Tuesday, July 5, 2016

New Home, New School, New Chapter for the Ishum Quads!

We had a VERY busy June! While it was full of amazing things, I'm really glad that July is here. I need a break!

We started off by moving! FINALLY!! We listed our house for sale at the beginning of February, and spent 3 long months with it on the market. In the grand scheme of things, 3 months really isn't that long, but when all the rest of the houses in the metro are selling in 48-72 hours, and we are having to keep a house that contains four 5-year-olds spotless, it makes for a very, long stressful period on the market. On the upside, my house never looked better than when it was listed. We finished fixing it up, and I actually looked at Sean and said, "Do we really have to move? This is a great house!"

Seriously, look how clean my living room was. Couch covers do amazing things for old furniture!

It totally was a great house. I loved our first home. It was where we figured out how to be married to each other without killing one another, the house that saw me come home from baby showers in tears because we couldn't get pregnant, the house where we brought home 4 medically fragile babies and prayed that they would survive, the house where our kids learned how to walk and talk....that house was so full of memories and blessings! I *may* have cried when we left. If it hadn't been for needing to improve on the school district, I wouldn't have minded staying a little longer.

We do have a great new house though! It's actually pretty close to the same size as our last one, but the layout is much better. I guess that's the difference between a house built 60 years ago and a house built 15 years ago. After waiting 3 months to go under contract on our house, we ended up having....oh....about 1 day to find a new one. We picked out 5 houses online, went and saw 4 of them (the key in the lockbox didn't work for one of them), and then went home and picked the one out of the bunch that would work best for us. AND we did that with all four of our kids in tow. No easy feat! It was quite the undertaking, and we only had one almost-emergency room visit in the process when Abby fell off of one of the front porches onto her head/shoulder on the concrete driveway below. I think next time, our goal is to 1) NOT have kids with us while house shopping and 2) have more than 1 day to find something. (In case you were wondering, the house that Abby had her accident at was not the one we went with. Lol!)

I have moved before as a kid, and then moved myself into Sean's house when we got married, but it's a WHOLE other ballgame when you are one of the adults in charge and have to move your own kids. I was ignorantly unaware of how much work it would be. Caleb had the hardest time of all of them as we started packing up. As his little world changed, he started to obsess about house showings, whether he could take his doggy (lovey) with him, and whether he was going home that day or going somewhere else. He has adjusted pretty well since we moved here, but I know it wasn't easy for him.

And on top of that move, we also enrolled the kids in our new school district's summer school program. Their summer school started on a Monday and our move happened on a Tuesday. It was a week of a LOT of changes for our family. I asked one of the kids' Pre-K teachers if that was too much in a 24 hour period, and she suggested that it might actually work in our favor, especially with Caleb. Since we had been telling them that they would get a new house AND a new school, doing it at the same time would probably make more sense to him than doing it a couple of months apart. So we went with it! Sure enough, Caleb didn't question it at all. It just seemed "right" in him mind to do it that way.

They were exhausted by the end of the week, but it actually was the BIGGEST blessing to have them occupied with school while we were trying to get boxes into the house and bunk beds set up.
Caleb....15 minutes after arriving at his new home. Lol!

We are so grateful for the friends who showed up to help us move on a Tuesday and Wednesday! It's really hard to find available people during the work week, but because the buyers of our house wanted to take possession on a Friday, and we couldn't get into our new house until the Tuesday before, we had no choice. A couple of friends actually took time off from work to show up and help us. It was unbelievably kind of them to do so! Many thanks to Tim, Alan, Brian and Brittany, Renee, Julie, and Sarah for showing up to help us do everything from moving boxes to setting up bunk beds (each had 200 pieces, and of course we needed two of them. ACK!), to helping us get our kitchen set up and usable. I really, REALLY planned on taking more photos, but I totally spaced it. Out of everyone who helped us, this is the *only* photo I have of anyone. Definitely a fail on my part. If you aren't in this photo, you are no less appreciated than these ladies!
Brittany, me, and Renee halfway through moving day.

You know what else is a fail? Falling flat on your face 20 minutes into moving. With my true sense of impeccable timing, I managed to severely sprain my ankle at 12:20 pm. We started the move at 12:00. I actually thought I broke it, but thankfully it was still usable even though it was incredibly painful. I think we all just need to admit that I am no good when it comes to stepping down off of anything. Remember when I broke my leg 2.5 years ago? Yep, stairs. This time, it was stepping off of the edge of the bathtub. I tell my kids repeatedly to never, ever stand on the edge of the bathtub because they might slip and fall. Apparently, I can't follow my own directions. I climbed up there to pull down the shower curtain, and when I stepped off, I landed VERY wrong, and felt a pop. I don't know if you can tell how bad the swelling was (it had actually gone down a little bit in this photo), but it looked like I had a baseball attached to the outside of my ankle. It took a good 5 days or so before I could walk without it hurting too much.
After the swelling had started to decrease.

I have a fear of stairs, steps, ledges....really anything that requires stepping down. I think that's fair at this point in my life!

So all of that to say....we have successfully moved our family to a new home with lots of help from our friends! We then spent the next 2 weeks scrambling to get things set up because Sean and I headed to Salt Lake City for a week for the Young Living International Convention. We needed for our babysitters to at least be able to move through the house while taking care of our kids instead of spending the whole time crawling over boxes. While we got it to the point of livable, It still feels like it's going to take months to dig back out from all of these boxes. So. much. stuff. It makes me want to get rid of everything that isn't used daily and become the ultimate minimalist.
Ellie, Elijah, Daddy, Caleb, and Abby

I think it's going to be worth it though! Our house is laid out so much better, I can start teaching classes in our home instead of always finding a coffee shop, and our kids go to one of the best elementary schools in the district we are in. We are so grateful for our blessings!
Ellie, Daddy, Elijah, Caleb, and Abby

 We started purging last June, started packing up "extra stuff" last November, listed in February, sold at the end of April, and moved in June. Well worth it to finally be in our new home.....but.....I think I might not ever want to move again. At a minimum, someone else gets to take down the shower curtain next time

4 comments:

  1. Welcome home! I'm excited to follow your adventures in your new home!

    ReplyDelete
  2. So excited for this new beginning & all the new memories yet to be made. ..although you definitely made the 1st within the first 20 minutes of moving! Blessings to you all!
    -Rachel

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love reading your blog Rebecca! I am so, so happy for you, Sean & the kiddos! Can't wait to read about your adventures in your new home!! Congratulations!!

    Angela

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello! So good to see this news! I know you are happy to be settled. I can only try to understand moving with 4 5-year olds. My partner and I are in the middle of the selling/moving/buying process ... I sold my house in March, moved everything I own to a storage unit; her house closes in two weeks, so we're trying to pack everything in her house and begin moving to our new house later this week. (So lucky the seller of our new house was okay with renting to us before the closing date!) But you are NOT kidding about STUFF!!! Agh! Putting two houses' worth of stuff into one house is going to be a challenge ... and will probably result in the biggest garage sale ever! But we are looking forward to the new house, new location, etc. Good luck as you move ahead! Hang in there!

    ReplyDelete

We would love to hear what you think! Please know that all comments are on a slight delay as we approve them on our end. Thanks for commenting!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...