July was a very busy month. After the 4th of July, things really started to get stressful. Now that it's all over, I can talk about how it all happened.
At the end of June, Josh and I were talking about how homes were selling for sooo much money right now in Idaho. Nation-wide, the housing market is high, but especially in Idaho. I read one article that said Boise had the most "over-inflated home values" of any city in the U.S. right now. A big reason that Idaho is growing is because a lot of people from California, Oregon, and Washington who are conservative are fed up with their states being shut down due to Covid restrictions. They want their kids in school and their businesses to be open and are sick of wearing masks. Those people were really excited this spring to sell THEIR houses and move to Idaho! What's happening is, they're getting a lot of money for their houses and then coming to Idaho and buying up the limited number of available houses here and are paying top dollar for them! Home prices have skyrocketed here as a result. I really feel bad for the newlywed couples who have lived in Idaho their whole lives and now have to move away because they can't afford to buy a house here. Even finding a place for rent is really, really difficult. That's what had kept us from even thinking about selling our house last summer! We knew it would be hard to find anything to rent while we would build! Plus, last year was my first year teaching and I knew I would be stressed about that, so I'm soooo glad we didn't do all this last summer! But back to the story....
At the end of June, Josh and I had kind of decided, "Let's just put our house on Zillow at a crazy high price and see what happens." When you put your house on Zillow, you don't have to pay a realtor or anything and you can always just take it down if you change your mind. A couple of weeks before that, I had posted on a local Rexburg Facebook page that I was looking for recommendations for someone to draw up house plans. We ended up finding a lady and she was working on our house plans and had gotten them pretty much completed. But apparently, a lady from a past church ward we had been in saw that post and decided to message me. She wrote me on facebook and basically said, "I saw that you were looking for someone to do houseplans! Are you thinking of selling your house soon because my daughter would be interested in looking at your house!" To make a long story short, the daughter and her husband came and looked at our house that night, loved it, and said they wanted to buy it.
The next month was a blur of moving things into a storage unit, looking for a rental, packing, celebrating me and Avery's birthdays, and hosting my mom and Jasmine at our house in the last week that we lived there!
For Avery's 9th birthday on July 18th, I really didn't want to have a party at our house because we were in packing mode, so I took her and six friends to the Gravity Factory, an indoor trampoline park. They jumped for an hour and we had pizza and donuts. It was low-key and they had fun. Gabe and Caleb wanted to invite friends too and I said, "I'm not paying for them and I'm not driving them there, but if they happen to show up at the same time, it's a public place so I can't stop them!" So of course, two of Gabe's friends (Porter and Noah) came over (that's the joy of them being able to drive!) and Caleb's two friends, Benson and Cole, also showed up with Cole's mom! So, Avery had six friends and Gabe and Caleb each had two! Here are a few pictures...
Then from July 22 - 27, my mom and Jasmine were here. They arrived in Idaho Falls on Thursday night (the 22nd) and were here until Tuesday afternoon. We toured the BYUI campus, went ax throwing at Heber Hatchets and bowling at Fat Cats. Josh took the teenagers out to shoot guns at the shooting range, and the girls went shopping a different day. It was fun having them here and it was one last time for them to visit our house before we moved! My mom was happy to be able to see everything: our house, our new townhouse that we are going to rent, and our land for our future house.
Before my mom and Jasmine left, we did pack up most of my kitchen and take the dishes over to the new townhouse, but for the most part, we waited until they were gone and then we came home and packed up everything we could that night. The next day (Wednesday, July 28) we got everything in our house, including all the furniture, moved over and we slept there Wednesday night. We really didn't have time to unpack very much though because we had to go back over to the house and clean like crazy. I had even hired a cleaning guy to come help, but he turned out to be a total loser and didn't do a very good job. I was there at the house until midnight cleaning. Then we came back to the townhouse and went to sleep, surrounded by boxes basically! The next morning, Josh and I went to the title company at 9:30 to sign our closing documents. Then, we went back over to the house for a few hours to finish up the cleaning and get everything perfect. At about noon, we left our house in Summerfield for the very last time. It was pretty crazy to leave the house we've lived in for the past ten years. We've had a lot of great memories there. I remember when we moved in, it was Gabe's first day of Kindergarten. Caleb was sad because he didn't get to go. I took this picture as we were walking Gabe to school (which was right across the street) and I remember feeling so lucky and so blessed to be moving into this brand new house that was so nice and so close to the elementary school.
