Well, this isn't necessarily the last post of the year that I had in mind, but since I've been working to finish the 2nd part of my update post, here goes:
Back here I had posted the beginnings of my emotions surrounding a multitude of topics. I had left you hanging on the house, so Part 2 will mainly be about the house. To recap- we busted our buns getting the house ready for the market and in showing condition. And we priced it to sell. We hoped we wouldn't have to spend months of continuing to pay the mortgage here while we paid rent (or a 2nd mortgage) in our new location. To do that, our realtor researched the prices of homes in our area that had recently sold and compared them with the size of ours. We priced our home a little higher than what she recommended, but we wanted some wiggle room for negotiating. We also figured out the worst case scenario as far as the maximum of all the fees we would have to pay, if the buyers requested we pay closing costs, what we still owe on our mortgage, etc. DH and I hoped we would come out ahead enough that we would have 20% to put down on a new home. As we ran the worst case scenario numbers, we quickly realized that we would come out at almost exactly that 20% figure we were hoping for! Thank you, Lord. I do not think that was a coincidence.
So our house goes on the market December 7th- not exactly prime time to sell a house, but it was the best we could do. DH still continues to freak out a bit about the stress of selling the house. "Normally high stress me" is calm, cool, and collected about selling the house. I continue to reassure him that God will take care of the house. Evidently, it is easy for me to trust God with huge things that are out of my control (except for IF). I even wrote in my journal before our house went on the market about my confidence (or foolishness and naivety to some) of how quickly God was going to sell our house. I thought I could just feel it working out.
I breathe a huge sigh of relief when our house finally does go up on the market because it's a little hard to sell a house if it isn't on the market. And yet I quickly realize that I am exhausted and not excited about waking up every day and making sure the house is in "show" condition in case we get a phone call from our realtor.
The photographer comes Friday afternoon to take professional pictures of our house (our house went up on the market with just one exterior photo) and I tell DH it's too bad the pictures won't be uploaded until Monday. We'll probably have showings of people who wouldn't be interested if they could see the interior of our home (we have lots of colorful, painted walls). Sure enough...we get a phone call Friday afternoon saying we have a showing scheduled Saturday afternoon. Let the fun begin.
We vacate our home and head to DH's office because, of course, R wants to take a nap while we need to be out of the house. We bring work to do at his office and before R even wakes up from her nap, we have a phone call and an offer on the house! Less than 45 minutes after the showing we have a reasonable offer! I wasn't surprised (see confidence in God comment above) and yet I was. Wow. God really was going to sell our house in a weekend.
We met with our realtor and discussed the offer. Since it was the 1st showing and the 1st offer, we decided to do a counter offer. But DH and I would have been happy with the original offer...it was a little less than we asked, but they covered closing costs, making us come out ahead of our worst case scenario! The coolest part for me was seeing the names of the buyers on the paperwork we had to sign and realizing that most likely they were international students or adults connected with the institution I taught at (based on where they were pre-approved for a loan). I only had their names to go by, but I figured they were either Ethiopian or Arabic. What a way for me to come full circle. I moved out here in Jan. 2004 to go to graduate school and teach ESL. And here I am leaving almost exactly 9 years later after having taught ESL for nearly my whole time here. I love that we sold our house to an international couple! I almost started crying in front of our realtor when I realized that. That turned out even better than I expected in so many ways.
We sent a counter over Sat. night and by Sun. afternoon they had accepted! We sold our house with 1 showing and 1 day on the market. God's hand was clearly all over that. Who sells their house that quickly in December in this market? Apparently, God does that for us. Everyone we talked to was simply stunned by the news of our house selling so rapidly. I thoroughly enjoyed giving God credit for the amazing work He had done. There was no other way to explain it than God, and even those non-believers/non-church attenders around me had to admit they were amazed (and hopefully saw my testimony to God).
Talk about a huge, majorly big obstacle falling by the wayside. God continued to pave the way for our move and clearly showed us it was time to move and confirmed the decision we had made. That was a relief. I can't even imagine the stress of a cross-country move if one of us was regretting the decision or feeling we made the wrong decision.
Selling the house quickly meant we could put up some Christmas decorations and could live a little in our house, not having to worry about a potential showing every single day. It was nice to have a few personal items out for Advent and Christmas. It wasn't the same as years past, but at least we had a teeny tiny tree (the 3ft kind that goes in an entryway) that R could stare at and we could take pictures of her by. I called it our twig tree. And even having a twig tree was ok with me.
Throughout the whole process, I found it ironic at how calm I was and how stress DH was. He usually is the one who is always so calm and relaxed and I am the one spazzing around worrying like a crazy fool. He was the calm one throughout our years of IF. He'd reassure me and say he just knew we would have our own child one day. It's funny how our roles were reversed and I was the one calmly telling him not to worry about our house selling because I just knew it would sell without a problem.
So...the house is under contract. We've completed the home inspection and all of the little things they wanted us to fix. The appraiser came today. We just have to wait on the buyer's financing and we will have sold our home. Thanks be to God for showing His power in such a clear and mighty way!
And with that we close the 2012 year out and almost simultaneously close this chapter in our lives. 2012 has been good to us...house renovations, preparations for Baby PPIW's arrival, the birth of R, lots of family visits, several trips to other states, and the selling of our house. Of course there have been challenges with the decision to move and other issues, but it seems 2012 was a lot kinder to us than previous years. Probably because it was in 2012 that we officially said goodbye to IF. Who knows what the future holds regarding my health and our family size, but we can no longer call ourselves IF with the birth of R in 2012. And with that we look to 2013 with excitement, anticipation, and a little bit of fear. Goodbye, 2012.
