I’m going to backtrack for a couple of posts, because I think some of the big life events we went through, though not directly related to infertility, help show we had a lot going on while also trying to get pregnant.
Some of these events were, at least in part, why we drew out the IUI attempts as long as we did. And also why we waited to start the IVF process.
In 2019 and 2020, we started noticing some disturbing developments in our neighborhood. We kept getting Ring notifications about shots fired in or near our home. In 2019, a sheriff’s deputy had been killed in a nearby neighborhood and there was a shooting at the WalMart where I regularly shopped.
When the deputy was killed, the shooter fled on foot through our neighborhood. On my way home that night, my road was blocked by two deputies holding rifles. They told me to get in my house quickly and lock the doors. Never in my life was I more grateful we had two huge dogs at home (our Great Dane, Aurora, and our foster, an English Mastiff named Hudson).
In 2020, there was a drive-by shooting on a corner in our neighborhood where Nick and I had literally walked Aurora just two hours prior to the shooting.
That was the last straw. While our immediate neighbors were great and the pandemic had brought us closer together, the neighborhood itself seemed to be going downhill fast. We decided it was time to move. That wasn’t our original plan. We’d wanted to stay in our first home until we were ready to move to Oregon, but, sometimes, (as I find myself writing and thinking repeatedly in this blog), life has other plans for you.
Maybe you remember and maybe you don’t, but the housing market during the pandemic was absolutely insane. Everyone and their mother was out there looking for a house.
I was really worried we would sell our house in a snap and then not find a replacement in time to move. It was stressful, to say the least.
Looking back on the experience, we were lucky. We had an incredible realtor who bent over backward to get us top dollar on our house, and who helped us negotiate post-closing agreements and find our new house. (Shout out to Terri Lay. If you live in the greater Denver area, and you’re in the market for a house, for real, she’s the bomb.)
Going into all the details of our house search could probably be a new blog in and of itself, but I’ll sum up our process.
After some agonizing and worrying, we listed our house in late November 2020. We had been ready for a couple of months, but we decided to wait until we started to see more listings of homes we were looking to buy. I didn’t want to sell our house and then have nothing to look at or offer on.
We did showings for one weekend and had 20 offers (it was legit crazy). We accepted an offer that was $50,000 over our asking price (bonkers!), and it came with a post-closing agreement. We would close in February 2021 and have until April to move out (and find a new home).
Because we got such a good price on our house, we were able to up our budget for a new home a little bit and also set aside some funds to do IVF, make updates to our new home, and pay off some debt.
Fortunately, two weeks after we accepted the offer on our house, we found our new place. The former owners had three other offers and chose ours–it was $10,000 over their asking price. To say we were lucky feels like an understatement. To have our offer accepted, we gave the sellers the same post-closing agreement we had received–60 days.
That did mean there could’ve been a two-week gap where we needed to rent an Airbnb, but it would’ve been worth it. It was tricky to make sure I had plans in place for multiple scenarios–being able to move in before the agreement was up, moving in two weeks after we’d left our house, or anything in between.
I had moving truck, storage container, and Airbnb reservations out the wazoo–thank goodness for being able to cancel without penalties!
In the end, it worked out perfectly. My in-laws came out to help us pack and move (thank you, Jacksons!), and we were able to move in the afternoon after we’d finished packing up our old house.
We’ve been in our new house for about a year and a half now, and we really love it. The neighborhood is amazing, our neighbors are incredible, and we have so much more space.
Not that we haven’t had a few issues come up along the way. Which will take us to Big Life Events, Part 2–next week.
IVF That 