Moving

I know I've been saying this all summer, but the last month has gone by in a whir-wind of events! The biggest news is we are moving! Not far, just a few streets south of us. We weren't even looking to buy, but my brother Mike was, so I've been watching for good homes in our neighborhood for him. I mentioned it to my friend Lori, and she texted me on a Thursday as we were heading out of town. We looked at the pictures online and fell in LOVE (sorry Mike)! So I called the owner's son (both he and the owner we know from Church), and told them we wanted to look at it when we got back into town.

He said absolutely, and didn't let anyone see the house until we got back into town. This is huge because the market is insane in Utah right now! To give you an idea, we had two offers on our home within 10 hours of listing our house. When we got back we saw the home, agreed that it just felt right for our family, and told the owner's son we would make them an offer. They accepted and we've been crazy busy ever since!

We were able to get our home on the market in 1.5 weeks. I've never worked so hard in my life as we did to get the house ready. Nothing major was wrong with it, but removing furniture for the stagers, getting everything deep cleaned, and all the little things around the house that we've been meaning to get to was a ton of work. We've had non-stop viewings, an open house, and multiple offers until we accepted one. My neighbor was working on his swamp cooler on his roof and said the second the realtor hammered the open house sign into our yard, swarms of people descended on our home and didn't stop until it was over. We've had tons of cars just sitting in front of our house starring. It's pretty creepy, but I pretend we don't see them.

With all these showings I had to get creative on how to keep the house clean and the kids excited to be excited to get out of the house at a moment's notice. I declared every time we had to get out of the home for a showing we would get ice cream (one a day max). Also if the kids had their room cleaned daily I would give them a dime a day. If they kept it clean all week long then they would get a bonus so they had a dollar for the week. Totally worked and worth the $3. I think we might keep this one up even after we move!

Friday night we went over to visit Dave's Mom, made her dinner, ate our daily ice cream, and watched a movie with her. It was a good visit and we were happy to not have to be wandering around the neighborhood for a 4 hour chunk.

Saturday we decided to just get out and into nature! We drive up to the Provo River Falls, had a picnic lunch and hiked up it until it was time to head back.

The kids had a blast! They didn't want to leave so we promised we would return another weekend.

The weather was in the 80's which was perfect for hiking through water.

Brooklyn had a hard time with how messy hiking is. She got upset a few times because "My hair is getting wet!" or "My beautiful shoes are getting muddy!" I don't know where she gets this from because I'm not that way, but eventually she was able to accept the mess and really enjoy herself.

When we got home we had 6 solid offers on the house. Dave and I showered while our agent got more information from the other agents about the potential buyers, verified their pre-qualification, etc. We reviewed the offers and felt good selecting one as our buyer. So we accepted their offer and got to enjoy a quiet rest of Labor Day weekend.

Sunday was pretty casual. After so much chaos we needed it! We hung around the house, played outside, went on a walk, had a family movie, took a nap and I boxed up a few things. Monday we made another fun one. We went swimming, got pizza, had a movie night and ate junk food. The kids were happy to hear when you move you get to try to eat up all the food in the pantry so you don't have to move it.