Sold! (and a super long explanation)

I've been avoiding this blog post. Because I'm still in denial that we're leaving our beloved Virginia. And I'm still in denial that I have to pack up the entire contents of my house and move it somewhere.

We moved into this house in March of 2005, just a few months before Amelia was born. We didn't think we would stay in the house for much more than five years. But it turned out to be nearly nine years. And four kids. We have loved our house (though not the financial burden of purchasing right before the housing market crash), our yard, our neighborhood, our school, our friends, our location, and the countless adventures we've taken here. It will be hard to leave.

For the past three years, Ben has been working for a company based in Houston. He works from home and manages projects in the D.C. area and sometimes travels to other areas where needed. In the last year, he has transitioned into a new position that has him working in areas all over the Eastern United States so it was no longer necessary to be based in the D.C. area. We decided it was time to look for a less expensive place to live. At the beginning of the summer we started getting our house ready to sell and started researching and visiting potential cities to live. If it sounds super fun to pick where you want to live, it's not. This has turned out to be incredibly stressful and difficult. I think part of the difficulty lies in the fact that our first choice of where to live is right here. Alexandria, Virginia. We love it here. But the cost of living is prohibitive. (And the traffic stinks and the people are cranky. But I've always been willing to deal with that because this is such an amazing place to live.)

So the search was on to find a cheaper city in the Eastern U.S. (which is just about any city but here) with a decent airport for Ben's travels. Over the summer we visited Charlotte, Asheville, and Raleigh in North Carolina. We even visited Wilmington, a beach town (where they filmed Dawson's Creek and many other shows) in North Carolina. We visited Richmond, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati. We researched and considered areas in Connecticut and Massachusetts, Louisville, Nashville, and Indianapolis. It was fun to consider all of the possibilities and have a chance to visit so many places.

After all of our research, we finally decided on the Raleigh, North Carolina area. I think we are still mourning the loss of a few other great cities. Pittsburgh was by far our favorite city as far as looks and activities and architecture and character. But in the end, we decided Raleigh would be a good fit for us.

And then Ben's company contacted him to offer him a new position which would be a great step in his career. But it would mean relocating to one of their main offices in either Houston or L.A. We agonized over these new possibilities for another week. We weren't wild about Houston (hot and not so pretty) and L.A. would be even more expensive than here. In the end, Ben turned down the job and we stuck with North Carolina.

Our "for sale" sign went up at the end of September. We had a few offers right away and were under contract within 3 days. (Hooray for not having to keep the house spotless for long!) At this point we still hadn't decided where we were moving and luckily our buyers were willing to do a rent-back until the end of November.

The "sold" sign came up and we closed on October 30. We are really happy with the people who bought the house. This place means a lot to us so it was nice to turn it over to a young couple who loved it (they said it immediately "felt like them" when they walked in). (More on the house selling process in another post.)