The Unsettling

I promised to do a post about the unsettling that has happened to us this year, so here it is! Also, is unsettling a word? Anyway, we moved! When we bought our house 8 years ago it was never meant to be our forever house. We bought it because we had sold our first home and needed a place to live. We had done really well fixing up our first home and selling it for a pretty big profit, so we thought we would do it again. Little did we know, the market took a dive. We, like so many people who bought at that time, were soon in a situation where we probably wouldn't break even if we sold, let alone profit, so we settled in. Lots of changes happened in that house. We had two more babies, James started his business, our kids grew up and started school, and we made a lot of changes to the house, fixing it up as we could.  We were happy and comfortable there and had lots of friends. However, it still wasn't the forever house. We knew we wanted to move, but didn't really know when or to where.  In late August of last year, the kids had just started school and life was rolling along. We were checking the real estate listing as we do occasionally and a house was listed that we thought was worth taking a look at. It was almost exactly what we wanted. After a lot of talk, we decided to make an offer, and then things went crazy. The house was bank owned, James is self employed, and we have rental properties. All those things were working against us in getting the house. We decided to put our house up for sale in the hopes that all would work out the way we wanted it. Well, it didn't. In the process of trying to make everything work out, the house sold to someone else. Someone else bought our dream home! It was so disappointing, but we made the decision to keep our house up for sale. We knew we were ready to move, so we might as well do it now. Our house sold in February and we still had not found the new "dream house". We decided rather than rent, we would buy a condo. We have had our rental properties for 8 years and knew how important those investments were, so the condo idea made sense. We would have a place to live while we found our new house then, we could rent out the condo when we leave.  It's not the way we wanted it to work out originally, but its working out great! We have a nice place to be together, we don't have any contract so we are open to buy as soon as we find our new home. We have a clubhouse with a gym and pool, a bike/walking path right across the street and we are still really close to all our friends back home.  Things felt really unsettled for awhile, and maybe they still do, but the lessons I have learned during all this have been great. I have learned that it doesn't matter where you live, as long as your family is together. I have learned that moving out after 8 years isn't as hard as I had feared. With help from friends and family, the move went so smooth and easy, I couldn't believe it! I learned that there are so many way to "do life". What James and I have done with our family may not be what others think is the right way, but there is no right way. It's just about what feels good and works for your family.  This feels good, I am happy and have been having a lot of fun here. I have a lot more free time because I have about half the square footage to clean and no yard work!  I am excited to be looking for our new home and to discover where life will take us next.