Well, I know that I start every blog post with this but....once again, the stress and drama of this process has severely delayed our updating. BUT, we are officially IN and I have no more stress to delay my blogging (just tons of house to do lists haha). When we started out on this journey, we knew that it was going to be stressful, time consuming, and would involve some arguing with contractors. What we did not expect however, was to lose all trust in those that were working for us and have to fight to make sure we were not taken. As some of you know, we had some serious issues with our builder that resulted in us having to hire an attorney and spend endless days and hours on the phone with lawyers, our lender, and the bank. Fortunately, we had been limiting all conversations to writing with our builder so we had enough evidence of his wrongdoings to make it a seemingly cut and dry case. Of course, our builder continued to fight it out until the bitter end ultimately leaving us struggling to maintain our faith in humanity. We
were able to come to an agreement at the final hour though and managed to close on December 11th! Hallelujah!
By the time we left the closing table, we were emotionally and physically drained to say the least. We made a couple of phone calls to update our family who had been praying for us relentlessly and then went home and spent the evening quietly at the condo. We did manage to go over to the house for a small glass of champagne though (I was trying very hard to make sure that our builder did not continue to ruin this process for us). That determination and mind set paid off the next day when it finally sank in that the struggle and fighting was over and we could move on in our dream home as an even stronger couple than when we started this process.
That weekend, to help us move on and put a different, more exciting feel into the home, we had my awesome friend Jen Smith (wife to super hero Josh who cured Adam's vertigo a few months ago) come over and take some pictures of us in the home before we moved in that day. It seemed a little crazy at first taking so much time that morning to snap some pictures when we had an entire condo with 4 years worth of stuff to move. However, after seeing the finished product, I am so so happy that we did. They are priceless moments that we will now have captured forever! Thanks Jen!
It took us two days to move all the large stuff out of the condo (just Adam and I) and another couple days to slowly move over the small things and clean the condo up. We definitely saved money not hiring movers but to say I was sore for a week is a gross understatement. It was definitely a bittersweet moment for us. We are extremely grateful and excited to move into the home but are sad to say goodbye to the place that shared our ups and downs for the past 4 years. That beachside condo is the first place we lived together engaged, the place where we shared our first 3 years of marriage, where Adam started a new career, and where I started 2 new jobs. It has seen our highs and our lows, our tears and our laughs. It was a great place to start our lives together as husband and wife and allowed us to live the dream of walking a block to the beach while helping shape who we are as a couple today. For that we will be forever grateful.
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| The first load all packed up: 12/13/14 |
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| morning tree view |
We spent the first night in our home saturday night (December 13th) on our mattress, on the floor, with no blinds on the windows, but it was OURS and the backyard view was AMAZING! There is a ton to do and the list is rapidly growing but we are in, it is ours, and we do not have to worry about looking at everything with a critical eye or waiting to be stabbed in the back anymore. Like I said before, we are so grateful for the opportunities that we have been blessed with and for all of our friends, family, and coworkers who have tolerated our craziness and emotional instability while supporting us and praying for us for 10 long months. We could not have gotten to this point on our own and in one piece without all of you. Your support and love does not go unnoticed and we are so thankful to you all. There is a ton to update y'all on and we look forward to being in a happier place now, enabling us to blog out hearts out!
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| Lighting the first fire in the indoor fireplace 12/20/14 |
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| First indoor fire 12/20/14 |
Thanks again, we love y'all!
