Here’s a pic of me with our realtor’s sign when we sold the condo we owned in Calgary in October 2004 and with the pending move (basically two nights left in our current home!), it’s got me thinking back on other places I’ve laid my head…
0-5 (?) – my parents live in a rental duplex in Indian Head and we spend summers at farm in camper
5-17 – parents buy newly built house in Indian Head (which I live in until graduation and they are still in to this day)
17-18 – Luther College Dorms, University of Regina
18 – Language Institute Dorms, University of Regina (one semester while taking my language requirement)
19 – Living with High School Friend in His Family Condo Near U of R
20-22 – Living with Various Roommates in Condo My Family Buys Near U of R When We Realise Its Better to Have Others Paying Our Mortgage (Especially With My Sister Following Me to University) Instead of Their Kids Paying Other People’s Mortgages
22 – Spend One Semester Living in Dorms While on Exchange in York, England
22-28 – Back to Family Condo (Which Is Where I First Met Shea)
28-31 – Bankview, Calgary – rental condo for a year after Shea gets her first nursing job after University then a condo Shea and I bought for 2.5 more years
31 – Move Back to Sask, Buy Our Current House
33 – Keep House and Rent to Friend of a Friend While Shea and I Move to London, Ontario for my MLIS, Live in Rental Apartment Right Beside University
34 – Return to Saskatchewan and Get Hired by Southeast Regional Library So Spend Weekdays Living With Shea’s Folks in Weyburn and Weekends Back in Regina In Our House
36 – Hired Full-Time by Regina Public Library and Have Lived in the Same House Ever Since Until…
46 – Buy A House That’s A Bit Newer, A Bit Bigger and A Bit Nicer Than the House We’ve Lived In (and Loved) for fifteen years!
We’ve got our house listed, have already had a handful of showing and I find myself watching videos like this in the small hours of the night (not bad advice but not sure it’s highly top secret knowledge either!) 😉
We likely won’t be permanently into our new house until later next week but that doesn’t mean, now that we have possession, we can’t start getting settled in!
I admit that between things we need for our new house and the usual Christmas pressure to “buy, buy, buy!”, I had a fairly loaded Amazon cart on the go.
But I read this article and just couldn’t do it – I mean, I know most corporations treat workers poorly and do anything in pursuit of profit but Amazon takes it to an AI-enhanced other level.
Feeling sentimental knowing we won’t have Christmas here this year, I was looking through my oldest photos for a picture of one of our first Christmases at our current house.
Unfortunately, since we bought our house in 2004 and our first digital camera in 2006 (and all our old-school photo albums are in boxes somewhere), I couldn’t find anything.
I did find this photo from 2007 though – in between 2004 when we bought our first house and today when we bought our new house, my cousin (pictured below with baby Pace), came out, married the love of his life and just recently announced that he and his husband are expecting their first baby in the spring!
His news reminded me of this great story of a local playwright who went through a similar surrogate pregnancy (who I have as a FB Friend and his regular posts about “Bette” are one of the only things that make Facebook bearable!) It also shows just how quickly our world is becoming more progressive in so many ways.
Attached Garage
Yesterday, I wrote about how we stupidly wanted to make sure we had a garage when we bought this house but ended up buying a house with a detached garage we rarely parked in. We made sure that our new house has an *attached* garage!
Extended “Backyard” One of the things we’ll miss about our current house is that it had a large backyard with lots of green space. Our new house has a smaller backyard and I was sad about that until I realised we *back onto a green space* so our “backyard” technically extends for a huge distance including to a nearby playground and basketball court! Plus the green space behind us is zoned in a way that it will never be developed so we’ll have extended green space behind us forever! We’ll also be able to go out for walks or cross-country skiing (er, once we acquire skis – hello, Santa? – right out our back door!)
