Sadly, as soon as we were in Utah, the seller of the house we were negotiating for pulled her house off the market. We started putting in offers on other houses we had liked, but they were all under contract by that point. We started to stress. I began looking online every day, scrambling to find a home before we moved to Maine the following month. We really felt that buying a home would be in our family's best interest (in comparison with the high cost of renting for 4 years), and we didn't want to have to move into a rental and then move again, so we were getting desperate!!!
One day, I came across a house that looked nicer than others in our price range. It had just come on the market that day. The only problem: it was a foreclosure. But I called our broker, he looked at it that day, and we decided to put in an offer that day, sight unseen. After our offer was accepted, we began wondering if we'd made the right choice. I had nightmares that we would arrive in Maine to find an old, abandoned house in shambles, full of mold and cobwebs. Many people said we were crazy.
When we arrived in Maine a few weeks later, I was still feeling stressed and unsettled. We drove straight to the house and looked around, which helped settle my nerves, but then we learned that, due to it being bank-owned and changing hands right before closing, the title was missing, so we couldn't close on the house as planned. Frustrated and stressed, we again wondered whether or not we were making the right decision. Doubt and fear filled our hearts as we waited a few days for the missing title, and deliberated over what to do.
One evening, while still waiting to close, our agent said we could do a walk-through of the house. When we arrived and entered, a beautiful feeling of peace and serenity - and a feeling of "being home" filled me. I told the Mr. how I felt, and he said he felt the same. At that point, the doubts and fears left, and we proceeded with the sale excited and comforted that we had, in fact, found our home.
The following day, Friday, the paperwork finally came together in the final hour, and we were able to close on our house Friday evening, the final appointment of the day, after an exhausting roller coaster of a week. (Since we were completely out of money and couldn't afford a hotel while we waited for our home purchase to go through, we'd been essentially 'living' at a nearby park/forest and eating at McDonalds. Angel had a stomach flu and we were all anxious to get settled.) We were thrilled!!!
Here we are, the day we moved in.
Our children affectionately named our house "Brownie", after the brown cedar shingle siding. We were SO excited to have a home. Our children spent months running through the empty rooms. We rearranged furniture and had so much fun painting walls, remodeling the bathrooms, landscaping the yard and filling the backyard with fairy houses and vegetable gardens.
Over the next four years, Brownie would be a venue for various social events, including Christmas Caroling parties, Little League dinners, Birthday parties, Game Nights, Book Clubs, Baby Showers, Graduation Parties, Play dates, Summer slip-n-slide days, and more! It would hold yard sales, lemonade stands, rock sales and back yard trampoline sleepovers. It would keep our family cool through many hot summers, and warm, safe and dry through many long, cold winters!!!
Some of our favorite memories in Brownie:
~The kids doing musical parades around the living room / kitchen / hallway loop. (Mom)
~Doing construction together as a family! Tearing downs walls/doors/etc and rebuilding them, finding different types of wallpaper/carpets, and having the children doodle and draw on walls before we painted them. (The Mr.)
~Playing Hide and Seek in the Dark and Sardines (Angel)
~Having lemonade stands on the corner (Angel)
~Beating pinatas at our birthday parties (Grins)
~Learning to ride our bikes on Bartlett St (Grins)
~Dancing around the house (Wiggles)
~Doing the slip n slide and jumping on the trampoline (Wiggles).
It's plain to see that many wonderful memories were made at 32 Bartlett Street, our Brownie. "She" will be dearly missed, and will forever hold a special place in our hearts. I tend to be quite sentimental, and was having a very difficult time letting go of our first house, and the home in which my children have grown. But fortunately, I received an impression with the sweet, loving reminder that my precious memories of Brownie are special not because of the house itself, but because of the lovely people with which I shared the home and memories - and thankfully, I get to keep them forever!!! :) That has made it much easier to say goodbye to Brownie. Still - we will remember the memories which were made there!
Here we are the day we sold Brownie
Pictures of Brownie when we moved in:
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Pictures of Brownie AFTER we added our own personal touches:
We love you, Brownie! Miss you already! :)
