Life got a little crazy for a little while right around the time that baby #5 was born. We were so busy getting our home ready to sell, it was a lot of fun for Zach, a little crazy for me. Zach refinished bathroom cabinets, added a stone backsplash to our kitchen, replaced all the baseboards throughout the house, repainted much of the house, and generally spruced the place up.
The entire time we were doing these improvements, we just had hope that we would find a good new home to move into, be able to move quickly, then sell this one. It seems common to be the case that we plan life out and it works out differently, so it's almost unthinkable when we make such plans and they work out exactly as planned! Right after completing some of the bigger upgrades to our home, and right after having baby #5, we found the perfect home, purchased it, moved in within 2 weeks, then sold this home FSBO1-2 weeks after that. Our lives went from not knowing how it would all work out, to living in a new home and being completely free from the old one, within 1 month. Truly miraculous!
It all moved so quickly that we felt bad asking our ward to help us move on such short notice, but we broke down and asked our home teachers, who had 2 teenage sons and our family to help. However, as we were getting ready to move, a few other friends from the ward discovered we were moving. It really helped that our new home was about a mile away from our old home and within our ward boundaries. So on moving day, we had a lot of support and though it was probably the most exhausting day of my life, I was so grateful we had all that support. As Zach was returning the U-Haul, he received a phone call from a couple who had driven by our home, had seen the For Sale By Owner sign, and were wondering if they could look at it. He drove back to the old house and walked them through it, it wasn't very pretty because though it was almost empty, it wasn't clean!
The following week was crazy as our washer and dryer was at our old home (we were hoping to sell them with the house) and in a family of 7, laundry is a pretty regular event, particularly when there are sick kids (the vomiting, diarrhea kind) which we had at that precise week. Beside laundry, there was a house to completely clean top to bottom to get ready to show to that couple who had come by the day we moved out, a brand-new baby to nurse, and 4 other kids (all of which were sick). The couple ended up purchasing the home, with cash, making the transaction so fast and not having any real estate company to go through on either end only expedited the whole process. It was such a whirlwind and Zach and I feel so awed by how impeccable the timing was. We upgraded our home just in time to find a new home. Moved out just in time to let someone else see and purchase the old one.
The Lord's hand was clearly orchestrating it all. That is notable for the following reason. We purchased this beautiful home in 2006, shortly after we were married. The housing market was horrible with insanely inflated prices. We were both working and were afraid if we didn't buy a home now, we'd never be able to afford one, so we bought the best house we could afford. We were young and naive and we bought too much. The house wasn't too big, but the mortgage was a larger percent of our income than we should have committed to. Flash forward two years and the economy tanked and we found ourselves over one hundred thousand dollars underwater on this home. We were shocked and wondered what to do. Our income hadn't worsened, even though I had quit working to stay home with my babies, Zach had amazingly been receiving raises that quickly made up the difference. But, it was still disheartening to see that we'd never be able to gain any equity on the home. We wondered and stewed over what to do. We applied for loan modifications, to no avail, and only superficially looked into short-selling the home. That didn't feel right at all because we had no hardships and we'd have to be deceitful to make it work. We had signed a contract and we had every intention to keep that contract as long as we were able. We learned some valuable lessons as we concluded that the only way we would be able to up size would be if we saved A LOT of money. Enough to put a down payment on a new home while paying the difference on the old one. That challenge helped us grow in big ways. We became very disciplined in our budgeting and it was a bonding experience for our marriage as we worked together and discussed our plans. We also learned that we wanted to be completely debt-free, as soon as possible, so our new home would have to allow for that. This meant that we wouldn't make the same mistake in purchasing more than we could afford. When we were able to sell our Armillaria home so quickly, we took this to mean the Lord approved of our effort and was helping us to achieve these worthwhile goals.
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