Moving Up the Moving

After selling our Bend house in record time (72 hours!) our next Adventure in Williams-Land was to decide what our next move was going to be.....literally. 

Door #1--renting in Bend until the end of the school year, quickly became a non-option.  After multiple online searches, voicemails, and rental magazines....God made it abundantly clear this was not the plan.  Most options never even called back, and the few that did required a 9 or 12 month lease, or had no immediate openings and would put us on a waiting list for three months.  But......we were not exactly sad about this!  After over two months of long-distance family, we were not looking forward to another four months.

Door #2--buying a house in Salem was going to be nothing short of a miracle, due to the short timeline we were on since the Bend house sold quickly.  Bryan and the kids drove over the mountain in the snow, timing their departure just exactly between three MAJOR snowstorms that hit most of Oregon and Washington.  Our new realtor was a little squeamish about house-hunting in the snow, but we offered to drive our four-wheel-drive SUV ourselves.  By the time we started out, there was already 12 inches of snow and it was still falling.  Pretty sure we were the only house-hunters that weekend!  Bryan even had to help push out the car of one of the owners as they were leaving.  But.....God provided the miracle indeed, and we found a house that was practically perfect in every way.  The kids were even claiming their bedrooms and deciding where furniture would go!  AND this house was under-budget for our price range and essentially move-in ready.  We made an offer, counter-counter-counter offered (nail biting along the way) and within another 72 hours we signed for a new house!  Perfect location, perfect house, perfect price.....our God is PERFECT!

Door #3--clearly, abundantly clearly, God's plan is for us to move to our new permanent house and live TOGETHER.  So Door #3 never even got opened.

So, we're moving the entire family at Spring Break, instead of waiting until the end of the school year.  The kids are adjusting well to this idea, and while sad to be leaving their friends in Bend, they are on board with our new adventure in moving up the moving timeline.  Moving day will be the Friday before Spring Break, so we'll have a whole week to unpack and get to know our new neighborhood before they'll have to start school.  (Clarification: "we" means I go to work and leave lots of honey-do lists, ha!)  And hopefully, having two months of school before Summer Break will allow them to make friends before summer....actually, mom is hoping before the end of the week.