Our big move to a small house Part II

Where were we? Oh, yes. We left our dream house. To understand how we got here from there, I probably need to explain where we were. Like, mental/emotion state location.

 

Chris had left his crazy corporate life to be able to slow down and spend more time with us and, it worked. Sort of. He was more available. He drove the kids to school in the morning, coached Carter’s T-ball team, was home for dinner majority of the nights, but he was still busy. We were still busy. He started juggling two jobs which promised to be flexible and to a great extent they were, but when he wasn’t working, he was working – on the yard. Our dream home came with five acres that seemed almost park-like to me. The front acre that we lived on was completely overgrown when we moved in, but over the course of our time there, Chris turned it into a beautiful retreat. It was a place meant for entertaining! Gorgeous patio with pergola for barbecues, huge yard of the kids to play in, it was perfect. But.. (you were expecting that, right?) it was a lot of work to keep it that perfect so, the yard perfect for entertaining saw no entertainment.

Our guests all promised that we were lucky to have four boys who would help with the yard SOMEDAY, but let me tell you, SOMEDAY is a heck of a long way away. Now, if the yard was the only thing that took time, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Turns out that four kids take a lot of time, as does keeping a house clean with four boys.  My mother swore that our house was great just the way it was, and really it was, but I saw the imperfections everywhere. There was nothing that would bother me in someone else’s home, but being a stay-at-home-mom who loves a good DIY, I saw projects EVERYWHERE. Again, not a problem except that with four kids, I couldn’t get the projects done. Oh, and I’m Type A so, when a project is incomplete, it drives me nuts. Messy houses also drive me nuts (well, only mine).

I became a cranky mom. I was a stressed out wife. I was not enjoying our dream home. I was not even enjoying my kids. I was spoiled rotten. To give myself a little credit, I did realize this and when I sat down to figure out why I was so unnecessarily grumpy, I realized that the house put a lot of extra stress on me. I started to blame it for being too big to keep clean. I blamed it for keeping my husband busy with the yard. I blamed it for our lack of time to take the boys to fun events going on in town. So, I started looking at smaller homes online when the kids would go to bed. Chris said I was nuts. There was no way we were moving again, and I agreed. Moving would be nuts.

 

To be continued…

 

carter

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Comments

  1. Debbie V. says:

    Looking forward to reading part III!

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