Back here I had posted the beginnings of my emotions surrounding a multitude of topics. I had left you hanging on the house, so Part 2 will mainly be about the house. To recap- we busted our buns getting the house ready for the market and in showing condition. And we priced it to sell. We hoped we wouldn't have to spend months of continuing to pay the mortgage here while we paid rent (or a 2nd mortgage) in our new location. To do that, our realtor researched the prices of homes in our area that had recently sold and compared them with the size of ours. We priced our home a little higher than what she recommended, but we wanted some wiggle room for negotiating. We also figured out the worst case scenario as far as the maximum of all the fees we would have to pay, if the buyers requested we pay closing costs, what we still owe on our mortgage, etc. DH and I hoped we would come out ahead enough that we would have 20% to put down on a new home. As we ran the worst case scenario numbers, we quickly realized that we would come out at almost exactly that 20% figure we were hoping for! Thank you, Lord. I do not think that was a coincidence.
So our house goes on the market December 7th- not exactly prime time to sell a house, but it was the best we could do. DH still continues to freak out a bit about the stress of selling the house. "Normally high stress me" is calm, cool, and collected about selling the house. I continue to reassure him that God will take care of the house. Evidently, it is easy for me to trust God with huge things that are out of my control (except for IF). I even wrote in my journal before our house went on the market about my confidence (or foolishness and naivety to some) of how quickly God was going to sell our house. I thought I could just feel it working out.
I breathe a huge sigh of relief when our house finally does go up on the market because it's a little hard to sell a house if it isn't on the market. And yet I quickly realize that I am exhausted and not excited about waking up every day and making sure the house is in "show" condition in case we get a phone call from our realtor.
The photographer comes Friday afternoon to take professional pictures of our house (our house went up on the market with just one exterior photo) and I tell DH it's too bad the pictures won't be uploaded until Monday. We'll probably have showings of people who wouldn't be interested if they could see the interior of our home (we have lots of colorful, painted walls). Sure enough...we get a phone call Friday afternoon saying we have a showing scheduled Saturday afternoon. Let the fun begin.
We vacate our home and head to DH's office because, of course, R wants to take a nap while we need to be out of the house. We bring work to do at his office and before R even wakes up from her nap, we have a phone call and an offer on the house! Less than 45 minutes after the showing we have a reasonable offer! I wasn't surprised (see confidence in God comment above) and yet I was. Wow. God really was going to sell our house in a weekend.
We met with our realtor and discussed the offer. Since it was the 1st showing and the 1st offer, we decided to do a counter offer. But DH and I would have been happy with the original offer...it was a little less than we asked, but they covered closing costs, making us come out ahead of our worst case scenario! The coolest part for me was seeing the names of the buyers on the paperwork we had to sign and realizing that most likely they were international students or adults connected with the institution I taught at (based on where they were pre-approved for a loan). I only had their names to go by, but I figured they were either Ethiopian or Arabic. What a way for me to come full circle. I moved out here in Jan. 2004 to go to graduate school and teach ESL. And here I am leaving almost exactly 9 years later after having taught ESL for nearly my whole time here. I love that we sold our house to an international couple! I almost started crying in front of our realtor when I realized that. That turned out even better than I expected in so many ways.
We sent a counter over Sat. night and by Sun. afternoon they had accepted! We sold our house with 1 showing and 1 day on the market. God's hand was clearly all over that. Who sells their house that quickly in December in this market? Apparently, God does that for us. Everyone we talked to was simply stunned by the news of our house selling so rapidly. I thoroughly enjoyed giving God credit for the amazing work He had done. There was no other way to explain it than God, and even those non-believers/non-church attenders around me had to admit they were amazed (and hopefully saw my testimony to God).
Talk about a huge, majorly big obstacle falling by the wayside. God continued to pave the way for our move and clearly showed us it was time to move and confirmed the decision we had made. That was a relief. I can't even imagine the stress of a cross-country move if one of us was regretting the decision or feeling we made the wrong decision.
Selling the house quickly meant we could put up some Christmas decorations and could live a little in our house, not having to worry about a potential showing every single day. It was nice to have a few personal items out for Advent and Christmas. It wasn't the same as years past, but at least we had a teeny tiny tree (the 3ft kind that goes in an entryway) that R could stare at and we could take pictures of her by. I called it our twig tree. And even having a twig tree was ok with me.
Throughout the whole process, I found it ironic at how calm I was and how stress DH was. He usually is the one who is always so calm and relaxed and I am the one spazzing around worrying like a crazy fool. He was the calm one throughout our years of IF. He'd reassure me and say he just knew we would have our own child one day. It's funny how our roles were reversed and I was the one calmly telling him not to worry about our house selling because I just knew it would sell without a problem.
So...the house is under contract. We've completed the home inspection and all of the little things they wanted us to fix. The appraiser came today. We just have to wait on the buyer's financing and we will have sold our home. Thanks be to God for showing His power in such a clear and mighty way!
And with that we close the 2012 year out and almost simultaneously close this chapter in our lives. 2012 has been good to us...house renovations, preparations for Baby PPIW's arrival, the birth of R, lots of family visits, several trips to other states, and the selling of our house. Of course there have been challenges with the decision to move and other issues, but it seems 2012 was a lot kinder to us than previous years. Probably because it was in 2012 that we officially said goodbye to IF. Who knows what the future holds regarding my health and our family size, but we can no longer call ourselves IF with the birth of R in 2012. And with that we look to 2013 with excitement, anticipation, and a little bit of fear. Goodbye, 2012.
