First of all, Happy belated Mother's Day! I wanted to give a little life update with some big news and a little clue why I've been MIA on social media lately! 

Recently, while Terry was on night shift, I noticed the red light on our home answering machine blinking. Often we forget to listen to these messages as it’s usually spam calls and anyone who knows us personally, calls our cell phones. For whatever reason, the blinking caught my eye and I hit ‘play.’ 

It was a commercial real estate agent from Vancouver calling for Terry. I didn’t recognize the name but passed the message along to Terry and didn’t think anything of it. The next morning, Terry came home from work and casually let me know,

“Oh, I called that number back. Someone is interested in buying our house. Would you want to sell?”

This is something we’ve talked about off and on for the past 4.5 years. It’s a really hard question to answer. There’s SO much behind what this house means to us. You see, we bought this house in our first year of marriage…. we were in our twenties and imagined by age 35 (which seemed so far off! ha!) we’d most likely have 3 kids. So we carefully picked a house we could grow into, one by the best local schools and amenities. We excitedly plugged along our 5-10 year plan and began working on the house to make it feel like home. We painted (inside and out), planted a garden, updated the kitchen, gutted and renoed the upstairs bathroom, updated the powder room, did the master bedroom, created a guest room, updated the windows/blinds/doors/counters/you name it. We poured so much love into this home. 

Then 5 years ago we lost our son Zachary and everything changed. Suddenly being in this home with his empty nursery felt so wrong. Nothing made sense. He should be here. The house felt so big and quiet. Watching all the children in the neighbourhood growing, playing and laughing, stung. For years on sunny days, behind the hum of lawn mowers our house would be filled with the echoes of neighbourhood children playing and laughing. We stayed hoping this stage in our grief would get easier and we'd add to our own family again. Anyone who has walked into our home remarks how great the layout is for a family. We completely agree, that is why we bought it and why we've stayed. Even though our neighbourhood is incredible, we never got to use this house how it's meant for, or how we envisioned. The feeling of emptiness in our home hasn't really left, even with Hurley! :) 

So when Terry asked me if I'd want to sell our home, what raced through my mind was the 9 full years we've spent here. Big years filled to the brim with memories. Our newlywed years. So many home reno projects. Mornings in the backyard having my coffee with Hurley.  Seasons of life spent here. Summers and winters, laughter and tears. Evenings cooking together. House guests. Neighbourhood deers. Gardening. This house was where we began our life together and became a family. These walls held our precious pregnancy with our son. This house represents SO many dreams. At what point do we decide we’d rather not walk by 3 empty bedrooms to get to our master bedroom any longer? At what point as much as we want the life we imagined in this home, do we accept what our life actually is? We have craved a fresh start for so long... and as horrible and painful as it is to take inventory of what is missing, how else can we move forward? Sitting there my eyes filled with tears. I knew it was time to embrace life today and take all our dreams along with us. 

I replied - “Yes.”

From there, the next week was a busy blur! We quickly worked through our to-do list to get our house ready to show when we weren’t listed or planning to sell. We listened to the answering machine message on Monday and by Saturday—a beautiful young family with 2 kids came through our home and fell in love with it. Their offer came in and we accepted. Subjects were removed this past week. The crazy part (other than suddenly selling our house) is that we have to be out by the end of May! So we are t-minus 2.5 weeks away!  We're still in a bit of shock about it all, as evidenced by not packing yet. I'm starting tonight! 

It's been a really emotional ride just getting to the point of accepting this opportunity for a fresh beginning and walking away from a house that has been home for 9 years. I truly can't believe we sold our house. It feels like I blinked and now I'm moving?! I can't imagine seeing this house empty as we pack up boxes and drive away for good. But I'm focusing on this next chapter. 

If you're reading this wondering-- okay so where will you go next? We're going to rent for a bit. Our dream has always been to build, so we're keeping our eyes open for a way to do that. We're just taking things a step at a time and we'll regroup once we're out of our home. It has all happened so fast it's a lot to process. We're going to watch for a new opportunity and see what adventure is ahead for us. I hope you'll come along this next chapter as we find out where we'll end up next! 

If you guys have packing or moving tips... please hit the comments below and let me know! I'd be so grateful. Also anyone in the Fraser Valley have boxes?! Time to get packin' :)                                           Subscribe & never miss a post

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