The Wojos: November 2010

Have you ever thought about where else you would like to live other than where you currently are? How about living in the country versus living in town or vice versa? Do you imagine being closer to your family, or farther from? Would you like to build your own house some day, or would you rather make your home in an already established dwelling?

Curt and I have discussed these questions hypothetically many times. We appreciated the distance we lived from our parents - not too close, but not too far, either, so just right - and both agreed that we would never want to live extremely close to them for many reasons. We knew people who lived practically right on top of their parents and wondered how they didn't go crazy!When we moved up to the Staples/Motley area, I was sad to move from River Falls, the town I'd known as another home since college (not to mention my sister, my best friend in the whole world, who only lived 10 minutes away on the other end of town), while he was antsy to get out of the apartment, then our Staples quadplex rental, and excited to buy a house in the country with a nice piece of land. We looked at several homes before making a decision 3 years ago to live just north of Motley, in a country neighborhood on 10 acres. I liked the location of the house we bought because we were still only 5 minutes from town and I could see my neighbors' houses but still have plenty of privacy in my own. He looked at all the potential the land and buildings provided. We both appreciated the big, open yards in both the front and back, and we could both imagine raising a family there.

At first I wasn't crazy about the house. It's hard to picture how you will make your home in someone else's house when you're looking to buy. I didn't like their crazy wallpaper and painting motifs, not to mention the straight-from-the-80s blue carpet and toilet in our room, and the unfinished portion of the utility room in the basement kind of creeped me out. There were many things to love, though, like the half bath attached to our bedroom, the faux wood floors in the kitchen, the hugeness of the basement bedroom and living room, the stairwell in the middle of the house that created a rectangular round in the upstairs, and much more. We appreciated the fact that our families were close enough to visit when we felt like making day-long trips, but too far to just drop by at any given time, which would afford us the privacy we wanted as we started to raise our family.

Once we got there, I decided loved the feeling of turning someone else's house into our first home. We felt like such adults! We tore wallpaper, cleaned the carpet, and literally painted everything. We bought new furniture, unpacked the remainder of our kitchen supplies we'd received as wedding gifts that I never had room for before, and created a bedroom for our babies. In the last three years, with lots of help, we've built a huge deck off the back side of the house, removed a window and replaced it with a sliding glass door, put in an outdoor wood boiler to heat our house, finished the basement by sheetrocking and painting walls, and adding a bathroom and an office. We put gravel on the driveway, grew a garden, planted trees, and turned an old, dilapidated garage into a heated outdoor workshop. (I use the term "we" loosely here, meaning mostly Curt, my dad and brother, friends, and other family. Not so much me. Except for unpacking and painting. Oh, and I added my own personal touch to the pole barn by crashing a 4-wheeler into the door and leaving a large dent.) WOW! Curt has been a busy guy.

In the past three years, we have spent a great deal of time and gas money packing up our kids and what has felt like our whole entire house to drive the distances required to visit friends and family. They have also made many, many trips north to visit for a day or to stay with us for weekends. It is so fun to see the kids' excitement at going to their grandparents' houses or having company; we wish we could be together more often. We love visiting, and it has surprised me how much Curt enjoys hosting people at our house, but it has really gotten to be a lot of work being so far away from family. We are running out of room in both our vehicles, and the time away from home for so many weekends is starting to get crazy. Last April, our calendar for summer was nearly empty, but once it actually arrived, it seemed that we were gone for half of it, if not more. Add to that the horrendous mental, emotional, and physical distress of having mice in our house beginning in July, it was a difficult summer, to say the least. (The mouse thing is a whole other story that I really don't feel like revisiting. I'd rather pretend it never happened at all.) Now that all of that is done, though, I love living in our house again and think it is just right for our family.

