April, Part 2: Mini Vacation to Ogden

After rushing to get our house painted, cleaned, staged, photographed, listed, etc., we needed to get the heck out of dodge. We didn't tell the kids we were leaving on a mini vacation...and it's a good thing we didn't because it took longer to get things cleaned and ready to go than we expected (as has been the case throughout this entire process). When we finally did load the kids up in the van, they were more than ready for a change of scenery. However, as you can see, they were downright tuckered out and promptly passed out in the car.

Above: Out like a light.

Above: Not sweet Dan though! I have no idea where his energy came from, but he was wide awake and all smiles! What a cutie! I sure love that Dan!

Above: This was Dan's first stay in a hotel room and he wasn't quite sure what to make of it!

Above: His brothers, being older and wiser, were very experienced when it came to staying in a hotel.

Above: Dan had a good time, even if he wasn't sure what to make of all of it.

Above: The next morning, we left Jeremiah at the hotel to do some work. One of the reasons for getting out of the house was that Jeremiah was working from home and that wasn't an easy thing to do while juggling house showings. So, I took the boys to the Eccles Dinosaur Museum while Jeremiah stayed at the hotel and did some work.

Above: I always get a kick out of these rocks that resemble food.

Above: I'm still a fan of the wooly rhino.

Above: Here's a little throwback to the impromptu family picture we took by the triceratops on our first family trip with Johnny back in 2011. It looks like they repainted the triceratops since our original picture and they paved the surrounding path.

Above: Here's the picture from our 2011 trip. Johnny was only 7 months old when we took this trip. My boys have grown so much in five years.

Above: I sure have some handsome boys.

Above: Sunny day!

Above: These boys needed to get some wiggles out of their system after the last few weeks.

Above: This was an odd trip in many ways. The boys were happy to be on a little vacation, but they also weren't exactly sure what to expect for the future because of the house situation. There was just an odd mood that hung around because of it. Johnny, particularly, was a little sad and worried at times. I know that moving was the right decision, but I wish we didn't have to do it for their sakes. It's such a lot to take in when they are so young. Our Suncrest house is pretty much the only house they have ever known. Johnny had just had his first birthday the week before we moved to Suncrest and Peter was only three when we moved. It was a lot for them to process. I tried my best to help prepare them and to support them and help them through all their emotions, but it was a lot for all of us to handle. The move was hard for me too. Perhaps we were all in a little over our heads. Plus, the vibe was made worse by the fact that we were taking calls and scheduling the showings for our house at the same time...and the fact that the showings were fewer than expected. We had some good times, but it really was just a weird trip.

Above: Back to the hotel and time for a much anticipated and promised swim with Dad now that he was done with his work for the day.

Above: A good swim in the hotel pool was just what everyone needed to perk up.

Above: Not for Dan though. Too cold for this baby's tastes!

Above: Our next stop was to see the planes at Hill Airforce Base. Cool stuff.

Above: Refusing to smile for the camera...nothing new. Sometimes he complies, sometimes he doesn't.

Above: Ha ha! This kid makes me smile...and laugh! A lot!

Above: Oh, how I wish we had bought that little hat for him. Doesn't it look cute on him? What an adorable little pilot.

Above: It really was a whirlwind trip. We didn't have a ton of time for the trip (I had to be back for a baby shower on Saturday). We visited all the kid-friendly stuff that Ogden had to offer, and we did it fast. We visited the Treehouse Museum and the kids had a lot of fun there.

Above: The gal who was the "restaurant owner" apparently reserved the right to refuse service to anyone. She was a sassy little gal.

Above: She refused service to Johnny, which made him understandably upset.

Above: After a gentle but firm talking to from me, however, you can bet she served my boys.

Above: Even so, Johnny and I decided it was time to move on and do some musical performing instead. Pete remained at the diner. I think he took a job there as a busboy or something. ;)

Above: As I mentioned before, Johnny was a little melancholy on this trip. He's my kid who struggles with change and the unknown. I know he was worrying about house stuff.

Above: It makes me sad to see these unhappy pictures of Johnny.

Above: Dan was oblivious, however, and enjoying the adventure!

Above: It's hard to see, but I finally got a genuine smile out of Johnny.

Above: There's another smile hidden by the steering wheel.

Above: A game with Dad is always a good thing.

Above: Pete was having a blast putting on quite an entertaining show.

Above: Then on to a puppet show.

Above: The boys then went and did some bowling and arcade stuff while I drove around to get Dan a nap. Navigating around baby nap times is always tricky on trips.

Above: We didn't get a chance to officially visit the temple on this trip, but I did point it out to my boys as we drove by (it is very close to the children's museum). After Dan fell asleep, I was able to park and rest a bit myself...and I also discovered that I had a nice reflection of the temple on my CD/radio display in my van.

