home is where the heart is

Home is where the heart is how the saying goes.  I would do well to remember that!  I have been stressing for the last year about where we are going to live.  I am stressed that we are not in a permanent home for our rambunctious toddlers. I hate carrying groceries and babies through the apartment.  I hate the arguments about what kind of house we should get and where it should be located.  We can't even get a house because we still own this stupid property in TEXAS!!! As I sit here tonight thinking of all the changes we have made in the last year, I am reminded of what is truly important.

So about a year ago, we were living in Texas with a set of 4 month old twins.  We never imagined we would be living in Texas but a good job opportunity took us to Frisco, TX. Man what a BIG change for our family! I had never lived more than 5 hours from family. We could take a quick trip to visit on a weekend.  After the move we were facing a minimum of a 12 hour drive to see family on my side and 15 hours to see family on Brandon's side. We lived in Frisco for six years and had begun to think of it as home: for now, and we made due with infrequent visits with family and old friends.

When we left Minnesota, Brandon promised that one day we could move back if we wanted. I never thought we actually would. I thought he was just telling me this to get me to stop crying about leaving.  No, I am not kidding, I think I cried for the first 7 hours of the trip and I was driving!!!   We never intended for Texas to be our final destination but we weren't sure we would ever be back in Minnesota, either. We knew that we wanted our kids to have the kind of life that we did with close relationships with our grandparents and extended family and living in Texas wasn't going to provide that.  We had decided, I would stay at home with the kids. So, for the first time in my adult life, I didn't have a paying job that prevented us from making a change.  Brandon was working from home so his office could be wherever we wanted as long as he had access to an airport. We decided this was the time to make a move.  We were going to move to Omaha Nebraska to be closer to my parents and sister as soon as we sold our house. During this process our plans changed a bit as Brandon decided on a new job that brought us back to Minneapolis a little sooner than we planned and my newly engaged sister moved cross country to Baltimore.

Well that one decision has been the best and one of the worst that we have made.  In terms of things that really matter it has been the best decision we could make for our family.  We now are closer to friends and family (with the exception of my sister moving to Baltimore at the same time we moved from Texas to Minnesota. Made me sad, but that is another post!) I am loving being at home with my twins and being back "home".  In other ways leaving our "temporary" home in Frisco brought some challenges as well.  After six years, we had made a life for ourselves there, had built a beautiful home that we had brought our babies home to and we had to leave all that behind.  We have had so many trials with selling our home in Frisco. Our first realtor was a nightmare to work with and we wasted so much time waiting for her to sell our place with the only suggestion to keep lowering the price, even though others were selling above our price.  Needless to say, the contract expired without a sale.  Our original plan was to move when the house sold and we were on our own time line.  Well with Brandon's new job suddenly we were moving to Minnesota in January!  Minnesota, January??? We must be crazy! We packed up our HUGE house in Texas and moved to a tiny tiny townhouse apartment with the majority of our stuff in a storage unit until our home sold.  We never thought we would be here longer than 6 months. We could do anything for 6 months right?  But that time frame came and went.  We had two accepted offers late this summer and we were so excited to be done dealing with a house in another state.  Unfortunately, real estate laws in TX allow the buyer to back out for any reason during the option period.  So basically both people were from out of state and liked out house enough to reserve it but then "just didn't love it" REALLY???? Ugh so here we are a year later and we have finally made it though the option period with our 3rd buyer.  We still have to wait to make sure that they secure financing, but I am knocking on wood, as I type that I feel we can finally move forward with establishing our new "forever" home.

I'm looking forward to creating our new home (if Brandon and I can agree on a new place).  I am thinking about the kids and I decorating for the holidays, playing in the backyard, hosting friends and family, and creating lasting memories.  I am very much a person that can get bogged down in the details and not look at the big picture.  There are always trials and tribulations as we make changes in our life, but what we must always remember is that home, is home where ever you are as long as you have the people you love.