Well it has been a whirlwind of a school holidays, not at all the way I had planned. My plan was to have the stepkids for the first week and then make the second week fun for the kids having their friends over etc for what would potentially be the last time. It didn't work out that way.
Our house had its first open inspection on Sunday 8 July. It also got a very interested family on that day. At that point we still didn't have a house to go to in Victoria so we made a whirlwind visit there, leaving Adelaide before sun up Tuesday morning and returning to Adelaide Friday afternoon. My older two boys stayed here to look after the animals while the younger two came with us to look for somewhere to live. We left Adelaide not knowing whether the person who was interested was going to put in a ridiculous offer, whether they would back away or anything. I was so nervous! Tuesday night we had a call from our real estate agent saying that the guy had made his offer.......just $5,000 below our asking price. We were amazed,,,,,we have ended up with a buyer that wants to pay about $30,000 than the figure we had put as our lowest acceptable price and in the house selling climate at the moment we were over the moon. We had been expecting the worst and for a change we got the best, we are thrilled. The first house we looked at over there caught our eye. Due to us having pets, renting a property was proving to be hard going so since we had an offer on our house we concentrated on looking for a house to buy instead. We looked at a few in Pakenham, Cranbourne and Frankston. We soon learned that photos on the internet make the rooms look huge in comparison to what they actually were. The house that we have chosen isn't necessarily one we would have chosen if we had not had a deadline looming before us, but it is one that we feel we can improve upon in many ways and we can make it work. It is alot smaller than our current house and we soon realised that we were going to have to leave behind quite a bit of our furniture. But we can now have a more minimalistic look to our house and I can see the benefits of it being much easier to clean. I plan to utilise the double garage, not for cars but for a storage area. I will unpack the essentials and then slowly work our way through everything else,,,,,,,Hubby tells me we will have alot of stuff to sell on Ebay lol. So we made an offer on this house. Our offer got rejected and it has basically worked out by the time you factor in stamp duty fees etc that we are basically trading in this house for that one. Not quite the plan I had but I have a vision for our new house and we are hoping if all goes according to plan that in a few years we can move a little further out from Pakenham, somewhere with an acre or so of land and build our dream home.
As for Melbourne, well I still don't like it. The traffic scares me to death lol. I told hubby that when I drive there next week I will be packing a paper bag in case I begin to hyperventilate when we reach the outskirts of Melbourne lol.
When we were leaving Melbourne we were full of nerves. We were having a pre purchase inspection done on our house that morning. I had been on the phone to my boys telling them things that had to be done (you know teenagers and tidiness don't always go hand in hand lol). The inspector arrived while our real estate agent was there (he knew that we had boys home alone so he offered to go and check up on them for me and make sure the house was somewhat presentable in case the buyer popped in lol). He called us and said that the inspector was one of the hardest in the state and if the house passed his inspection it would pass anyone's. This made us feel sick lol. Our house is pretty good but its all the little things that could be wrong with it that we didn't know about that had us worried. Thankfully a few hours later while we were still travelling we got the news we had been waiting for that our house had passed with only a few little things getting picked up but the buyer was happy to go ahead. A little while after that, we got a call saying that our latest offer on the house in Victoria had been approved also. We could breathe again. Now we just have to wait for our cooling off period to finish tomorrow night and wait for finance for us and also our buyer to get approved (both are basically approved but it just isn't official as such lol) We have our pre purchase inspection getting done later this week and hopefully we can move in next week as the old owner has agreed for us to rent the house from him for a couple of weeks until settlement day which is on the 8th of August.
We had an open inspection booked in for Saturday which the real estate wanted to leave on, so we came home Friday and cleaned the house thoroughly (my boys had done a great job of keeping it neat and tidy,,,,,proud mumma moment I tell you lol). At the open, we had to sign our cooling off papers. Just as it opened, I was signing the papers and hubby was gathering the dogs together so we could take them for a walk. The new owner arrived and so we got to meet him and his family. He is buying the house and living in the back half while his daughter, her partner and soon to be 2 children will live in the front. The guy was lovely and asked me a few questions about the house but the best bit is that I offered him the furniture which we now will not be taking with us and he said he would love to have it lol. He is an ex army guy and only lives in a small unit in Sydney. He doesn't have much furniture so he is more than happy to take whatever we don't want. He offered us some money for it but I said no. Our furniture isn't super expensive stuff and if he had said no we would have had to arrange to get rid of it in the space of just a week and that was just another stress we didn't need so it worked out perfectly!
The sad bit about all this is that it has really begun to sink in now. It is all very real and very soon and very emotional. On Friday we have Hubby's kids coming over for just 1 night. This will be the last time we see them for about 9 weeks. On Saturday night my boys are going to their dad's for 2 nights. The older two will then be staying there,,,,,,we will probably take the 4 of them out for dinner on Monday night but other than that, this will be the last time we see them for 9 weeks also. My eldest boy has basically said that if his dad decides to stay here in Adelaide, that he will stay here too. Now my Mr15 has also said that if he is given the choice (as in his Dad decides to stay here), that he wouldn't necessarily come over either. If he was able to stay at his school with his friends, he would rather stay here. This knocked me for six as he had been definitely coming over in December up until this point. I am struggling with the prospect of losing 1, now possibly losing 2 is just too much. I am hoping that the fact that his Dad will be moving house regardless of which state he chooses to live in and Mr15 would most likely have to move schools anyway will tip the scales back into my favour. I know that I always said I would never make my kids choose and I will respect their decisions but right now it is so hard. Hubby said last night that he feels like he is the bad guy. He is leaving his kids. Taking my kids away from his kids. Taking my Ex away from my boys. Taking my Ex's kids away from him. Splitting my boys up etc etc etc you get the picture. I know next weekend is going to be so very hard and I know that tears will flow,,,,for me they have already started.
It is such a strange feeling to be doing this. I know that potentially this move could very well make life more secure for us financially but I do feel that the cost for our family is going to be huge and that is what scares me. Going from having 6 kids in our home on a regular basis and always with at least 4, having just 2 children majority of the time is going to be very odd to me.
If you have made it this far through my ramble this morning well done lol. I have missed blog land lately and can't wait until we get settled and get internet up and running and I can return to some kind of new normal in life. I want all the hard stuff over and done with and I want to see how our new life goes and hope with all my heart that my babies come home to roost lol (I know I need to be fair to their dad as well though and I know this is also going to be very hard on him,,,,,at the end of the day I'm not a bitch and I don't want to take his children away from him either).
Talk to you all again soon, stay safe and take care guys :)
