Let me start by saying we did not "need" to move. We LOVED our old house and I actually cried a few times before leaving. So why in the world did we leave? Well an opportunity came up that we both felt may never happen again, oh and it was totally a God thing, just wait ;)
Josh will tell you that when I get something on my mind I am pretty determined to get it done (he has a love/hate relationship with this personality trait!) I don't know why he kept mentioning "more land" here and there but even as much as we loved our old house Josh wanted more than .19 acres. We knew it was Wade's last year of preschool so now was the time to look before he started school. He wanted land and I got this CRAZY idea to be near our little downtown . Downtown is so neat if you have never been before. I grew up right in downtown in an old house. Never ever ever did I think I would buy a house three doors down from the house I grew up in or that my kids would walk to the same elementary school that I did!
Long story short I called people, left notes at houses and nothing really happened. Well one day I was talking to the lady that bought my childhood house and she told me to call Ann one of our neighbors growing up. She said their health was bad and the house needed work but that they may want to move soon. So my crazy self got a phone book out (yes they still had a land line) and Ann answered and I really don't know what I said except "we love your house if you ever want to sell would she call us?" Josh and I used to walk past this house and we used to joke about how much we would love to have it! Well little did we know they were praying about selling because they couldn't keep the house and yard up anymore. Remember that .19 lot we had well this one was .84 acres and the house is right in the perfect location! I really didn't think I heard her right when she said she wanted to sell and that they would only sell to a family like us who would love it. I called josh right away and he didn't believe me.
After talking a couple if times we went over to look at it and of course we loved it. Now most people would have walked right out. It was NASTY and smelled horrible and need a ton of work but because we are crazy we still loved it. We could both see past all that and had a vision of what it could be. I mean NASTY- like dog poop everywhere. Pee all over the rugs and your feet stuck to the kitchen floor when you walked on it. Oh did we mention hoarders? Yes lucky us they were hoarders too. This comes into play in part 2 just you wait :) So what did Josh and I do...of course we brought a contract with us as we signed papers right away. They had no where to go and we had a house to sell but we wanted something in writing because we knew if people found out it would have been a biding war for this house.
We listed our house a few days later and here is the God part- we got a full price offer the very first day on the market and the very first showing we had. We couldn't argue with that. That offer ended up falling through but within two weeks in the market we had a second offer almost at asking price and we closed 45 days later. We knew if it was meant to be we would sell easy and it did. Now the hard part was finding them a house. Yes they asked US to do it they didn't want a realtor. So I became one and what do you know we found them the perfect ranch house in our area that also already had a wheelchair ramp for her. Pretty sure that was meant to be too!
So back to the hoarders part.... They have no family here or any help so not only were we their realtor but we were their moving company also. We had to move ALL of their stuff out. Oh and they also had 5 barns on our lot full of stuff. It took us one month just to clean the house out. Thankfully the man they bought their house from has an auction business and they hired him to auction off some stuff. Lets just say they made $3,400 at a yard sale- that is how much stuff we cleaned out. Thankfully we had some help from the auctioneer. I think we signed papers in July 2013 and by the time we moved out of our house October 2013 we had them settled in their house. Couldn't have done it without my parents. They helped so much with packing and moving Ann and Ron. We also had to unpack their house for them because she is sick and bedridden. The boxes we didn't unpack
are still packed up in their guest room. We however won't be unpacking those for him :)
Now it is worth it but in the midst of it all we thought about backing out once or twice. They were pitiful and we brought them dinner a lot and we had to take them to and from the doctors quite a bit. That part was hard because our kids are small and we are busy too. But out of all this we feel like we gained two more sweet family members and we still see them about once a week.
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