We love living in Utah for fall! I tend to get a little panicky around autumn because in the past, we've only lived in whatever state we're in for 2-3 years. Fall is my favorite season and it's fleeting as it is, so knowing that I'm only going to get a few chances to soak it in has me feeling like we need to go explore ALL the leaves in ALL the nearby places. Washington was especially gorgeous in the fall, and I didn't get to enjoy as many PNW autumns as I would have liked. But we're here in beautiful Utah now, and I'm reminding myself that we are here for the long haul so I don't have to drive up every single canyon to see every single leaf changing. But it won't stop me from hitting a few of the greats.
Over the weekend we drove through Big Cottonwood Canyon to do a little family hike around Silver Lake. What an experience! I don't think I've driven up Big Cottonwood Canyon...ever? before this? Which is shocking but of course it was so lovely. The leaves were perfect. The little .9-mile hike along the boardwalk going around the lake was amazing with kids. 10/10, would recommend.
Because Alice is skipping her nap so frequently lately, I don't have much else to report. Free time is fleeting. If I ever happen to find extra time I usually spend it mulling over which of our pictures to put on what walls in our next house. Something that feels fun but also somewhat productive. Speaking of our house, they started putting sheetrock up! Now the rooms are really starting to take shape. And now for some pictures from our week:
I meant to finish this post up yesterday, but our dear sweet Alice is in the transition period of giving up her nap, and I'm finding that more often than not these days I'm losing my free hour. I know this is a natural part of kids growing up, but it is TOUGH not to have that guaranteed block of free time in my day. I'm trying to establish a solid "quiet time" so that once she's completely given up her nap I can still have an hour to rest or get things done while she has a quiet play hour, but so far that isn't taking very well. And weirdly, in the midst of her giving up her nap, both of our kids have started waking up earlier than usual, despite going to sleep at their normal times and the sun rising later each morning. So I'm feeling a touch burned out, and finding it difficult to find the time to get basic tasks done.
I've been reflecting on this "burned out" feeling a lot this week. It feels like it's been years since I've had a "spark" or a passion project I'm excited about. Not that it's mandatory to have a passion project, but I do find I'm generally happier, kinder, more patient, more sparkly when I have a personal creative project I'm excited about rather than just trudging through the daily grind (which is beautiful too). I realized that the entire 12 years Jared and I have been married, we haven't had a SINGLE year that hasn't been swallowed up in a big life change:
Year 1: Just married, me finishing my degree, Jared interviewing at med schools, then preparing to move to Grenada.
Year 2: An international move to a developing country. Jared starts medical school. I start my big girl editing job. Homesickness.
Year 3: A chronic medical diagnosis for me (interstitial cystitis), a major depressive episode🙃, and preparing to move back to some unknown location in the states for Jared's rotations.
Year 4: A big move to Georgia. Puppy training. (This was our most "chill" year, and I did have some creative endeavors and learn how to weave haha)
Year 5: Pregnant with Jack. Every minute of every day consumed with Hyperemesis Gravidarum--feeling like I simultaneously have food poisoning and a stomach flu for 200+ days in a row. Had to give up my editing job.
Year 6: Having a baby. Specifically, the most colicky newborn I've ever seen (poor bb Jack, poor me). Another big move across the country to Utah, then house hunting and a move to Wyoming for Jared to begin his demanding medical residency.
Year 7: Jared working 80-100 hours a week in residency, sometimes at away rotations for weeks at a time. Me raising our colicky baby in a place where we have no family or friends. A global pandemic hits.
Year 8: Residency, and job hunting! Ending up unexpectedly scrambling into a job in Washington state. House hunting. A big move to Washington.
Year 9: Pregnant with Alice. Another hyperemesis gravidarum pregnancy. 200+ more days feeling like I have food poisoning and a stomach flu at the same time.
Year 10: A fairly traumatizing childbirth experience, then newborn life with sweet, tender-tummied baby Alice. Begin the year-long process of job hunting and Jared interviewing in Utah. A stake calling for me.
Year 11: Secure the new job. Begin the turbulent process of home selling, a stressful house-hunt-turned-rental-hunt in Utah, then a big solo move to Utah with the kids and a TOUGH settling in period. Jack has violent panic attacks every morning before school and every night before bed and in the middle of the night for months until his doctor helps us nail down an anxiety diagnosis and find a prescription that really helps him. Praise.
Year 12: An emotional hunt for our (likely) forever home. A pots diagnosis for me. Still to come: another move once our home is completed.
It's been a wild ride that we wouldn't change, and I'm sure years of back-to-back life changes is common for many people in their 20s/30s, but mama's tired. Mama's ready for a year of no moves or babies or job changes. It makes sense that I haven't been able to fan a creative spark into a flame, or get excited about a passion project. There hasn't been a speck of bandwidth for anything other than big life changes in years! Next year will be pretty wild too, but I am setting my sights on our first "calm" year after that. Fingers crossed. I'm holding on to an ember of hope that eventually I'll have some bandwidth back in my life for creative endeavors. But for now, I'm feeling grateful I've been able to stick to finding the time for weekly blog posts so we can always look back and remember this wild, wonderful season. Now for some pictures from our week:
Happy Monday friends! Last Monday Jared and I caught a bit of a cold, which ended up being strange since none of our kids ever caught it. Usually it's the kids bringing the colds home to us. I'm feeling pretty well back to normal today and I'm ready to start packing up our first boxes for our upcoming move! It feels a bit like Groundhog Day to be packing up boxes when I only just finished unpacking from our last move . . . but I have no regrets. We were gearing up to be in our rental for another year and I wanted to feel as settled as possible during that time. We've got a very busy day ahead of us (Alice's first music class at a neighbor's home), so let's get to the pictures:
We did it, team. We bought a house! We are going to be able to move in December or January, a month or two after our rental contract ends. Luckily our landlord is willing to let us keep renting on a month-by-month basis, so we are hoping to be able to make a slow, calm move over the course of a few weeks rather than an extremely stressful frenzy of a big move like all our previous moves have been.
