Moving On, Moving Out, Moving Up.

It's official - we are bidding farewell to our first little home! Here are Chris and I nearly 4 years ago, so excited about owning our first home!

And here is our whole little family, excited about the next step up!

We looked at this house twice just before Christmas and put an offer in the following week. Finally after haggling around for a bit, conditions were removed last Tuesday, and we get possession March 1st! We are both nervous about it, but still very excited. Moving in to this house will mean:

- We will be landlords. The new house has a basement suite that already has a tenant in it. We are also not selling our current house, we are going to rent it out to a friend of mine and her roommate.

- Being very frugal! Not that we don't strive to save our money and be frugal all the time, but we will have to put in a really good effort for the next year. We will have 2 mortgages now, and all that entails!

- The kids can have their own room (possibly....) This is still up in the air. The house does have a 3rd bedroom, but it is on the main floor and I had plans to use it as a toy/playroom. The way that these hooligan children of mine have been keeping me up at night lately though....I am getting very tempted to give Ella her own room on the main floor, keeping Eli upstairs with us. This would pretty much eliminate the problem we have of "One kid wakes the sleeping kid up while they are trying to fall asleep. Very loudly." Unless we experience a miracle in the next few weeks regarding bedtime, I'm afraid Ella will be relinquished to the main level bedroom. I mean, gifted with. not relinquished. Little monster.

- Main floor laundry and a DISHWASHER in the kitchen! Maybe this will entice me to be more on top of the dishes and laundry - we can only hope.

There are lots of other little things that we will need to adjust to, of course. We are moving closer to downtown, and right next to the hospital, so the area will be much busier than we are used to! But Chris will be able to walk to work in 10 minutes, and there are still some nearby parks that I can take the kids to. Here is our new house!

Sold!

This has been a good little house for us though, and it will be a bit sad to leave. When we moved in here, it was just Chris and I, and we both worked full time. Since then, we've had 2 kids, Chris has graduated from the U of R, I've become a stay at home mom, and Chris has a new job. This quirky little place has been good to us - with the 6 layers of wallpaper, the kitchen's 1950's linoleum, the 'brain' carpet that used to cover the upper floor (seriously, it looked like brains), the laughingly small counter space in the kitchen...oh yeah. It's been a nice little start. And now we're moving on, moving out, moving up!