Onto a new chapter next week...

I can not believe that we are one week away from moving into our new house. It has been quite a process to get to this point. We are definitely excited but still hesitant. It has been an overwhelmingly stressful process. And we are still waiting on a few last minute things to fall into place. I'm just so ready to return to some kind of normalcy. I think my kids are desperately ready for us to return to some kind of normalcy. This moving and relocating has totally consumed our lives. At this point it's like we both go through the work day with our mind still on all the paperwork and things to do to make this transition, and then we get home and one of us is showing the house or returning phone calls that were received throughout the day on the house being avaliable for rent while the other one is on the phone with the lender or emailing the realtor about this or that. There's utilities to switch, change of address for all our bills, insurance changes for both houses, inspections and registrations, home warranties to shop for, cable crap to return; new dance, gymnastics, and school registrations to follow up on; prescriptions and shot records to get, ezpass to change,  and renters to screen and CYA paperwork out the wazo to worry about for renting out your house, and holy crap the list never ENDS!!!! And on top of that, what do you mean you forgot to pick our daughter up from daycare? We have to drive clear across the city with rush hour traffic to go back t get her! And what do you mean you just threw up on us while we were sleeping in our beds? Where did that credit card go that was suppose to be used to pay for your grad class? Oh, yeah, and remember that redbox movie we rented a week or so again. Well, wherever it's ended up I guess we own it now because we forgot to return it. What do you mean I didn't reserve movers for the 16th like I thought? The 14 th works better then. Fine by me let's get this over with!!!

So, Valentine's Day is going to be a big day in the Glenn house this year! We are finally moving into the new house we've been trying to get into for three and half years. Shortly after Averi was born we started to realize living in the city was awesome when it was just us but it wasnt' the place we wanted to raise kids. So October of 2009 was the first time we talked to a realtor. Who was a no call no show the first time because supposedly her tiolet overflowed. Should have taken that as a sign we were in for a long haul. That became our reality check to how much the housing market had crashed since we bought in 2006. I want to say at that time we were around $15000-20000 in the hole. So we said okay, Averi's just a baby we'll wait a year. We checked back the next year with a new realtor because the other one was just as unreliable. Same thing still around $15000 short. In January of 2012 we checked again. This time it looked like we were only off by $5000 so we decided to list it. So on June 11, 2012 we listed it for sale finally. And come the first of October at the end of the peak season for house buying we had had two showings. It was not looking good. The plan had been if it hadn't sold by November we'd take it off and list it again the following spring. But knowing that left us one last year to get out of it before Averi started school and with pretty much no interest in it, it was rather discouraging.  I've always been someone who sets her mind on something and I do it. I have ideas, I have visions, and that's the way I want it. And I will do anything I can to try to get it. I'm kind of a brat like that. Call it what you will it's just the way I am. And as much as I love Baltimore, I did not leave home and the wonderful place there to raise kids to raise my kids in inner Baltimore City. So the realtor put in our head the idea of renting out our house. Which is something Nate always talked about but I wasn't too crazy about the idea because I was afraid of the huge headache it could possibly be.

But that's the road we chose. It's been a little bumpy. But I'm not sure we know how to drive down a smooth road anyway. First, twice it looked like we couldn't get approved for a new mortgage while holding our current one. We tried me by myself since my name is not on this house, just Nate's. Nope I'm just a poor teacher with a very expensive car payment thanks to that wonderful Mazda story. We tried with both our names and at first they said no because they thought this mortgage was FHA. But then it turned it wasn't. And what do you know. We were approved and for a little bit more (like $75) than I wanted our new mortgage payment to be. So this was even better since the bank tends to approve you for a much larger amout than is usually your realistic limit. But now we had to have a 3.5% downpayment. Well we don't exactly have thousands of dollars laying around and we don't have family to go borrow or "gift" us thousands of dollars so we sold the only thing that was truly ours that we've both loved and hated to part with . We sold our silver bullet truck as we called it. And yes maybe it's just a truck. But when you've always had to buy everything with every dollar you've ever earned yourself, you have a huge appreciate for everything little thing that you can rightfully call yours. We came out here with a TV and damn microwave. We still have that TV and it took us a while but we finally parted with the microwave. So owning that truck meant a lot to us. So we painfully parted with it. And we had our thousands of dollars to go put our offer in the house. It took us a month from the time we found the house until we had the money. We were back at the house within in twenty four hours of selling the truck, ready to put in our offer. And so was someone else! Talk about that horrible knot of anxiety in your gut for the next twenty four hours. We put in a pretty aggressive offer and waited, praying they would choose our offer over the other one. It was in our number one area, on an acre of land, a huge deck that overlooked the yard, a huge finished basement with a playroom and Mommy/Daddy room, tons of storage and closest space, two bathrooms finally, and three bedrooms. This had to be our house. AHHH, the wait was so agonzing. And finally the call came and they took our offer!!! What a huge relief. Then began the next crazy process. The loan approval and finding renters to cover the mortgage on this house. I have to say I would recommend our lender to anyone looking to refinance or purchase. He was amazing. He took care of everything he promised and was easily accessible whenever I had questions. Seriously if you want a great lender in the Maryland area let me know. Heard from him today that our loan is good, ready to go. Just have to sign the papers on Thursday!

And now we're down to the one last hurdle. The one that keeps me awake at night. The one that leaves that knot of anxiety in my gut that never leaves. We still need renters. We have tons of interest so that's hopeful. I hope after we have the renters the anxiety will go away. And people keep asking, "Why are you renting?" "Aren't you worried someone will destroy your house?" "Not pay the rent?" " Sue you over something?" Yes, people,I am freaking out about all these things. Is this a good idea? Hell, I don't know. But the economy kind of went upside down in the last seven years and my kids are going to be grown if I wait for everyone else to get themselves together and the economy to rebound. Yes, we understand this is a huge risk. It could bite us in the butt big time but I've always felt like you do what you have to do when you have to do it. We weren't even thinking this this time last year when we put the house up for sale but everything's fallen into place now. It's a gamble but half the stuff Nate and I have done in our life together has been a  gamble. If I've learned anything you don't know how anything is going to work until you try it. You have to be willing to fail in order to succeed. We've waited over three years for this change and change can only occur sometimes when you push forward to make it happen. I pray everyday we get good people in here and renting this house out doesn't turn out to be a huge headache. I have faith. With every crazy choice, even the mistakes we've made, things have always worked out in the end.

I wanted to include some memories and pictures of our days on Boston Street in good ole Baltimore but I'm afraid I may have put some of my readers to sleep for now so I'll save that for another time. We're excited for this new family journey. I can't wait to watch my girls run around in that big backyard. Sometimes the dreams come true are the simple things.