Ok, home details. We went with House #3 from last week's blog post: "Meh house on dream lot." We had already made up our minds that this was the decision we were going to make, and we were settling in to have to wait a month or so for it to be listed. In the meantime, I'm pretty sure our sales agent was feeling guilty for accidentally doing us dirty on the original house we wanted, and she knew we were gunning for the dream lot house now. We're pretty sure she went to bat for us and got them to list it on Saturday. We found out on Friday evening, and shortly after were told that there were going to be multiple offers, and so they were going to do a "highest and best offer" situation on Saturday.
0/5 stars, do not recommend having to do a highest and best offer. It will mess with your brain chemistry. It is so stressful not to know what anyone else is going to offer, and wanting to make your offer competitive enough that you will definitely win, but not so competitive that you're unnecessarily losing money by going way above all the other offers. In the end our offer won (we knew from the beginning we had some extra leverage because our purchase wouldn't be contingent on our home selling, our timeline was flexible, and we weren't bringing a realtor to the table for them to have to pay). It also helped that the price they initially listed the home at was WAY lower than we expected it to be, so we had a lot of wiggle room to make a competitive offer and still come out paying less than what we would have initially planned to pay. That's a lot of info, but we did win the house and we are so relieved to have a trajectory and a concrete timeline for settling into our next home now! They are hoping we will be able to close in December, but it might be January. That is a way's off because they let us buy much earlier than they usually do, and we don't mind. We'd rather be locked in now and wait a little longer to move in than have to keep waiting to be able to buy and feeling uncertain it would work out.
So now we are getting excited to settle down on our absolute dream lot! Pinch me! I have been vision-boarding a home by foothill trails, with a peaceful lot and nice views, forever. The kids will be close enough to walk to school until they are in high school. We will still be living close to all of Jack's friends. It feels so right not to have to uproot, and for lots of reasons, it feels like we were led to this exact lot over the course of the last year and a half, really since Jared took his very first interview in Utah and this neighborhood was the only one that felt right to us after weeks of neighborhood hunting. We have come to love the area where we live. The home itself is actually very similar to our rental house, but with a few elements we like better, like the primary bedroom on the main floor, a fireplace, and a 3-car garage. The things we don't like about it can be slowly changed over time, and with time the backyard will be an incredible play/entertaining space too.
That is our big update for the week! Because we are renting so close to where the home is going to be, we will likely be driving over there most nights to see what new progress has been made. The kids are so excited too. They will have so much space to play, a walking path and flat street to ride bikes, and we will have the BEST sledding hill right next door to our home. And now for some pictures from our week:
Things are starting to move again on the path to getting into our next home. The week started with some tough news--the home that we have been waiting on all year to begin construction had been downgraded significantly in terms of size, floor plan, finishes, ceiling height, etc. Basically anywhere a corner could be cut, it was going to be cut. How could this happen? It's because we will be buying in a tract home neighborhood, so we aren't under contract, and we won't be until the home is nearly finished. Homes aren't selling as quickly as the builder would like, so they are downgrading all future homes to get price points down and appeal to a wider market. This was very frustrating since the home we were hoping to buy was going to have ground broken next month. There is a verrrrrry slight chance we will be able to convince them to build just one more home with the original floor plan and features for us to buy before they make the switch, but that is highly unlikely. We are being a squeaky wheel about it, but have to assume it won't be a possibility.
The good news is, we are now looking at a different home on a different lot that just became available. We don't love the home, but the lot is so beautiful, so superior to every other lot we were considering before, that we will likely end up being grateful that the first house fell through so we can buy this better-lot one (even though we still really prefer the original house we wanted, by a ton). Essentially, sometime this month we will have to commit to one of 3 houses:
House 1: The original house on the original lot we wanted, but with all downgraded features/floor plan. We'll call this option "mid house on mid lot."
House 2: There is one final house that is about to be finished and listed that is the real true original dream home we fell in love with. It has all the upgraded features and floor plan, but is on a teeny-tiny postage stamp lot on a busy street. We'll call this option "dream house on meh lot."
House 3: The house that has a floor plan and finishes we don't like but will be on our dream lot. To paint the picture, it will be on a large 1/3-acre lot, there will be an incredible valley view out front, mountains in the backyard, and a field next door to one side that can never be built on. So we would have exactly one neighbor on any side of us. We will call this option "meh house on dream lot."
I have a sister-in-law who cannot comprehend why we would go with a tract-home builder that works this way. She is baffled and thinks we should run. Granted, her dad builds homes and they are getting all set to do a custom build on a lot they purchased a few years ago. To that I say, sounds great! That does seem like the superior way. And. It will never, ever be in our budget to do a custom build in the city where we want to live, on a lot as stunning as the "house #3" lot. If we want to stay in the neighborhood where we currently live (we really do) but get Jared into a new build, then this is the way. And we do feel really good about it. We just have some decisions to make now. I'll keep you posted. For now we're leaning heavily toward house #3 because, "You can change a house but you can't change a location."
And now for some pictures from our week:
