Earlier this year I commented on this blog and to several people that 2013 had started off very nicely for us: calm, routine, peaceful. We have been busy but healthy, enjoying small successes and suffering only minor defeats. We have had days packed with a lot of fun, but most days have been rather ordinary, packed with the work of school and church and family life.
Except for one thing.
And this one thing really hasn't affected our day to day life very much, but it will very soon. But, it is a pretty big thing!
As you know, we moved to this house in the summer of 2011. We were offered a really great opportunity to rent this home at a below-market rate by our landlord, who has been a long-standing client of Nate's. We accepted his offer because we thought it would put us closer to Nate's new office, and because with the new addition to our family (Trey) we were getting kind of crowded in our home in Westminster. We also wanted to get to know the area of South Denver better so that we could find a place to settle long-term near Nathan's office. We expected to rent this home here in Parker for about a year before moving to our "dream home" somewhere nearby. Also, based on the housing market at the time, we decided to rent out our house in Westminster, waiting for its value to increase again before selling it. We figured our timing would work out so that we could sell our Westminster house about the time we were ready to buy a new one in the South Denver area.
Great plan; but things don't always work out as planned! What we didn't know in the summer of 2011 is that self-employed people, as well as many other people, were not going to be able to qualify for new mortgages as easily as in the past. And, being newly self-employed, we needed more time to establish ourselves as a reasonable risk for a lender. No problem . . . we would just stay in this rental home for longer than we originally planned, until we could qualify for a mortgage on a home we would love forever more. Nate's business had been doing well and is improving all the time, but we just needed a little more time to really be secure in affording a new home.
Well, it was a good idea. Unfortunately, our landlord has gotten himself into a "heap o'trouble" both financially and legally. And, despite the fact that we have paid our rent according to our rental agreement for the entire time we have lived here, our landlord has been in default on this house for more than a year. He has foreclosed on the house, declared bankruptcy, and has been convicted of criminal charges in regards to his finances. Ugly business. We have known about this for some time, but hoped that we could hold out, living in a house to which our landlord really has no rights, for as long as we needed. But we now have indications that we will probably not be able to hang out here for as long as we need to establish ourselves financially and qualify for a new mortgage.
Meanwhile, we had a verbal agreement with the tenants of our Westminster house that they were planning to buy our home from us. Great news for us! Until they contacted us in March to tell us that they were not in a position to buy it at present. Their current lease is set to expire at the end of May of this year.
Ok. So, put it all together and we have a set of problems that we really need to resolve. So, Nathan and I held a Family Executive Committee meeting, complete with a white board, spreadsheets, lists of pros and cons and priorities and goals. This meeting, followed by lots of other discussions, prayers, and a trip to the temple, led us to what became a pretty obvious conclusion: at the end of our tenant's lease period, we need to move back to our house in Westminster. Yup! At this time, we will not qualify for a mortgage on a home in which we would like to settle forever. But, we can't stay here, either. So, we are going back to where we once belonged, to our beloved Westminster house that we built 10 years ago.
How do we feel about this? Quite honestly, I am happy about it and very much relieved to be leaving a precarious situation such as the one we faced by living here in these circumstances. We will be more crowded, to be sure! Nate will have a more difficult commute, to be sure! But, we will be living in OUR home, a house much more suited to a family, with flowers and vegetable gardens a fruit tree and a sandbox and a school room and a pink bedroom for our little girl! We still have lots of friends there and know the area very, very well. When we first contemplated this decision, I worried that it would feel like we had failed, like we should never have moved here to Parker in the first place. However, I have NO regrets! We have had a great experience here, we have learned so much! We have made great progress in our family, in Nate's business, in our education, in our health, in so many things. But, now it is time to go home and use the things we have learned to make it a great life there!
The one and only thing I regret is how much work it will take to move a family of our size from a house of this size back into a house of that size. We are not exactly sure when the move will take place. Our tenants will occupy the house probably until sometime in June, and our boys will be attending Scout camps with their troops here at the end of June. However, we expect to be out of here completely by mid-summer. It will be a big job, but we can do it!
I thank my Heavenly Father, my wonderful husband, and even our goofy landlord for giving us the opportunity to live in this lovely place for a period of time. I am also very grateful to have such a wonderful place to go back to, and that it doesn't really matter where we live as long as we are together. We are very blessed!
I will miss this lovely view from our back deck:
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| Beautiful! Gorgeous! Wish you were here! |
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| This is a picture of Chase at 2 years old, standing in what would become our Master Bedroom closet. A few years later, Nate upgraded that closet with a beautiful cherry wood organization system that we love! We put so much love into that house over the years we lived there, and I love it still to this day. What a blessing to return to a place filled with such great memories for our family! |
So, among the MANY other things we are doing this spring, we will soon be packing it all up and re-settling again in Westminster. Hooray! I kind of wish I could fast-forward to when it is done, but this is just one more challenge to overcome cheerfully, right? Wish us luck!
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