Happy New Year!

All of us on the stairs...tired, sad, and ready for a shower.

Our backyard with the shed that David worked in...which looks just like the house.

The girls looking out from their secret cubby that connected to their huge closet.

The beautiful arches in the girls upstairs playroom and bedroom

The tile work in the girl's bedroom of our house.

The front of our house

The sunset from our home. We loved watching the sun set while we ate on the patio or roasted marshmallows in our firepit.

Our fireplace mantle

Our country kitchen

The last two loads of our stuff to go to storage.

I had all these plans of posting exciting things for December, such as taking the girls to see Santa, celebrating our anniversary, celebrating both the girl's birthdays and fun pictures of Christmas. Little did I know that most of the month would be filled with packing boxes, feelings of pure exhaustion, and showers only when REALLY needed. Here we are, now January 2nd, fully moved out of our beautiful home and into my parents house. Our stuff is all packed away in three storage units and we are living out of suitcases and boxes. Why, you may ask? Well, at the beginning of December, we finally found out that our offer (that we made back in August) was finally accepted on our first home. It is a short sale, so we were prepared to not hear for a while, but we were not prepared to hear the month of December. It is such a busy and fun time for our family, so we knew throwing a move in there would be a real challenge. But, like I said at the beginning of this long BLOG post, we are not in our new home, we are at my parents. The house we are moving into needs TONS of work and it is not possible to live there and work on it at the same time. We also need to save money this month. So, while we wait for escrow to close (January 15th we hope....we know it's risky....but feel this is the right thing to do) and while we fix up the house, we will be staying down the street at my parent's. We are hoping it will not take too long, but you never know.
I had no idea the amount of emotions this move would cause for me, David, the girls, and even Tyler. We LOVE the home we have lived in for the past two years. Even though we did not own it, we have loved living there. It wasn't just a house, with four walls and a rental payment...it truly was our home and leaving has been really hard. Our landlord, next door neighbor, fellow ward member, and builder of the home, Alan, was sad to see us go. He built this home for his family. They had four of their seven children there and moved next door to their very big home once it was done. We have loved living there. We have made so many memories there and when we turned in our keys December 31st, it was very sad. We are excited to move on and finally buy our first home....but we know the challenges with that are lurking right around the corner. We will miss our little French cottage and so I thought I would post some pictures of our last day there.