Winter Is Coming

With colder weather and our house under contract, we are enjoying a bit of lull in our to-do list.  We know that this next year will have overwhelming periods with renovating an office, learning how to run a dental practice, building our business, and likely updating a home (we think we may have found THE house, but are waiting on financing) so we are savoring these relaxed moments together while we can.

 That time I found Cora quizzing Milan on her geography homework.  

 Enjoying a beautiful day at Harvest Farms with the Young Women.

 Impulsively bought Indie this sink off of Amazon and it has been the BIGGEST hit with all the girls.  

Grandma Kat's Visit

House transformations are always fun (for me), but family time in our home is the most important part of the whole process.  And this week, we got a special visitor!  Grandma Kat completely spoiled our entire family with a Prime Rib dinner, trip to the zoo and watching Abominable in theaters with treats.  Each girl got the special privilege of skipping one day of school for a one-on-one lunch and shopping trip with grandma.  Eden's favorite hobby is shopping so she absolutely loved picking out a few new things.  Cora is completely happy with her hand-me-down clothes so she was most excited about spending time together.  Milan set off shopping with a specific list and they were both happy to have scored high-waisted jeans (with 5 buttons!) and a new winter coat without visiting every store in town.  Indie is still working on her shopping skills, but LOVED seeing grandma every day and they spent a lot of time lining Lincoln Logs out.  Even though grandma's hip was barely recovering from a recent injury, she joined us for soccer games, freezing cross country meets, and treks across the Territorial Prison's Pumpkin Walk.  Plus she was a great sport about last minute home repairs and helping getting our house together for showing.  It was a wonderful visit and we're so grateful grandma left her tropical, comfortable, not -for-sale home to join our chaos.

Before and After

When we bought this house, we submitted a heartfelt letter about how we would love to raise our girls on this land and host their high school graduations in this house.  At the time, we truly meant everything we said.  To make this house more livable for our family, we implemented our Phase 1 Remodel, which included a lot of wallpaper peeling, painting, and learning some new reno skills.  Meanwhile, we dreamed up a Phase 2 Plan for down the road,which would have basically reconfigured the whole thing.  Over the past 13 months, this house has become a great little home for our family.

Just when things were getting comfy and we started unpacking storage boxes from the garage, we decided to switch gears with our life plans.  Dave's boss who initially told us we could buy into the practice and insinuated that the building would be part of the deal changed his mind.  Instead of a partner, he wants to keep associates in that position and reap all the financial rewards (I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, but I'll just keep those to myself.)  Fortunately, we had started looking into other practice opportunities and landed a great deal on the Saratoga practice and building.  We think we'll really love that beautiful little town, but first things first, we are selling this house and hoping to make a nice profit.  It hit the market today, we have our first showing tomorrow morning, and we're looking forward to the next adventure.