Four Seasons

 One house in four seasons:

But Dreams Do Come True

This is the cake Jacob's former employees gave him on his last day of work. Read it carefully and then tell me that isn't the best thing you've seen today.

Well hello there. Thank you for stopping by. If you have seriously been checking up on my blog often enough that you would notice this long overdue post, then hats off to you, my friend. Hats off to you.

It has been a year (almost exactly!) since my last blog post. How do I even BEGIN to know what to talk about? Part of me wants to just move past all of that and talk only about the latest updates, but...how do I even talk about today without explaining how we got here?

So let's rewind a little bit. To be exact, let's rewind one year.

Jacob had just accepted a job as Library Director for a tiny little county in central Virginia. They asked him to start on July 1st. That gave us a very few short weeks to try to sell our home in northern VA and find a new one. Bad news: after nearly five years of having tiny kids in the house plus two and a half years of homeschooling, our house was a disaster. It was nowhere close to being ready to go on the market. We got to work!

Here is what we accomplished in the forty days between when Jacob accepted the job offer and our townhouse went on the market:

-Powerwashed house exterior

-Removed rose bushes and planted new bushes (Gah! My rosebushes! I loved those!)

-Put in a brick edge in front garden and re-mulched

-Replaced storm door

-Painted front door

-Hung wreath

-Painted back deck

-Patched all wall cracks (and there were a lot...)

-Painted all interior walls and some doors/baseboards

-Painted stair banister

-Replaced all hall light fixtures (3)

-Replaced light fixture in dining room

-Replaced all bathroom light fixtures (3)

-Replaced all toilet seats (3)

-Replaced all bathroom faucets (3)

-Removed fiberglass shower in master bathroom and replaced with tile (hired out this job)

-Removed an enormous amount of our belongings...I would guess about 75%

-Removed most pictures/wall decor

-Converted playroom back into dining room

-Bought new towels, bedding, and couch cushions

-And cleaned like that house had never been cleaned before

I had wanted to paint the front door the entire time we lived there, but of course I only got to it when we were selling the house. Such a lovely color, too! *sigh*

For the last forty-five minutes before the photographer came to take our listing photos, I was frantically carrying load after load of junk out of the house. When the van got too full, I started putting everything in the street. I am clearly a very classy person.

And that's not all! Because while all of THAT was going on, we were also...

-Holding my end-of-year piano recital

-Completing Abby's end-of-year homeschool testing

-Hosting Jacob's parents (who helped tremendously!)

-Celebrating Abby's birthday

-Getting Abby ready to be baptized

-Training for my second year of music teaching

-AND making two trips to our new town to research/figure out where we wanted to live

It was chaotic and crazy and overwhelming and terrible, and just when I'm starting to question whether ANYTHING can seriously be worth THIS amount of work, Virginia starts doing what it does best...looking absolutely beautiful. And then I start to REALLY wonder whether moving is a smart  decision.

All of these places where we have established memories and traditions, places we have come back to again and again, it is now time to say goodbye to and that just feels TOO HARD. How can we face it?

Meanwhile the kids are being kids. They are emotional and needy and do not want to leave their home. We are trying to stabilize them and give them the love and support they need while also trying to get done a mega-long to-do list. It feels impossible.

We pushed through the doubt and discouragement and exhaustion until the day finally came that (ready or not) our house went on the market.

Now I'll tell you what I was NOT going to do: try to KEEP my house clean for viewings with three little kids in the house. No. No. No. I had been TRYING to keep my house clean for five years and we all saw where that got me. Instead we opted for skipping town. We rented a house in our new town and left the day the house went on the market.

Sweet relief. It was amazing to be able to let go of the stress we'd had for the previous five weeks. That night the kids caught fireflies in the yard of the rental and I felt incredible peace. It was the start of something good. I could feel it.

We bunkered down in that rental for the next few days, relaxing and exploring our new town and relishing in the fact that we didn't have to worry about disturbing neighbors. THAT was the sweetest relief of all! Four days after our house went on the market we were under contract for a price higher than listing price. Two days after THAT, Jacob started his new job.

A new (and much bigger!) office for Jacob

Determined to sneak up on the baby rabbit that lived in the yard of the rental

And in the meantime, of course, we were looking for a new home! It was discouraging. There were not many to choose from, and while we saw some that were very lovely, none of them felt "right" for us. 

When we finally saw The One, Jacob and I were both skeptical at first. It was undoubtedly a beautiful location, it was zoned for the school we wanted our kids to attend, it had the square footage we were looking for as well as the acreage we wanted, it was as private a location as we could ask for, and the price was right. But it was also A MESS. It looked like every single thing would have to be fixed or replaced: the doors, the windows, the chimney, the deck, the floors, the toilets, the sinks...on and on. It had clearly not been maintained in a long, long time. Was this really the house we wanted?

There is a crepe myrtle tree to the side of the driveway. As I walked around the property I saw two hummingbirds flitting in and out of it. I was a little taken aback. I walked around and behind the carport to have a full view of the mountain on the north side of the property. As I stood there gazing, I saw a hawk circling above the treeline. It was so unbelievably quiet. It was so peaceful. I felt hidden away in my own little paradise. That moment decided it for me. We put an offer in shortly afterwards and it was accepted.

The next several weeks were spent driving back and forth between our two homes, saying goodbye to friends and finishing everything that needed to be done in the north, and also getting everything ready in the south. It was a crazy, hectic summer.

My beloved dwarf blueberry bushes, that I planted in the front yard of the townhouse in 2020, produced exactly five blueberries in the summer of 2021.

Exactly enough for everyone to try one before saying goodbye!

Jacob catches a firefly

Perfectly dry before and after, the sky poured down rain for the exact five minutes that the piano movers were moving my piano. 

Sometimes Mom just cannot make us feel better

And then...*poof*...just like that, it was time to say goodbye to the townhouse and the town that I loved so much.

That townhouse was the longest I've ever lived anywhere in my adult life. It sheltered my babies through their itty bitty years. It's the home we brought our youngest baby to after she was born. There were years worth of laughter, hugs, and joy in that house. It was very difficult to say goodbye.

And if that wasn't hard enough, add to it the worst pain of moving...the actual MOVING of everything!

In a hurry to return the moving truck before we were charged for another day, we quickly emptied it by putting everything in the yard. Then Jacob left to return the truck while I worked on moving everything into the house by myself. While I was working the sky let loose a furious torrent of rain. I kept moving boxes until the thunder started.

I had hoped I got everything inside that couldn't get wet, but it was hard to tell in the dark and the rain. The next morning we found a soaking box of books left in the yard. We set them up in the den to dry and, amazingly, they all recovered just fine.

Uggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

This was undoubtedly the worst move of my life and I will never, ever, EVER move again. If there was anything that made it feel better, it was that we were moving to THIS house.

There are no houses, roads, or other signs of civilization visible from any place on our property except this barn. The only things you can see are sky, trees, mountains, and open grass. It is bliss.

 

It is an absolute mess. There are so many things wrong with it. We are very slowly working our way through it and it is often overwhelming. BUT...I love it. I don't think a single day in nine months has gone by without us sighing in contentment. I LOVE this house.

If I could have had a conversation with a genie and stated all the things I wanted, I would have asked for a safe place to raise my kids, in a loving and warm community, with enough room for my kids to explore and pretend in their own little world, and with enough seclusion that we could be left to ourselves without worrying about disturbing the neighbors. I never would have believed that such a place actually existed. Also, I've never met a genie. But I seem to have some sort of fairy godmother looking out for me, because here are all the things that I wanted and more. It is a magical, perfect little paradise.