Part 2

About that phone call:

The people who used to own our house called us and said they heard we were going to move and would we possibly be interested in a house swap? Let me back up 8 years. Eight years ago this summer, we found a house for sale that we loved. We made an offer but when it came to selling the house, the owner's sister decided that she wanted the place. The owners said that the across the fence neighbor who had the same house/floorplan (different brick) were thinking of building a bigger house for their teenagers and we should contact them.

Well, we did and the rest is history! We fell in love with the house which seemed so big at the time. This family loved the house they were in but wanted something bigger for their children. They decided that they would build the same floorplan and add a game room. Since we were ready to move and they hadn't even started drawing up plans, they swapped houses with us! We were renting a small house on the outskirts of town.

Fast forward 8 years. Now the family's two children are grown and they are looking to downsize. My first reaction to the suggestion was that we were going to build on our lot but they were more than welcome to buy ours. Something about the conversation made me think. It just seemed to coincidental that we had been having reservations recently. Was this a sign? We thought we would check it out.

When we went to the house, it felt like bizzaro world. It was our house with small changes everywhere. The lot was beautiful with trees everywhere, although there wasn't much yard for the kids to play. Many of the things had been upgraded. It wasn't quite as big as the house we had drawn up for our lot, but it was bigger than this hosue and it felt like a good size. Some things bugged me. It needed a lot of updating and I was really wanting to move into a house that needed no updating. It was in a different school zone as well. There was a steep drop off in the back yard that would have been safe for teenagers, but not my almost 2 year old. We would have had to put in a deck. There were lots of things that I really liked about it as well, so the tough decisions started rolling in. The family had emotional attachment to this house and I felt bad about not taking them up on their offer. Also, wouldn't it be great to go ahead and move and not be thinking about building in a few years?

My parents suggested just for the fun of it, to look at every house in that price range and just see what we could find. We still weren't convinced that we weren't going to build on our lot, but the feelings of being sad if we didn't live there were diminishing. This got me thinking of a neighborhood close to my house that might have just what we were looking for. Matthew's best friend lives in this neighborhood and I took Matthew over to his friend's house recently. I had not been in the neighborhood in years and when I pulled up to their adorable house in a neighborhood with sidewalks and children running around, I thought, "Oh I wish we had thought of this neighborhood before we bought our lot. Oh well, too late now." This neighborhood was close to everything and we wouldn't have to move schools! I called up a realtor to see what was available in this neighborhood....