By Kelli Bowen
Ten months ago our garage, along with a lot of our collections, hobbies and dreams, went up in smoke. Days and weeks after, I’d wake up and search for the phantom smoke that was haunting my sleep.
Almost 4 months ago we went through the scariest parenting moment we’ve had, after Miss A took a swan dive out of the family pool, lots of Specialists, labs, one horrendous phlebotomist, and thousands of dollars later, we still don’t know if or what maybe the long-term effects.
Almost two months ago, we said goodbye to our 4-legged baby. THE 4-legged baby. After 15 years with us, he went over the rainbow bridge and I still see him out the corner of my eye every day.
Now our family of four is in quarantine and I am positive for Covid 19. I hope I’m the only one who has to deal with symptoms, while praying each day I don’t wake up with something more drastic and less manageable.
It’s time. We need a fresh start. We had been going back and forth, with someone I’ll refer to as a “Crazy Old Bat” about purchasing a glorious Victorian fixer upper home a bit further off the beaten path. After three offers, we gave up. The last we heard, she was going to remove the listing for the winter.
A couple weeks later I went to see if the COB had taken the house off the market, I’m just curious sort, and as I snooped, I noticed another house pop up.
This house was beautiful. It looked like the house we would build, if we built a house. It ticked all of the boxes: 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, big windows, attached garage, fireplace, fenced yard, and a maintenance-free deck, there is a stocked pond behind the house-the girls can fish, there’s a park a short walk away. There’s a bike path. We can see three of Miss E’s friends’ house from our house and I have friends within walking distance, one lives RIGHT NEXT DOOR. This is a whole lot of pluses.
Hubby said something eloquent, like “that’s effing nice”, when I showed him. As our day went on, we kept circling back to this new house idea. We don’t want to move to town… Wait, would we move back into town? Maybe? The girls would love it…there are advantages. I finally asked Hubby if this was one of those things that he secretly wanted but I needed to act like it’s my idea so he can blame me later…? He answered “probably”. I called our realtor.
We looked at the house the next day. Our realtor called it “glorious”. We put an offer in the following morning, negotiated, and signed the paperwork the morning after that. Within 72 hours we had the paperwork drawn up, signed and the earnest money on the way to the selling agent. I guess we are moving back to town.
Within a week we had all the paperwork figured out, inspection and appraisal ordered and now we are trying to figure out how to pack up our lives in less than 6 weeks to move 8 miles down the road.
Due to the speed of this transaction, the girls have been along for the ride the whole time and they are JACKED excited to move closer to their friends, new rooms, park, pond, etc, etc.
Sometimes in life you need a fresh start. We are big believers in you get dealt what you accept in life, so it’s up to us as individuals to improve our circumstances. We knew we needed a fresh perspective and this house looks pretty fresh to us.
Funny thing: our 10 year anniversary we bought the farm. For our 15 year, we are buying this house. For our 20, maybe we’ll just do a trip, sometimes even fresh starts just need a vacation.
Kelli makes her home in rural Cass County with her husband, two daughters (8 and 5), two dogs, and random poultry. She works for a regional seed company by day and tries to be an alright mom, wife, friend and writer by night.
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