Our Sanctuary Probably one of the biggest things that drew us to this house is that it has a master bedroom over the garage with both a walk-in closet and a large en suite master bath. This will make getting away from the kids so much easier than locking our current bedroom door and holding pillows over our heads until the screaming stops! 😉
Opportunity for Upgrades/Decluttering
If I’m completely honest, there’s a lot of things Shea and I were unlikely to do in our own house – downsize and declutter fifteen years of accumulated “stuff” and get away from the easy familiarity of our long-time satellite and Internet providers. Moving has given us an excuse to look for the absolute best, top-of-the-line providers in both areas which we would’ve been unlikely to change if we maintained status quo.
Jetted Tub In my post about things we’ll miss, I didn’t mention the two person tub that was literally the first major reno we did in our new house since we’d loved the jetted tub we had in our condo in Calgary. This tub wasn’t jetted but it was incredibly relaxing and we spent a lot of hours in it (er, separately of course!) Our new house doesn’t have a two-person tub but it does have a single jetted tub and at this point in our marriage, that’s probably more appealing anyhow! 😉
Our realtor had a photographer come to our old/current house today to take photos in preparation for our house being listed later this week and it brought home, perhaps more than any other step, that soon, the house we’ve called a home for fifteen years will likely soon no longer be ours.
As excited as we are to start another chapter of our lives in a new house, of course, we’re sad to leave this one behind.
Beyond the sentimental reasons of being the house where we raised our kids, had so many family milestones and even where we completed various renovations, there are some practical reasons I’m sad to leave our house behind.
In no particular order, here are five of them:
“The Overhang”
This is a weird one but one side of our house has an overhang meaning that there’s a about a two foot covered portion along the side of the house that created a perfect spot for year-round storage of lawn chairs, toy boxes and more that was fairly sheltered from rain, snow and even sun.
“The Counter”
We have a fairly large downstairs bathroom that doubles as our laundry room and one project Shea’s dad completed for us was installing a counter over the the length of the (front load) washer and dryer which gave an incredible amount of space for folding laundry and just storing laundry baskets. Our new house has a laundry area but it doesn’t have nearly as much room as we had in our house so I’m not sure how we’ll fold and sort laundry. (Plus since our laundry room is downstairs in our current house and on the main floor of our new one, Sasha’s really worried because she can’t “throw my laundry over the rail to downstairs anymore!”) 🙂
“The Step”
One of my dad’s contributions to our current house was to replace an aging front step. He was able to make it a bit narrower than our bulky/wide previous step, put on very nice rails and underneath created a perfect spot to store our garbage and recycling bins that we haul to the curb every week. Our new house has the bins behind a fence gate at the side of the house which is a lot less convenient than our current arrangement.
“The Storage Locker”
When we were looking for a house, one of the things that was an absolute “must” on our list was a garage. Unfortunately, we lacked the foresight (or possibly the funds) to make sure that garage was an *attached* garage. We bought a house with a detached garage that, because it was basically behind the house down a single car driveway, we rarely used – either because Shea and I couldn’t coordinate our leaving times for work or we’d risk having to shovel a long driveway in winter if we parked in it or, probably the main reason, we didn’t use it and will miss it – it basically became a huge storage shed with all kinds of toys, equipment including a lawn mower and snow blower, and tons of other crap (much of which we thankfully got rid of prepping for the move). Our new house has an attached garage and we’re really excited about actually parking inside going forward but we’re also nervous about losing a lot of the space we had for storage in our current garage.
“The Patio”
One of our earliest renos was having rubber paving put down on the patio stones along the side of our house opposite the driveway/garage. Combined with a new fence we put in a few years back, some strategic lighting and a propane barbecue, this area on the sunny south side of the house became our private sanctuary where we’d often have a drink after work, eat meals or sometimes just sit and read on a summer’s day.
I know that our new house will have many benefits (hmm, future blog post idea?) and unique features we don’t currently enjoy but it’ll be tough to try to replace some of the things we’re leaving behind as well. 🙁
I think I’ve probably posted this old viral video before but as we prep to move into our new house, it felt appropriate for a few reasons – the title “Home” obviously but also for how it reminds me of Sasha who’s increasingly into music and has taken to making up her own songs to sing!
