do we sell the house?

post by casey.

jacob and I have always thought this house would be our Forever Home. And it might still be. Maybe moving a couple times while I was growing up...a few times in my youth and a few times even before I remember...maybe that has enabled me to look at a house as just a safe place to 'call' home. I think I could call home any where I was with my family. Unfortunately, when I say Family...I mean that IF we were to ever more beyond the City limits, my mom and dad and Courts and her 10 kids and Pigg and Mal and her 4 kids/ETC. would have to move right along with us;).

i've looked into selling the house before. Our ultimate goal is to build a very small, energy efficient home on the land near his parents. Outside of town feels but very much the convenience and in town location. Ultimately, we can't afford to do that any time soon. Which is frustrating because I'd love to build a 1800sqft house and throw a few kids in shared rooms and have a tiny master with the space saved for a roomy closet and luxurious bathroom and walls of windows and solar panels on the roof...I haven't given it much thought at all;).

we shelved that idea a year or more ago when we realized it would take some pretty creative planning to make happen on our budget and that in the end...we'd be house poor. I wasn't willing to compromise travel. I'd rather stay where we're at, 'fixer-upper' + small mortgage and be able to travel, than to live in a finished home but not be able to DO anything.

Who are you...BIG house or LITTLE house?! Do you want all.the.space? Or like us, do you find that since moving UP and to a bigger home, you still find that you're ALL in the same place at the same time anyways?! 

when Jacob came home the other night and suggested that we look again at selling it all and starting over...we got to talking and realized that where we're at right now is...exactly where we should be:). We may not have cabinets in our kitchen. We may not have a floor in our bathroom. There may be wet spots on our ceilings where the old roof leaked. 

It's no where near 'done' but it really is perfect for us right now and we do, very much, love this house:). 

okay...babies and toddlers don't give me the luxury of being much more wordy on this blog posts and you KNOW I have so much more to say;). But what I will say is that we're staying put...for now. After a long talk, we kinda figured out that our impatience in being here and wanting to go somewhere else was less about the new place and more about starting over and starting fresh and being able to minimize and all the reasons we were listing for wanting to leave this house were things that we could change and do. Right now. And so we went to bed having stayed up way too late, talking about our plans and making lists - literally, my favorite nights with my husband:). 

over the last week I've sold more stuff and we've cleaned out rooms and started a bunch of projects and thrown things and hauled things out and downsized and organized and it feels so good!

had we had this conversation a year ago, I don't think much would have changed. For whatever reason, the other night, we were ready to take some action. Timing is always everything:). And so going forward, we are trying to motivate ourselves to do the things that we CAN do. Stop looking at what we 'want' 10 years from now or even tomorrow and concentrate on what we can do TODAY! And hell, there's A LOT that can be done today:).

now, here are some photos from earlier this summer when we went to Mead Wildlife Area and ran the trails and the misquotes had there way with us on the way through the woods and the kids got to pet some turtles and I got to run from a snake;).

i haven't forgotten the difficulty of the summer and adjusting to all the kids being home and the fighting and boredom and the missed naps and having to feed my kids - holy shit, that actually might be the worst..having to feed them all the times in a day;)...but even with all that, we really are having the best time and I think our summers together (and late night plan-making) and last minute adventures, will always be my favorite:).