There were really times that I thought, "Maybe this will be our forever home." But I think Covid made us realize that if travel is becoming more difficult and we are spending more time at home and more people are just continuing to build in our neighborhood, we really want to have a place with a little more space and a little more room around us in our yard. We LOVED our neighbors, but the houses were just really close together. When we bought that house, there were only six houses in the neighborhood and there were farm fields behind us as far as the eye could see. Now, there are over 200 houses in the neighborhood and everything just feels really crammed in there. Plus, with Gabe starting his sophomore year of high school, we were just feeling like, "If not now, when? Is it ever going to happen or should we just stay here forever?" Ultimately, Josh would definitely not have been happy there forever with that tiny lot surrounded by people. He's a country boy and he's always wanted more space. For me, it was more about having a house with a big, open kitchen and living room where I could have extended family over someday. So, we are excited for our next chapter, but it's also sad to think about leaving behind a place where our family made so many wonderful memories! Here are some pictures of us, right before we drove away from our house for the last time!
After we drove away, we drove back to our townhouse and basically threw some clothes and swimsuits into some bags, and headed to Utah for a weekend at the lake with friends! Gabe had gotten home from trek on Wednesday afternoon, helped us move, slept at the townhouse for one night, and then left again! His life was a whirlwind! lol It was fun though to get away for a few days and just have fun with our friends, Chris and Holly, and their kids. They had rented this beautiful home in Huntsville, Utah for the entire month and they would just invite different friends and family members each week to come stay a few nights and go boating. The boys did tubing and wake surfing. I mostly just watched from the boat! Avery did some tubing too. We stayed there from Thursday through Sunday, so then finally, on Sunday, August 1st, we came back home to our new townhouse rental and had to unpack.
The boys didn't get much time to relax though, because they had to pack their bags again and leave for young men's camp the very next day! It actually was awesome because it gave the boys one last opportunity to spend time with all of their friends (from church and our old neighborhood). They went up to Island Park, Idaho and stayed there from Monday - Thursday (the first week of August). They went rafting, ziplining, went hiking, went to a play, and had a great time.
Gabe was able to spend time with his good friends, Porter and Noah, and Caleb was able to spend time with his friend, Benson. It's going to be really hard for them to leave that ward. They've been close friends with all those boys since there were little and it'll be really different for them on Sundays and at church activities. Part of me is like, "Maybe I should see if we can keep attending that ward while we build our house..." but then the other part of me is like, "But we will be in a different ward AGAIN in a year once our house is built, so maybe it's best to just teach them resilience now..." I don't know. It will be a hard adjustment, but at least they aren't switching schools or anything! Plus, the townhome is within biking distance of our old neighborhood so they've already been back and forth with friends. Even Caleb's little friends, Tanner and Kohl (who are only like, 10 years old) showed up on our doorstep the other day! I said to Tanner, "How did you get here?" thinking maybe his mom drove him, and he replies, "I ran!" haha It was kind of funny. I don't think I would let my kid just go running off down the road to find his friend's new house, but whatever! He made it!
So now it is Friday, August 6 and we are officially moved into our townhouse and the house is officially sold and we are only two weeks away from starting school up again! As for the building of our new house, we have to wait on the county planning and zoning committee to meet and approve the lots in the new subdivision. I don't even know if I mentioned this part, but the lot we originally purchased was right next to the road and as we got thinking about it, we decided we would rather be further back. So, we have some friends that are buying our front lot and then we are going to buy one in the back. There are only six lots total and each one is 2-3 acres, so when I say "subdivision" it's really not going to feel anything like our last neighborhood! We are excited for all of the new things that will take place over the next year, but I know it's going to require a lot of patience, so I'm just trying to take it one step at a time!
