offer and we are the ‘break up’ call they are putting off until the morning.”  To our surprise and delight, they accepted our offer!

So here we go… we are in the option period and if all goes well, we hope to close at the end of September, just in time for when we need to be out of our “Rental”.

2016 – the year that God continued to surprise us over and over and over again.

*Bonus Info* it’s a 4 bed, 2.5 bath! Just like I mentioned in my previous post, it’s what we really preferred. A little higher than our goal price, but we stayed in our reasonable range, just shy of our maximum.  And for what it’s worth, our maximum was determined by us, based on how much a month we want to pay/can afford per month for a monthly mortgage, NOT based on how much the banks would let us borrow.

Advertisement

🔥🔥🔥

We spent almost the entire day out of our house. 

Somewhere around 9-10 showings today with a few more scheduled in the next few days. There is also an open house tomorrow. Hooray!

Please pray for wisdom in accepting the right offer, should any be made.

Please also pray for wisdom as we start looking at homes. 

It’s a sellers market. Easier to sell than buy. We are on both sides of this market.

On a completely different note: I got a complimentary ID card from the company that made my heart valve. It has my doctor’s name and surgery date as well as the serial number of the valve. I’m not sure why, but this cracks me up. I have a serial number inside me! (Hope there is never a recall!)

Getting ready to list

There are a few minor items to finish on the house and one major project (updating our master bath).

It’s been such a tremendous blessing to have JJ’s parents here helping. I know Z has enjoyed it.

Learning to paint with grandma.

One project I was dreading was painting our master bedroom. To my relief, it was knocked out in a day – mostly thanks to Marsha the painting machine.

The old color is on the left. The newer, lighter color is on the right.

For my part, I’ve been mostly taking care of the kids and in my “down time” cleaning the kitchen. (Hooray for self cleaning ovens and Norwex!) While everyone is tired and it’s been a lot of work – JJ & I are both pleasantly surprised at how much my energy capacity has increased. I’m so glad we are doing this now instead of a year ago, pre new valve.

Lastly, yesterday we put out the “coming soon” sign in the yard. This is happening and I can hardly believe it.

We’re moving!

Wait. What?

Yes – we are preparing new to list our townhome and move.

First question – Where? Answer: Locally. We simply have different needs now as a family of four than JJ did when he was a single guy and purchased this home eleven years ago.

Second question – Wait… didn’t you just have heart surgery? Answer: Yes. So, we may be crazy. 😉

For the last few years we’ve talked about if it was time to sell the townhome.

It’s never been a good time.

First it was the housing bubble and falling prices that held us back.

Once the market turned around, we decided that it was not wise to add moving to the arrival of our first child. 

Last spring we sat down with a realtor and seriously consider doing it, but again decided to hold off since E was expected and my energy levels where not up for it.

When we learned in January that heart surgery would be on the 2016 calendar, we sighed “not this year either”.

Then I had surgery and two things happened.

1. It went much better than expected and I am recovering at such a fast rate.

2. I was bored. Which resulted in looking at houses for sale near us. When I saw an interesting one in our price range, it suddenly became a call to the realtor and we were on our way.

We are currently packing up and decluttering. JJ’s parents are in town helping us do some repairs and fixes on the townhome.

We hope to have it listed in about 3 weeks and from what we’ve heard – it should sell quick.

The tricky part is going to be finding a new house. We are in need of (at minimum) 3 bed / 2 bath with a study. The study could just be a 4th bedroom. Basically we need a separate office space where JJ can work with the door closed. The last 3 years are showing us that having JJ work at home in the loft, with two little boys playing below, is not something we want to do long term.

I’m a little overwhelmed with the work that needs to be done, but we are pretty excited.

I’ll keep you posted on how it all goes.