Occupying our time

Once September hit, and the pool was closed, we knew we needed to plan a lot of  family outings on the weekends to get us out of our mouse house.

The first weekend in September, we took a day trip to Northern Neck, the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.

Exploring the town.

Looking out over the water.

Pretty boats.

Another weekend we went off to explore Maymont, a park with wildlife exhibits and a petting zoo.

Goats!

Koi Pond

Baby L demands to walk by himself.

The last weekend of September was the State Fair! 

This was my first time at the Virginia State Fair, I didn't know what to expect.  I was pleasantly surprised by the whole event.  There was so much to see and do!

They had all sorts of animals, cows, llamas, bears, kangaroos, goats and more!

An entire agriculturaal area.

All sorts of rides, from camel rides to carnival rides.

Selections Process

In September, we began our selections process.    Hubs and I thought we had done our homework by pouring over every home design site we could find, and touring the big box stores.

We spent a full day at the design studio picking out flooring, siding, faucets, cabinetry and more.  It was a lot to take in, and a lot to decide.

It took us another week + to actually finalize these selections.

Our little Mouse house

By August we had moved into our temporary mouse-house and put the majority of our belongings into a garage here on the apartment property.

Photo courteous of apartments.com

The apartment itself is 600 square feet, which would be fine if it was just the two of us.  600 square feet for two adults, two 80 lb. dogs, and a toddler, is a tight squeeze.  When setting up the apartment we had to be creative with the space and make sure that each area was multi-purpose.   For example, the nursery is also the office.


The nice part about moving into the apartment in the summer, was having a pool.   We spent many hot summer evenings at the pool, grilling dinner and enjoying the cool water.

Packing and Moving Part 1

Packing with a baby who is learning to walk is hard work.  Baby L was able to unpack boxes almost as quickly as I could pack them.

We chose to move in phases, which equated to every weekend in July we had something to move somewhere.

• Weekend 1 move into the apartment
• Weekend 2 move from storage unit to garage
• Weekend 3 move from house to garage
• Weekend 4 move/sell whatever was left

July was hot and exhausting.

 I just love this picture of baby L,  at this point the house was nearly empty.

Contracts and Selling

After several negotiations and some breath holding, we had a contract!

Celebrating the contract!

Next steps were the appraisal and inspection. 

As a selling tool, Hubs and I had our house pre-inspected, so we had a pretty good idea what was going to come back on the inspection report.  

The inspection and appraisal went well, before we knew it, it was time to pack up and get ready to move.

The Big Decision

Late last year (2011), early this year (2012), Hubs and I decided it was time to move.  We had put a lot of time, money and love into remodeling and updating the house, so we had a pretty good idea that our next house would be new construction.  We spent several weekends scoping out new construction neighborhoods. 

In January, we were invited to a birthday party at a friends new house, a little ways north of us.  The birthday party was in a new construction neighborhood, that was at the top of our list.

After the party, we were sure, that neighborhood is where we are going to build.  Hubs and I did our due diligence by looking at a few more new construction neighborhoods; we found that we compared all the other neighborhoods to this one, and they just didn't match up.

We met with the neighborhood sales agent and our realtor to begin the process of selling our house and putting a contingent contract on the new property.

A picture from our MLS listing after the leaves started coming in.

Keeping the house show ready with a baby was difficult, especially when our realtor wanted to have an open house the day of baby L's 1st birthday.  Thankfully, we had a lot of help from our parents in getting the party set up at a local park and getting the house ready for the open house.

Turns out, it was a very good thing we had that open house... that day our buyer came through the open house 3 times!