I know so many of you have been patiently awaiting to hear more about our move and house story. I have been tiptoeing at this journey to share since moving, selling, and buying feels very fragile. So many moving parts that make it so hard to share too much too soon. I am now ready to share Part I of this story with you all but with more to be shared. I hope you are ready to buckle up and be on this journey with us. There is so much unknown and so much of this feels a bit scary but we are just trusting that this is what is next for us on this Earth.

If you are just catching up with the journey I’ll have you check out the first part of when we announced our house was going on the market and our why.

Now that you’re all caught up I’d love to share a bit of our story that feels a bit crazy but so amazing too. Watching God move in all this honestly has been the best part. Knowing our future and the details are all in His hands.

We started our journey back in October when we felt the pull to put our kids in a Christian school and though we have talked about it for so long the idea of our kids switching schools next season (middle and high school) made the decision feel a bit more urgent. If we were really going to do this we needed to make this decision soon. Schools would be starting to enroll soon and if it required a waiting list we would need to get on one.

Finding a school

Where did we start…with searching schools near and far we knew we did not want to be too far from New Jersey and with the lack of schools in the New Jersey area we started thinking we may need to leave our home state. That brought us to Virginia… we found two schools in particular that we thought we liked from looking at online and their tuitions were not astronomical. We NEVER thought we could afford private school and though its still going to be a bit of a financial sacrifice for us we knew there was nothing better to spend money and save for. In November we went on a family trip to tour two schools and we really loved one in particular. We toured some homes to get a sense for the area and if it was right for our family. We ended up driving home in insane traffic with a kiddo that got sick and well…we got home and something in our spirit just felt like Virginia was just not it. I was excited about earlier springs and being a bit in the southern region but though that felt exciting Virginia was just not home.

Back to the drawing board…

We looked again at schools in New Jersey considered upstate NY (but too cold for me) and I reminded hubby about Pennsylvania. The one thing we knew for sure is that hubbby could stay at his job since he works in NYC only twice a week and the rest was remote. I had come across one school during our original search and hubby was not up for the idea of PA. I felt it was close to home still and considering I grew up there before moving to New Jersey when I was 15, it wasn’t too bad going back to my home state. So we began our search again in November and toured two schools, each we loved for different reasons. What was our deciding factor was knowing not what was best for what we wanted but what we felt was best for our kids… and well, we found it. We added our kids to the waiting list at a school in the Bucks County area and began our home search.

The Home Search

That took our search to the home market, of course! We decided to start searching for surrounding towns. We had quite a few ideas for our new house and we really kept an open mind. We started looking for homes with any of the following: farm, land, pond, commercial use, an older home, new home, land to build, a fixer upper, space for working, pool, private neighborhood or property.

As you can see we were 100% open. I did not have too many restrictions on our search except with price. There has had a bit of fear with this market since it has been a sellers market. We really considered renting too to wait until the market calmed down a bit. We came to find very quickly that the PA market was crazier than NJ and we were not expecting that. Turns out PA has less inventory and so many New Yorkers started moving out that way so the market out there was certainly in the sellers favor. So much what we started touring felt waaaay over priced and nothing was really sparking any excitement. We found pieces to homes or properties we loved but we also knew we had some time. Until WE FOUND THE HOUSE! We couldn’t believe it but in January while we were doing some more house hunting with our realtor, we found it. It was early in our search especially since we had not yet been accepted into the school or prepared to list our house yet. Lets just say though we were open to so much possibilities and not limiting ourselves it was not exactly what we were expecting. I’ll be sharing more about the house once we close next month and I’m thinking of doing a fun way of introducing the house with some guesses with other properties we saw and see which you think we bought. Kind of like our very own House Hunters. Once we had our offer accepted there was still one problem…we did not know yet if the kids made it into the school.

We knew we had a good chance with the kids getting in since where they were on the list compared to how many they were accepting for the new year, but nothing was guaranteed. We just kept pushing forward and praying on it and about a week later we got the email that they were in! We couldn’t be any more excited to see how God was moving in all of this. But there was still one more thing… we had to sell our house!

Our house sale

As many of you know by now our house sold. We had quite a crazy President’s weekend as we did an open house and had around 70 people come through. This was the first time I felt the reality of it all. The house offers started coming in and we couldn’t believe by that Tuesday we had 7 offers on the table. Though we loved so many of the wonderful people that came to our home and met…we had one family that just felt so right for this house. Thankful for Instagram as we met online and hearing their story of how they were praying for a home for 7 years. They had been in search for their family home for so long and this house had it all. So here’s where we sound crazy again… we didn’t just consider the $’s on the table, we actually had higher offers, but our heart could not let this house not be theirs. We felt God was leading them here and just as we felt so blessed with this house I knew the blessing of it was being prepared for the next family.

What has been consistent in this entire process is moments of fear…just as we are about to be nervous about something not working out, financial stress, choosing a buyer, putting an offer, getting into a school, making a decision for what was next… we let it go and gave it to God and every moment and decision has been blessed and given us peace. Not everything is perfect, the market, moving, leaving behind all we built here, and even our new house has many questionable details we hope doesn’t become a money pit. But…God!

I know you all are excited to hear more about our next house and I CAN’T WAIT to share it! I’ll be saving all the details for when we close next month. We will still be in our home until July so I’ll be sharing more content in our home and the plans for the next.

The new house is about an hour and a half from where we live now and just about the same from all of our family. I know many of you were concerned about us leaving our parents but its not too far of a drive and with both my mom and mother in law retiring this year they can hopefully come for longer weekends and stay with us. We made sure to find a house that had space for family to come and visit.

You will see a lot during these few months of making the house ours, though I feel we may move a bit slower this time around…lets just say we got our work cut out for us!

Of course tonight as I am writing this the news of the bank collapse puts the market and interest rates higher and that feels scary. I would be lying if I did not say that makes me fearful a bit…but just as we have seen so far the Lord has made it work out and we are still hopeful for the future and our next chapter.