We moved.

It's true.  We sold our beloved split level home in June.  Ironically enough, we sold it exactly seven years to the day that we bought it.  

It was a bitter sweet goodbye.  It was a little more sweet than bitter because we moved to a house on an acre and a quarter.  We have talked and dreamed about buying a home on a bit of land since the time we got married.  So in a big way, this was a dream come true.

We hunted for the right house on some land for about six months before we found the right one.  We weren't afraid of buying another fixer upper and putting in a lot of work to make it pretty.  That's exactly what we did here, and looking back, it's been lots of fun seeing the transformation throughout the years.  The first house we went to look at happened to be a small labor and delivery hospital back in the early seventies.  It had acreage and "character" in a way, but was more fascinating to look through, then it would have been to fix up with our meager funds.  If we'd had an extra $200,000 cash laying around, it would have been a fun fixer.  So we walked away from the "hospital house" and kept looking for months.  We had a hard time finding what we wanted in our price range and often went from, "let's just not move and stay where we are" to "this is a cool house, let's pray about this one."

In the end, we put an offer on a home that my husband had to almost drag me to go see.  I was so sick of looking at the wrong homes and was tired of being disappointed.  The pictures of our new home online, made it look like an old persons home and at first, my bad attitude couldn't get past the old decor and craaaaaazy wall colors.  But I begrudgingly went to look at it with my husband and our realtor.  Surprisingly, it looked better in person.  As we were walking around the yard outside, the leaves were fluttering in the wind, making a heavenly noise and I said a silent prayer, asking if this was the right house.  I had a peaceful reassurance wash over me and I knew this was the one.  Although we would want to change things about it, it was the nicest house we'd seen and it met a large majority of the wants on our checklist.

We put so much sweat, blood, and tears (literally) into this split level.  For so long I hated it and by the time I learned to love it, it was time to say goodbye.

The picture above shows the last of our belongings before we locked the front door for the very last time.  I miss this house.  I miss that all the projects were finished.  I miss that it felt so familiar to me.  I miss our friendly neighbors.  But we live less than a mile away and I get to drive by it nearly everyday.  

Soon I'll share some pictures of our new home.  I already have a handful of "before" and "after" photos.  It still doesn't quite feel like "home" yet, but it's getting there.