On one of our trips home to Curt's parents' house, they mentioned that one of the neighbors would be willing to sell his home if they knew anyone who was looking. We knew it was way too expensive for us, but I mentioned it to Curt, so we jokingly started talking like we'd try to buy it. Over the next few days we revisited the whole issue and started seriously considering moving closer to our families, even after all the times we'd talked about how crazy it would be to live close to our parents. We realized that many things had changed since we got married, namely having two children whose grandparents love them to pieces. We would love to be able to spend time together without having to pack up the whole entire house, and being within a shorter driving distance would free up all that driving and packing and sleeping over time. The convenience would be great. Although we are starting to build more connections within our community, we are not so attached to the point where we'd never want to leave. Curt has a job that he could find in time at another hospital, and I have been looking for my own classroom job for years. We do have friends up here, but they are mostly through work, and we don't spend a lot of time with them outside of work because we're so busy being gone to be with family on the weekends.

After thinking more about it on our own and talking about it almost all the time, albeit for a short period of time, we decided that we would like to move closer to our families. Early in October Curt and I contacted Edina Realty about selling our house. The realtor came and took a look, then did some paperwork with us before getting ready to put us on the market. When I mentioned all this to the neighbor, Kathy, who we had purchased our house from, she told me that another neighbor, Trish, had approached her about buying her home. There is a group home in our neighborhood for adults with mental health issues, and Trish wants to open another one. Since it didn't work out for Trish to but Kathy's home, Kathy told me to call her right away before moving forward with the realtor (how nice of her, eh?). Trish was excited to hear from us and wanted to come look at our home, so I had to tell a little white lie and put the realtor on hold.

We were super excited at the prospect of being able to sell by owner and save tons of money on realtor fees, not to mention get a better sale price. After Trish came and looked at our house, we weren't sure how to interpret the situation, because she was mostly serious and business-like about it. We were surprised to get a call from her a short while later saying she wanted to buy it! However, she still had to hear from the bank about financing, so while we waited, she asked us to consider renting our home to them, which we decided we absolutely did not want to do. Too risky. We were very disappointed to hear back from her that they had to wait until after tax season to get a loan from the bank, at which point they decided to just start all over with looking at property. That was really hard for me, but I guess we should have known it was too good to be true. Now that there is no guarantee they will be purchasing our home (although I can't imagine why they wouldn't, what with the convenience of having two business properties within two minutes of one another; you still never know, I guess), we decided to go back to our realtor, get it listed soon, and hope for some showings and offers this spring.

Obviously it's a terrible time to sell a house, so we fully realize that we could still be here three years from now, but it is worth a try. All it takes is one person/couple to appreciate our home and make us an offer, and it's a great time to be a buyer! Plus, there happens to be a home right on Curt's parents' road that is foreclosed, which would be so wonderfully convenient and is just a half hour from my parents, and Curt really likes the location. (I am not crazy about the physical location, but it would just be one of several things I would get used to, just like I did the first time we moved to the country. There are many reasons it'd be worth it!) This may be too good to be true, though, just like the situation with the neighbor, but again, you never know. As you can imagine, both our parents are really excited about the prospect of having their grandkids closer, and it would be fun for us to become more involved with other family members and old friends who live in that area, too. Every time we talk with our parents and families about the possibility of moving closer, we all get very excited talking about all the things we'd like to do! (Hopefully it wouldn't be too much! That was one of our discussion points when talking about the move, too; we'd really have to be choosy about how we spend our time so as not to get burnt out.)

I remember how sad and scared I was to be moving north and starting over on our own, just the two of us, four years ago when we were still kind of newlyweds, but I'm so proud of us for doing so when I look back. I will try to keep a realistic perspective as we move forward with this process, as I will probably have to deal with more disappointment, but I am worried this will be hard for me. I also know that I will have a hard time giving up the very first home my husband and I have ever had, the place where we brought our babies, the place we've started raising our family. I just have to remember how much we'll be gaining by being nearer to loved ones. There will be difficulties, kinks, and lots of work to do as we make this transition, but it will all be worth it in the end, no matter when that end arrives. Yes, it will be an end, but it will also be an exciting new beginning.