It’s official….we’re on the move again!

The last few months have been a crazy whirlwind. You could say Bryan and I don’t know how to relax. This will be our 10th year together, and I can honestly say there hasn’t been a year that we haven’t had a huge milestone or some major life moment happening. New job, engagement, new house, new pup, wedding, baby, we’ve been through it all. I honestly love that our relationship can take all of this excitement and for the most part not be affected. Life is always keeping us on our toes, and yes we’re like every couple and have our rough patches where things aren’t going the way they should, communication is off , we’re not listening to each other etc. But above all we know what we have is special and this is our forever so we keep pushing through…..

Now on to our new milestone…..

Now I will get to our new house, but first I thought i’d give you a rundown on our reality background.

We bought our current house back in November to get back into the City (London Ont.) We decided to move so we could be close to Nora’s daycare and our work. We moved from our lake house which thankfully we kept because A) It’s beautiful, B) It’s close to my family and C) It’s on the lake (no brainer).

Moving back to London was a tough decision for us, we love the community we were in and I desperately wanted Nora to have that small town upbringing that I had. Unfortunately my job is over an hour away and as much as I didn’t want to move, I definitely didn’t want to subject Nora to that commute, or not see her until after 630 PM each day. So with the end of my maternity leave rapidly approaching we had to make the tough decision. Time to start looking for houses. I am sure you’re all familiar with the crazy housing market, and the Toronto boom had started to make it’s way to London. We put in two offers and we’re outbid by drastic values. Bryan and I knew what we wanted to spend and knew what locations we would be willing to spend a bit more money on. So we waited, and waited (we only actually waited a few days, but when you make up your mind to do something you want it done ASAP.) Finally there were a few good options that we liked, so we booked a full day of viewing houses. The first house we looked at, I didn’t even want to go in. It looked so small, tiny, this was not going to work. It was in a great neighbourhood and we already had the appointment booked, so fine we will go check it out. It was 3:30 and the owners were taking offers at 4…..story of our life…we step inside and it was huge. I actually laughed out loud when I walked into the master bedroom. It was almost 25 feet long. Gone were my reservations about it being too small, I was now wondering if this would be too big. Within 10 minutes, we knew we needed to have it. It was a great central location to everything we needed and Nora’s doctor was two streets down. We put our offer in right on the kitchen counter and walked out with 5 minutes to spare. We waited a few hours and found out that with multiple offers the house was ours! We had 30 days to pack up our house, find the perfect renters for our lake house and move back to London. The quick turn around didn’t allow me to dwell on that fact that I am moving away from my parents, my sister with her husband and my niece and nephew. Doing all of this within a month while yes I was off on maternity leave which meant I technically had more “time” but it also meant I had a sassy 11 month old on my hip all day, who may I mention started walking the month before. It was no easy task.

We did it, and that was over 9 months ago. We knew we wanted a fixer upper, something we could put our stamp on over time. This was never a forever home, but a great chance to make some extra income and start something we talked about doing forever.

As it turns out the market was only going to get crazier, and while we were on vacation to the east Coast (Post coming on that later) we decided to put our house on the market. Because we were on the fence about selling for a couple months, we had our realtor take photo’s of our house, and because Bryan and I are neat people we started showings while we were halfway across the country about to board a plan to head home. Later that day (which was my birthday), we sold for full ask without even officially going on the market. We we’re thrilled, but then realised, we ourselves had to find a house in an even crazier market than we had 9 months prior.

So what do you do when you’ve been gone for 10 days, just travelled across the country and sold your house without any idea on where you will live? You eat frozen pizza, open a fancy bottle of red and try not to think about all the luggage  waiting for your in the back of your SUV.

My next post I will talk about our next steps and the project we have been working on for the last month!

XO JL