House decisions

I should have known when I started blogging about making house decisions that I was getting to attached.  Can you blame me... for 9 months we have been talking about, planning, prepping, and meeting with the builder about our new home... we were in a contract, we had an estimated move in date.  I knew things could change and that there were still some variables that might effect the new home, but I was finally letting myself get excited and imagine life with our growing family in our new home.


Welllllll it happened.  Life came into play and we have to back out of the house.  Its been official for  about 2 weeks now... we told the builder and the lawyer is working on voiding the contract.

If I wrote this post back on Thanksgiving weekend, it would be much more emotional.  When we first really started talking about backing out, I was devastated.  I cried a lot for 3 days.  But I have calmed down and I see the reasons for making this decision, and I know in my heart its the right decision.  So instead of writing about how I "feel", here are the logistics of the decision.

1.  Mike lost his job... even though we know he will get something soon and by April he will be working again (fingers crossed, he has some offers on the table), it is still very scary to make a huge financial investment and decision when Mikes career is not settled.

2.  If Mike gets a new job, we don't know with what company, what he would be making, what area he would be working in... so much unknown..

3.  Our mortgage commitment is technically void because it was given based off Mikes income and history with the old company.

4.  We were at a point where we had to make our next deposit and pay for all of the upgrades we picked out in full.  That would mean putting a good chunk of money into the house, with no guarantees that we would get a new mortgage.  It became a huge risk.

5.  We still didn't sell our home, and we haven't had any offers.  Back in the summer and early fall we felt confident we would sell our home.  But we dropped the price twice, had a lot of people looking, but not one single offer.  If we didn't sell the house we would be faced with another huge decision to make (rent it?  sell to Jerome? back out of the new house?). 

It just hit us that we had a million signs surrounding us and they all pointed to backing out of the new house :(

Once we made the decision, we went right into project mode to do as much as we can to optimize the space in this house.  We moved the office into our master bedroom, set up a big boy room for Ryan in the old office (conveniently already painted in sports colors and pinstripes), we started to set up Ryan's old room as a nursery, we cleaned out closets to have a place for the increased amount of toys and baby gear we have (especially with Santa coming next week), and we pretty much started to clean out every drawer, cabinet, and closet in the whole house to remove clutter and make space.

I'm still sad about...
-Not having the basement
-Not having a bigger property in a bigger neighborhood
-Not having a master bathroom... I can't image sharing our little bathroom with a toddler and an infant
-Not being neighbors with the Eberhardts

Reasons I"m happy about this decision...
-Gives us some financial freedom and flexibility
-We took the house off the market!! Woo Hoo... no more showing it and trying to keep it clean
-We could finally set up the baby things and start settling in
- We will still have the pool this summer!

The slogan of the past few months has been "Everything happens for a reason"  ... and I am totally believing in that.  Things seem to be working themselves out and decisions made on their own... so I am going with the flow and trying to have confidence that its all happening for a reason and it will bring us to where we are suppose to be in the future!