Where the Craziness Began

Jeff's cousin, Samantha, got married in March at her family's farm in Tifton, GA. Uncle Brian and Aunt Becky live on a pecan orchard and have built a home there that looks like a red barn... its beautiful! The property is just gorgeous and has some of the prettiest trees and that is where Samantha and her hubby to be, Matt, chose to get married. What a special place for memories to be made!!! :-)

We had put our house on the market on Thursday, March 13th (LATE in the evening) and got a call on Friday that someone wanted to see the house on Saturday morning. I let the agent know that we would be getting packed up to go out of town for a wedding and would love for them to come but would need a definite timeframe so that we could be sure to be out.

Turns out that they came AS we were packing the car to leave. Mama was gracious enough to keep the kids for us to go to the wedding so that we could go and spend the night in Tifton and not have to do the 3.5 hour drive there and back in one day. So we briefly said hello to the potential buyers and headed out.

Sidenote of a little drama: on the way to Tifton, my mom called and said the house was all completely locked up and she couldnt get in. She was keeping the kids at OUR house so that was not good. She had always used the garage code to get into the garage and we never locked the garage door at the foryer. So we called a neighbor who was kind enough to go down and try to pick the lock, but the agent had dead bolted the door. So I had to call the agent and she had to go back out and open the lock box and let my mom in. Geez.

Meanwhile, we got to Tifton and settled down in our room and got ready for the wedding. When we got back down to meet up with the family, we learned that Jeff's dad (who is our real estate agent, too) had gotten a call from the potential buyers agent letting us know they would be submitting an offer that afternoon. Talk about overwhelming/exciting!

So the offer came in and to save some details and explaining, the counter offering began. Basically we went back and forth but the BIGGEST "problem" with the offer is that they wanted to close in 2 weeks. Not even, actually. They wanted to close March 28th. That gave us approx 11 days to get moved. Not to mention the fact that Mommie's house had not yet been cleaned out :-(

We knew that before we continued to entertain the offer, we would HAVE to get my family on board with getting Mommie's house cleaned out so that we could get it ready to move into. There were some things that were just not ok before we moved in (carpets were really dirty, the house in general was dirty, my uncle had smoked in there and it needed to be painted... including trim and ceilings... an inspection needed to happen which would give us a bigger list of things to do). So after the beautiful wedding, we started making phone calls at the reception. Whirlwind!!!

Here was our little Ford family at the wedding :) 

When we got back, the clean out began! Some things that we found as we cleaned up were just hilarious. Like this redneck invention... a ball cap with a flashlight taped to the bill! lol!

We also had a very last minute, very impromptu yard sale at Mommie's house. Which gave us the opportunity to see some friends who stopped by... like my friend Ashlyn, who is 3 weeks behind me in pregnancy!!! SO excited for her family!!!  We worked like little doggies that entire week to get the house all cleaned out so that we could spend the following week getting it cleaned up. It was bittersweet... i HATED having to go through all of mommie and daddy's things so haphazardly and discard SO many of their things, but time didnt allow for anything else :-(. Our family rented a dumpster and most of what didnt sell at the yard sale either went in the dump or got donated...

We had an inspection on the house at the end of that week (one week after having put our house on the market) and on that same day, the buyers of our home had an inspection and appraisal done on it. They had previously tried to purchase another home in our neighborhood which fell through b/c the home went into foreclosure and the buyers didnt want to get into that process, so they were already pre-approved for their loan, etc. That is how they were able to move so quickly with the purchase of our house.

The inspector gave us a list of things to do but there were two biggies that needed to be done BEFORE we moved in. Fog the crawlspace for mold (NOT ok to live there and breathe spores) and have the ductwork all cleaned professionally to help rid it of the spores as well. Otherwise, the other tasks could be done after we moved in!

To add to the craziness, the week that we were to close on the sale of our home (and have new carpet installed in our house, have our old home's carpets cleaned as a contingency of that contract, have mommie's ducts cleaned and pain the house) was the week of the Hinman dental convention. Dr Jones was SO kind as to rent a SUITE in downtown Atlanta for our office and wanted everyone to go down there Wednesday night for dinner all together and then we had classes Thursday and Friday. I was mega stressed about being away for 3 days... there was SO much I needed to be at home for to get done! Apparently, he could tell that I was stressed and told me he really wanted me to come to dinner with everyone Wednesday night but that if I needed to skip the classes to feel free. That he totally understood that we didnt plan for this to happen this way and he knew I had a lot to get done. How incredible is that?! He is seriously the most generous/kind boss I've ever had.

So i stayed wednesday night and suffered through this view out our suite's window ;-). And we enjoyed an amazing dinner at Ray's in downtown... I also attended the Thursday morning class with Dr Jones and Angela (very interesting!) but then I headed on home to meet with people and get things done.

I was sure to talk to Dr Pohl about the safety of painting while preggo and he assured me that latex paint is fine to be around. To keep the area well ventilated and take breaks as needed but that it was fine. So I bascially worked on painting trim for 2 days straight. It was SHOCKING to me to see how different paint made Mommie's house look. Rhyan was a pretty big helper, too... the diva she is ;-)

Jeff and his dad painted literally EVERY room in the house (minus the kitchen). Every ceiling in the house. And I painted every trim. It was a crazy few days. And the carpet came. And was the wrong color and I didnt realize it until AFTER They had cut the carpet (b/c it was rainy outside and we dont have a garage so they had to go back to the warehouse and cut it and then bring it back. so i didnt see it till they started laying it and realized it was too dark. they wouldnt discount it so i asked them to redo it. i hated to ask but i wasnt about to pay full price for a color I didnt like).
And we rented a fogger from Home depot and Jeff handled the fogging of the crawl space. He actually, at the suggestion of our inspector, also fogged with an insecticide to help kill off bugs in the crawlspace, too.

In the meanwhile, the executor of Mommie's estate (her family lawyer) went about getting the family to sign a contract for the sale of Mommie's house and we hit a snag... my uncle, Jonathan, refused to sign. He had gotten into some legal trouble and said he didnt want the house sold until he could be around to be a part of the whole process. Um, too late, right!? But he's emotional by nature and simply refused. Talk about stressing us out :-(. Long story short there, he eventually agreed, but only with pressure from the rest of the family. I know how hard it must have been on him to not be able to play a part in the clean out of the house, etc. As sad of a time as that was, it was therapeutic to do all of that together as a family, and I hate that he wasnt a part of that. It brought closure.

So the rest of March was probably the CRAZIEST month of my life. Our poor kids got shuffled from grandparents to Tracy's house to friends house's to play as we got everything done. I'm SO grateful for all the help and honestly there is NO way we could have done it without Jeff's dad... who not only helped us sell our house, but who basically did the entire "to do" list at our old house that the buyers asked for but also did probably 75% of the moving of our things. Some to mommie's house to go into our attic or bbq shed, some to goodwill, some to his own basement to store things for us. It was crazy. He was amazing and a life saver! Especially seeing as how Jeff was in the middle of baseball season and had practice and games every day after school. Whew.

So in less than 2 weeks we moved. OH, and moving day was equally insane. Why? Because our house was NOT packed. Not in the least. So the nice friends (understatement) who helped us move were also packing for us and unpacking for us as we went. It amazes me, quite honestly, that we all survived ;-)