We're Moving!

It's true- after 3 years of cushy living in the basement of Spencer's parents house, we finally are MOVING!!! We signed the contract to our new place on Monday and started moving things in the following day. Since Spencer has to work all week, I'm moving things on my own over to the new house in small loads (we have so many toys for the boys, it's INSANE! Moving with three little kids is quite the chore- they own way more stuff than both Spencer and I combined!); Spencer will have his friends help him move the big furniture next Monday.

After some deliberation, we decided to back out of our contract and not buy the house I already mentioned in a previous post. I'm actually very relieved we didn't buy that house in Orem; I started having a lot of 2ND doubts about it, too many in fact to list here. It's true the house was in an excellent neighborhood, a fabulous location, and it had a huge yard and the house itself was huge with lots of bedrooms, but it just wasn't a place I could see myself settling into (I think I was wearing my "missionary goggles" when we decided to buy the place and sign the contract). We lost our earnest money when we terminated the contract, which kinda stinks because I could have thought of about a thousand other things I would have liked to use it for, but oh well... we learned an expensive lesson about home buying, and that is not to go with our first impulse but instead wait a little while after touring a house before placing any bid.

We decided for now, the best thing for us to do is lease a house for a year, during which time we can watch the housing market and hopefully find a house either here in Utah or maybe even possibly out of state (perhaps Ohio???) we really would like to own. Some of our friends have asked us why we've chosen to lease if we're not going to buy, since Spencer's parents aren't in hurry to have us leave, but truth is, regardless of whether we pay our own mortgage or someone else's, it's time for us to be out on our own.

We found a townhouse we're leasing for the year up in American Fork; we have the option at any time through out the year or just after our one year lease is up to leave, continue leasing the home or actually buy it. We really like these options, since we'll get to have a "feel" for the place before making any big decisions like buying it. It's part of a brand new development called Liberty Cove Park (click on the red text if you want to see more abt. it), just off of 5Th East. It has 2000 sq. ft., 4 bedrooms, a HUGE kitchen, upgrades through out the entire house and a pretty big patio for the kids to play on; there is also a huge lawn (we won't have to mow thank goodness) our patio leads onto that everyone can share (anyone care to have a get together for a barbecue and game of ultimate Frisbee??? Noah calls our new house the "house with the park"). I'm thrilled with the location of our new place, it's just a quick drive to every store imaginable; the freeway and State Street are close by; it's still not far from Spencer's parents house,; it's just 5 minutes from Tricia's house and the Timpanogas temple and there's three big parks in the neighborhood, one of which is the American Fork skate park!!! It's just around the corner from where we'll be living; Noah was pretty excited when we drove past it to our place yesterday; I guess we'll be spending a lot of time there, which really means, I suppose I should be prepared for lots of scrapes and bruises right? The old tabernacle is just a couple of blocks away and so is the library.

We're pretty excited to have a place of our own- (I'm especially excited about my kitchen space since I won't have to share it; although, I'm pretty sure there will be cobbwebs on my dishes and cookware that's been boxed up in storage forever now... YUCK!) ; we'll be even more excited once we're actually settled into it!... once we are I'll be sure to add pictures of the place.