Our Property. {EEK!}

I’ve mentioned the fact that we weren’t really house shopping, and yet…here we are.

So while I share photos of our property (what the heck?!  who says that?!  ME???!!! EEK!), I thought I’d tell you a little about the story of how all of this came to be.

We LOVED our last house.  It was great.

But we’ve always hoped/planned to move about 20 miles north.  That’s closer to Andy’s office, 99% of our friends, our church community, and even Jill’s doctors.  20 miles doesn’t seem far…and it isn’t.  At first.  But after a while, you begin to realize that you are basically commuting for every thing you do.  And especially now that I’m a stay at home mom, I felt very much like I lived on an island far from most of the people I knew.

[Quick note: we live on 4 acres.  That little cluster of oak trees up on the hill?  That’s one of our property corners.]

The Cliff’s Notes version is that we’ve always had our eye on the housing market.  Taking note of ups and downs, and specifically, what our home was worth.  (For a while there we were actually $100,000 underwater on it.  And we had bought it at over $150k less than original!)

We knew that moving to the more expensive area meant we would have to take a major downgrade in home size and quality, but we felt it was worth it.  The schools would be better, and we’d be more plugged into our community.  And Andy would be just a few minutes away in case of emergencies.  Plus, Jill was getting heavy.  And hauling her up and down the stairs was beginning to get cumbersome.  It was okay for now, but I knew that it wouldn’t be too many years from now before I could no longer do it.

So I had been poking around.  Casual window shopping.  I saw a tiny old home that needed A LOT of work, but was on a cul de sac, in a cute neighborhood, and had lots of potential.  Expensive to get to that potential, but it could be really nice eventually if we threw enough money and energy at it.  And time.  Slow and steady and all that.

And then my mother in law mentioned wanting to retire in the area someday.  And then we talked about how separately we could each afford only fixer uppers or perhaps a condo.  And how maybe if we pooled our resources…?

It was an interesting prospect, but still I wasn’t really house shopping.  After all, Andy was traveling more than usual, we had several weddings coming up, and about a million other things going on.  In fact, I remember Andy saying “There is no way we could move right now.  That would be insane.  We would lose our minds.  Let’s just keep an eye out and maybe next Spring or Summer?  2015 for sure.”

The very. next. morning. my friend Joy asked me how house shopping was going.  Mind you, Joy has been asking me this very question monthly for the last 7 years.  So this is a pretty normal thing.  She’s been my Pretend Realtor scoping out houses in her neighborhood for the better part of a decade.  For the better part of a decade, I rolled my eyes and laughed at the links she sent me to homes way out of our budget.  Except that this time I mentioned the possible change in not only price point, but scope.

Before I could finish my sentence, she and another friend exclaimed, almost in unison, that they knew of just the place.

We drove by the house on our way home from church a few hours later.  We sighed and dreamed of how nice it would be, but it was too crazy.  There’s no way we could afford that.

Except that we started crunching numbers.  And they kept coming back saying we could, in fact, make it work.  I’m pretty sure Andy did the math at least 75 times.  Incredulous.  Sure he had done something wrong.  Missed a decimal or something.

By Thursday, we made an offer.  A few days later we were in escrow.  All the while Andy was traveling like crazy, and I was single mom status while scanning documents and hunting down millions of things for our loan officer.

But here we are.  In a whirlwind, exhausting, head spinning few months.

We are here.  With four acres.  And even a fire pit.

We have a retired couple as tenants in the second unit.

Who, by the way, BECAUSE GOD WORKS IN THE CUH-RAZIEST WAYS, is a swim coach for the Special Olympics, and volunteers at a nearby ranch that teaches teens with Cerebral Palsy how to care for animals and other ranchy tasks.

You better believe I burst into tears when I heard that.

Someday my in-laws will move here.  Not for several years, and by then my kids are liable to be in junior high, but for now, we have sweet neighbors that like our kids.

I keep waiting for my kids to come home itching profusely.  We’ve taught them what poison oak looks like, but it’s still only a matter of time.  Luckily, it’s pretty concentrated in this scrub area, but Porkchop.

I didn’t see my kids for about the first 72 hours we lived here.

WHICH IS BASICALLY HEAVEN.

Mental note: trim back some of those bushes.  Because the slide dumps right into an area teeming with poison oak.  Details.

We have a set of walkie talkies so that we can communicate.  It’s not super far, but it saves me from yelling.

I already do plenty of that as it is.

I love that the property was designed to include a traditional backyard area with grass and plantings, yet it’s still plenty of open space.

I had immediately thought that one of our first projects would be to build a patio cover…but I quickly realized that while the shade would be nice, it would kill our view from inside the house.  So we bought a giant 11′ umbrella.  It works perfectly.

You can see here where the play structure is in reference to the patio area.  Also, there’s the chicken coop too.

Funny side note: I noticed right away that my kids came inside smelling like an odd combination of dirt…and rosemary?  Until I realized those green bushes on the bark hill are…rosemary.

I have a feeling that rosemary will be one of my “smells”.

Along the back of the house (which I’m bummed they didn’t wrap the siding around), the previous owner had planted a rose garden, and if you look off in the distance, that’s my nearest neighbor.

I tromped out in my pajamas at 6 am.  Just so you know.  Because I love you.

That fenced off area is on our property, but it’s a drainage basin to collect runoff from the hill and neighboring properties.  It’s maintained by the city, so we don’t have to bother with it in  any way.  Although that also means there’s that portion of our property that we can’t touch.  Meh.  I’m from Los Angeles.  This is already way more than I ever dared to dream I’d have someday.

For now, Andy parks his beloved Land Cruiser behind the basin, but I also think it’s a good spot for visitors to park their RVs when they come.

The side yard.  I’d like to add a larger concrete patio area.  Not a ton, but it’s kinda squishy right now.

Those trees are my favorite thing about the entire property.  They look all weeping willow-ish, but I don’t know what they are.

So far, we’ve seen/heard coyotes, road runners, quail, there’s a cute little gray bunny that lives in our front bushes, blue jays, and jack rabbits.

Also, it took me almost a month of living here to realize...ohhhhhh…coyotes…and road runners….like the cartoon!!!!  That’s where they get it!  I’m from L.A.  It’s pathetic sometimes.

Andy mows all of this with a regular mower.  It takes him over an hour.  But he says he likes the workout.

Whatever.  I’ll be over on the patio drinking a glass of wine thankyouverymuch.

Several lemon and orange trees grow on that hillside.  My kids pick fruit right off the trees and eat them, sticky juice dripping down their chins and arms.

This makes me irrationally happy.

This hill will be lush green in the spring and winter.  I don’t mind the brown, but I’m excited for the color.

We have some pretty great views, even if I wasn’t able to really capture them.

So there you have it.

The story of how we weren’t really house shopping, but bought a house.

And the story of how I never in a million, gajillion, bazillion years thought I’d get to say I lived on property.

But I do.

I’m so excited to think of the memories my kids will make here.

It will be good.

It’s like God said “That one.  Yup.  That one.  Go get it.”  Because, as I’ll continue to share in the coming weeks, it’s like it was custom made just for our family.  12 years ago.  And it’s been patiently waiting, hosting another family in the meantime, but it’s really always been for us.

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jeannett

I'm a mom to four. A wife to one. I believe in story. I love telling you about mine and would love to hear yours. There's really no sense in wasting our suffering and not sharing in each other's joy. We're all in this together...even if it doesn't always feel like it.

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