I have a lot of ideas of things to blog about in the near future but I want to start with a post about where we are today as a family. Literally - where we physically are. If you know us, you know that we always have projects going on. And you know that we've moved a lot over the past few years. I get a lot of questions - Where are you living NOW? Why did you guys sell that house?? When will your new house be finished? Wait, you went from THAT house to an apartment?! Hopefully I can answer some of those questions here and kind of give you a brief overview of our journey over the past 10 years as it pertains to houses, condos, hotels, and apartments. Yes, we've been in all of those (not to mention my one month in rehab living in Nashville!!!)
When we were first married, we lived in a smaller brick home on the east side of town.
We did a lot of work on that house - put down hardwood floor, ripped out carpets, painted, redid the master bathroom, etc. We started to outgrow that house though as the kids got older - or at least we thought we did. I think we always want bigger, better, and more right? We had a lot in Henderson that we had planned to build on in the future BUT as plans often do, this one changed. We were randomly looking at houses for sale just for fun and we found one in a GREAT neighborhood for an amazing price. We drove out to look at it and although it was an older home, the lot was PERFECT.
We loved backing up to a woods, we loved the big trees, Tommy was golfing at the time and it was a golf course neighborhood. We put in an offer and BOOM. We suddenly had a house that was built in the 70's and hadn't had many updates since. So we moved in and started making our plans for remodeling. We had lived there almost a year and had only made a few updates like painting when....
.....the house caught fire from our wood burning fireplace and it was a total loss. That was devastating and stressful and scary on so many levels. I will never forget how the inside of the house smelled afterwards. It was like a nightmare walking through trying to figure out what all had been lost. Going through and having to inventory everything was so time consuming and never ending. You don't realize what all people go through after a house fire until you have one happen to you. The night of the fire, we had nowhere to go so we went to a hotel in town. We stayed there for a week. That was interesting to say the least. Then we had to have somewhere to live temporarily while a new house was built, so we happen to find a condo for rent in our neighborhood. That would be perfect so we could be close to the building site of the new house that was being built where the old house was. So, while living in this condo....
.....the old house was being torn down and the lot was getting ready for us to rebuild on.
To keep a very long story short, while living in the condo at the end of 2010 - beginning of 2011, my alcoholism progressed and I became very sick and became a person that I no longer knew. Alcohol and my lifestyle ruled my life and nothing else mattered. Add to that the stress of building a new house and our life was very unmanageable. By the grace of God, my husband offered to send me to rehab in Nashville, TN at Cumberland Heights. So while my family was still in the condo and finishing up the new house, I was living here for 30 days....
Are you keeping up? Keep in mind all of this has happened in a matter of 10 years. Have I mentioned how much I hate moving?! When I came home from rehab in June 2011, our new home was almost complete and it was absolutely gorgeous. After it was in the Parade of Homes that year, we were able to move in. We loved it and it was so beautiful and perfect for us. So we thought.
While in this house a lot of things happened. I learned how to live sober which was the highlight of my life so far. :) My sister graduated high school, started college, and moved out. Our kids entered their teen and pre-teen years and started getting busier and busier and spending more time with friends and less time with us ;) My crazy husband (I say that with love!) had bright ideas to do some pretty big projects. Including a MASSIVE outdoor fireplace, a flagstone patio, a huge master closet and an underground garage. Yes, you read that correctly. Did I mention that we did all of these projects ourselves? Which then lead into Tommy's back becoming so bad that finally surgery was inevitable. He had spinal fusion surgery so we got to live in the basement of this house for a bit after that. :) I have a lot of great memories of this house. Truly. However, we started one day talking about the fact that someday we would want to downsize when the kids got older. And we thought....what are we waiting for? Why not do it now while we are still relatively young and can still enjoy life. Let's downsize and spend less money on this place and more time living. So, in the fall of 2014 we put this house on the market. Selling this guy was not easy. It was a huge house and a nice house and we had put a lot of money into it. We were not going to get what we wanted for this house but after 6 months on the market, we accepted an offer. Selling this house was a very stressful process on a lot of levels. We didn't think it would EVER sell. In the meantime we had found a lot in Newburgh that we really loved.
There is a whole lot more to that story as well but I will spare you. Once our house sold, we purchased the Newburgh lot and things were great. But wait? Where will we live until our new home is built? Enter apartment living:
This portion of it all has been very interesting because we went from our 5700 square foot house to a 1000 square foot apartment. The majority of our things are in storage sheds. We have three of those rented along with some stuff hanging out at various family members homes. We have only what we need at this apartment but it's teaching us that we don't need HALF of the junk that we own. And as a lover of purging things, I am looking forward to getting rid of a bunch of stuff.
So that is the cliff notes version of our living situations over the past 10 years. We've moved a lot. We've lived in a lot of different places. We've changed our minds a lot. We've learned a lot. We've learned what we do want and what we don't want. We've learned what is important and what is not.
We are hoping to start building our new home in the next month or so. We are currently in the process of finalizing floor plans, having our builder get bids, etc. To say that I am impatient is an understatement. I'm very ready to just be SOMEWHERE and have all of our stuff in ONE place. I am not sure what this new journey of building again is going to bring us but I will keep you all updated. No, I don't think our lives are so exciting that you all want to hear every detail but I do know that people think we are nuts and like to hear about our projects so....here you go. HA!
I look forward to doing more writing now on this blog. As I said, I have a lot of ideas. This is going to be a blog about my life, my thoughts, my world. And my thoughts can be pretty weird sometimes so just stick with me. ;)