Also, another time Dan needed a nap, I drove around with him while Jeremiah took the boys into the Ogden train museum. I will have to see if he took any pictures of that. If he did, I will add them. If not, there are no pictures. :)

Again, it was a very quick trip. I'm not sure it did much to refresh or revitalize us. As I said, there was just a weird feeling in the air. Jeremiah and I were stressed about the house showings and whether or not we were going to get an offer on the house. The boys were stressed by all of the unknowns and upcoming changes in their world. Besides that, I was just so exhausted from all of the work I had just accomplished to prepare our house to be put on the market, and Jeremiah was still having to work. We did have some good times though. We just have to accept this trip for what it was. It wasn't a dream vacation. It didn't give us the rest and relaxation that we needed. However, it was a bit of a much needed diversion for all of us. It helped to prepare us a bit for the crazy weeks ahead.

April, Part 1: House Preparations and Conference Weekend

Well, no lies, March and April were not easy this year. It is a lot of work to get a house ready to put it up for sale. Things took longer than expected to get everything ready and as a result, we were behind schedule getting our house put on the market. I really wanted to get everything ready before General Conference weekend rolled around, but unfortunately, it was not to be. We were feverishly painting our house during conference, putting up blinds, etc. We also had two doors added to our master bathroom (can you believe our master bathroom had no doors?) and that took way longer than we thought it would, and as a result, a lot of that was done over conference too. It was really an exhausting, sleep deprived couple of weeks. Here we are painting and watching conference at the same time. We hired one of our neighbors (who was an amazing painter) to do most of the painting, but there was still so, so much to do to get our house ready.





Above: The boys listened to conference downstairs while they played with Legos. It was a rough time for them too, but they were really good sports about it.





Above: When Sunday rolled around, there was still plenty to do, but we forced ourselves to take it easy, slow down, and enjoy conference. Who wouldn't want to snuggle this little guy while watching conference?

Above: This blasted little plant played musical chairs all over our house for a few weeks. Johnny apparently did not agree with where I thought it should be placed. We have differing home decor opinions, I guess. Many times as we were getting ready for showings, I would have a last minute dash all over the house trying to find where Johnny felt that plant ought to be placed at that specific point in time. I found this plant all over the place.

Above: We finally got our house ready. It had never been so clean and de-cluttered, so of course I had to document it. My amazing friend, Nicole, helped stage our house and gave us a lot of pointers, rearranging advice, etc. She is a miracle worker! I wish I had had her help me years ago!

Above: I will miss that view, even if I won't miss the snow.

Above: That's where the plant was supposed to go.

Above: Jeremiah's sister bought new furniture and gave us her old furniture. It really helped in the staging of our house.

Above: We put our old couches on the landing, and it was so dang cozy! It was another one of those moments where we smacked our heads and thought, "This! This is what we should have done with this landing years ago."

Above: Everything was so clean and de-cluttered. It was so nice, big, spacious, and comfortable. Almost like being in a hotel...but also super hard to maintain with my little guys. I don't know how some moms keep their houses constantly spotless!

Above: Ahhh, this bathtub. What a pain. This baby has to have a steady drip during the winter or the pipes will freeze (and they have once a year for 3 out of the 4 years that we lived here). After one of the freezing spells, it developed a drip. Jeremiah tried to fix the drip and the only way he could do it was by twisting one of the handles in a different direction than it had been before. We even had a plumber look at it and they pretty much said that was all that could be done--unless we wanted to cut a hole out of the tub so he could get under there and replace the hardware and leave a panel on the tub. We opted not to do that. However, during one of our "fixes" we stripped the screw to the faucet and it was wobbly. We ended up having to get a faucet replacement. Lesson: leave these kinds of repairs to the professionals!

Above: Those doors were a pain to put in, but it was sooooo nice once they were there. I wish they had been there all along.

Above: I'll miss this big backyard and our uninhabited mountain behind us.



Above: We had a lot of good times on that trampoline.

Above: I'll miss this view from our master bedroom.

Does that clean house make you feel as exhausted as it made me to get it into that immaculate state?

Selling our house turned out to be a nightmare. As soon as we listed the house, we left to spend the weekend in Ogden for a mini vacation. The market was crazy and houses were getting snatched up right and left. We felt that if we were gone on a little trip, it would be easier than constantly having to get up and leave for showings. We had two realtors. We had one realtor who was helping us to buy a house and another realtor who was selling our house. We really wanted to just use our realtor who was helping us to buy our house. He was an old friend from our old ward. He helped us find our Suncrest house. He's knowledgeable and trustworthy. However, we kind of felt guilted into using a realtor in our ward and neighborhood to help us sell our house (her husband kind of went off the deep end, left the church and stopped being an electrician to become a nature photographer, and left it to his wife to be the sole breadwinner as a realtor). Using her as our selling realtor was not the best decision.

