We are moving...

...and I'm having all the feelings. 

We are moving to Washington state.  We are under contract on a house there...and our house here in Utah is under contract.  It all happened so fast!  And my head is kind of spinning.

We have been wanting to move to the northwest since Scott got out of the Air Force about five years ago.  We ended up taking a circuitous route - through Northern California and then Utah.  With COVID-19 Scott started working from home and his company found working remotely actually worked really well and Scott got approval to continue working remotely indefinitely.   

We quickly decided to move - it was already quite late in the summer by this time but we decided to go anyway.  All during quarantine I had been decluttering and purging throughout the whole house.  So when we suddenly found out we could move the house was in decent shape, but it still took a frantic week of cleaning and tidying to get it ready to go on the market.  It's quite a seller's market here these days, as it seems to be most places in coronavirus times.  There was a lot of interest in the house and we found a buyer pretty quickly, which was nice.  But, since it is a seller's market, there weren't many options in the Portland area for us to buy.  

We ended up putting an offer on a house in Washington in a school district we like and were able to get the kids registered for school just in time.

It has all happened so fast that I feel a bit whiplashed.   We came back from our house hunting trip to our Utah house and I felt a little sad. Our family has many good memories even though it has only been two years.  I feel sad about the kids leaving their friends and schools.  And we really liked our neighbors.  So it's bittersweet.

Here are a few pictures of our Utah house.  It was a heavy lift to get it to this beautiful, clean state.

Kitchen/dining area

Living room

Formal living/dining

Master bedroom

Master bath

The kids bathroom has never looked so clean

Basement Rec Room

Boys (G and J) bedroom

Matthew's bedroom

Anna's bedroom

Our garden

The yard.  Honestly Scott and I were getting tired of mowing this for hours each week.  It's a little over a half acre.  But it was a fun kid yard.

Here are some in process pictures for getting or house ready to sell...

The master bath shower tile was looking worn when we moved in.  Recently tiles started coming away from the walls so we re-did the shower and tub surround for selling.  Here it is part way complete.

The kids all worked hard to help get their rooms cleaned.  Usually I worked with them and we did quite a strong purge of the room.  We got rid of a lot of stuff and tried to organize what was left.

The garden is growing like crazy.  We spread out the pumpkins more than last year but they were still right on top of each other.  We feel like we over did it again.  And now the new buyers can enjoy the pumpkins. There will be lots of them.

Flowers I planted in the front flower bed.  They came back!

Anna is pretty good at organizing things and she helped me with some of the kids rooms.  She had a lot of trouble decluttering her own room though and required lots of help.  I guess its different when its your own stuff.

Anna and Grant volunteered to dust the top of the cabinets unsolicited.  They pooped out quickly and then I climbed up there to check their progress.  I saw how dusty it was and then couldn't unsee it, so spent the afternoon vacuuming up there.

John's crookneck squash plant bore fruit.

We did a lot of paint touch ups, including the shoe area bench.

Looks nice and white now.

Trying hard to decorate.  Decorating doesn't come naturally to me, but I know when I see something that I like.  This is where we ended up with the entry table.  Trying to use things we already had.  I had all my 4th of July decor up in the house so we left that up.

Master shower all finished

Shower bottom

Emma's room.  It gets messy again in a hurry, although I've worked with Emma a lot to try and keep toys organized.  It's a work in progress.

Matthew cleaning his own space.

We got things very clean, had pictures taken, got them clean again and then left town.  There was an open house and some other showings that weekend while we were gone and lots of interest in the house.  We were able to pick a buyer and go under contract pretty quickly, so that's good.  This all happened while we were in Oregon/Washington house hunting.

We spent the first few days there house hunting and then had some free time during the week.  Scott worked remotely from his parents house.

The kids and I went on some different adventures during the days.  Here we are on a walk picking some blackberries.

Getting treats and social distancing

Taking a lakeside walk another day

Everyone loved throwing rocks in the lake

We had a lot of fun exploring

Later on we swam in a pond in Vancouver.  The kids loved it there.  As we were talking to the kids about moving we told Emma there are lots of lakes and rivers in Washington and Oregon.  Emma said she would NEVER swim in a lake.  She quickly changed her mind when she saw this fun pond.  We ended up going there twice while we were there.

Everyone had so much fun.  We will have to go next summer and bring floaties.

Getting shave ice in Gladstone.  We walked there and back from Ma2 and Pa2's house while Scott was working.  It was a busy week of house hunting and we found a house in the end that should work for us.  Phew.  Now lots more moving jobs to do!