With how much longer it took for us to get our house on the market than we expected, we weren't able to list our house until spring break...and our Suncrest realtor left on a two week vacation to Hawaii with her family just as we listed it. She listed our house in the wrong county, and as a result, it wasn't searchable under certain criteria on certain websites, so we didn't get nearly as much traffic as we expected to get. We only had four showings the first weekend. Plus, she convinced us to list our house for way more than the market value. As a result, it got overlooked in favor of other houses which were comparable in size, but listed for way less money than ours was. Comparable houses listed as the same time as ours were under contract and off the market in only a matter of a few days, whereas ours was on the market for a few weeks. We had to contact our realtor on her vacation in Hawaii and ask her to change the county that our house was listed in to the correct county. We also had to ask her to drop the asking price as well. She also hadn't listed us as being searchable in the Suncrest neighborhood. We had to deal with her time change, her poor cell phone reception in Hawaii, her travel schedule, etc. Also, she hadn't brought a computer on her trip, so she was making all of these changes to our listing with the use of her cell phone. When she changed us to be in the Suncrest neighborhood, she actually moved our address to Suncrest Drive...which has no houses on it whatsoever. So, then we had to call her again to change it. In fact, our old friend realtor from our previous ward helped us far more than she ever did throughout the whole process. He was the one who was deserving of her commission.

Besides that, since she was in Hawaii, we were in charge of setting up the showings ourselves for the two weeks that she was gone. One realtor who was showing our house wasn't able to get the key because he had forgotten his own stuff to access the house key. We almost had to come back from Thanksgiving Point to open the door for them...but another realtor in our neighborhood (who we had also considered, and who would have been a way better choice) ended up coming to our rescue and opened up the key lock so that the people could get into our house for the showing (they didn't make an offer though). 

Finally, at our suggestion, we had an open house. I provided all the refreshments myself and the realtor pretty much did nothing but stay at our house during the open house. As luck would have it, some people came to the open house and pretty much informed our realtor that they would be buying our house. Simple as that, and pretty much no thanks to our realtor.

In the meantime, we had already put an offer in on a house shortly before we put our house on the market. All of the realtors involved were absolutely positive that our house would get snatched up immediately as soon as it was put on the market because all of the houses were getting snatched up. It was a seller's market...except when the sellers were us. Because of all of the problems listed above (being overpriced, having the wrong county listed, etc.), our house did NOT get snatched up and we were getting really worried that we would have to back out of our offer on that house if our house did not sell. We were THIS close to firing our Suncrest realtor, taking our house off the market, and starting over with our tried and true friend realtor from our old ward when the offer was made on our house during the open house. I truly kind of wish that it hadn't worked out at that time so that our old friend could have gotten the commission for selling that house instead.

As soon as our house was under contract, we found out that Jeremiah's friends' startup company (that Jeremiah was helping them with and receiving health insurance through) lost their financial backing and had to get shut down...therefore leaving us on our own to pay for our own health insurance. That meant an additional cost of $1,000 a month that we weren't planning on having to spend. Also, call us naive, but while we had already owned a house, this was our first experience with buying AND selling a house at the same time and we were uninformed as to many of the fees and the amount of money that we would be paying in realtor fees. It took a huge chunk of our equity from the house we were selling. Yuck. Lesson learned. We will be much wiser the next time we have to sell a house (which may be over my dead body...I never want to sell another house or move again). It was all very sobering and we quickly realized that our dream house that we had put an offer on was now out of our reach. We would be immediately house poor if we bought that house. After a couple of agonizing days, a lot of stressing, a lot of prayers, and a huge and constant pit in my stomach, we decided to break our contract and rescind our offer on the house in Draper that we had planned to buy. That meant we would have to move shortly and we had nowhere to move to. Back to house hunting square one we went after all the previous months of searching. I widened our search area to include Lehi, and through what I can only believe was divine intervention, we found a wonderful (and much more affordable) house in Lehi in the Traverse Mountain neighborhood. 

We were still in for a few more really rough weeks. The people who bought our home had ridiculous repair requests for us. We stupidly agreed to some of them at the urging (and manipulation) of our Suncrest realtor. It ended up costing us a lot more money than we were planning on spending, not to mention the time, energy, and stress that it caused. "Oh, just use my caulk to seal your driveway. It will be so easy," said our realtor. Yeah, until we discovered that the caulk she gave us was years old, expired, and hard as a rock and we had to buy our own anyway. It just kept seeping into the driveway. It ended up looking awful. But oh well! As I said, it was a nightmare. So stressful! At that point, our finances were stretched so thin and all of our money was tied up in our equity. If our house didn't sell, we would be in trouble. We needed to sell the house to pay off our credit cards and start fresh. I really hate money. I really, really do.

Well, finally our house was sold and we had a place to go...we had just a little over a month until we would be in our new home. Time to start packing and start saying goodbye to our old house, neighborhood, and friends. But first, surely there is time to take a little nap, right? Zzzzzz.