A whirlwind of a summer

 This summer started off fun and easy....then Nic and I (after months of looking) found a house we wanted on KSL.  It was an older house in West Bountiful, much smaller.  The kicker was the backyard.  Oh man, the magical, one acre, full of trees, more beautiful than I could imagine, back yard.  So we did the unthinkable and listed our house on July 1st.  We thought it would sell the next day, but it didn't.  Clark had it listed pretty high, but we still had showings.  Meanwhile, the West Bountiful home, which was under contract with a different buyer, became available when the other buyers couldn't get financed.  We made an offer and started working on getting a loan.  Hard to do when you haven't sold your other home!  We dropped the price on our home twice, had lots of showings, spent our lives completely stressed out trying to keep the house and yard perfect.  We finally got an offer, it was a little lower than we hoped but we were able to meet in the middle.  We were so relieved, even though they couldn't close for a month!  Well as luck would have it, they bailed a couple weeks later.  That day goes down as one of the most stressful days of our lives.  We were close to closing on the West Bountiful home and scrambling to find money to show we were qualified.  Oh, and did I mention we were also selling and buying different cars for each of us???  Yep, a couple of idiots we are.  So the day after our buyers bailed, we had 2 showings and one of them made an offer that night!  OUR PRAYERS WERE ANSWERED!!!  The offer was better than the other buyers' offer and we were ecstatic.  We finally closed on the West Bountiful home and felt quite fortunate to own 2 homes within a mile of eachother (that was sarcastic).  The inspection of our Woods Cross home was a little rough as there was a tremendous amount of water damage under the stucco on the exterior of our garage.  We had noticed cracks in the house, shingles bending, the door not closing correctly, among other strange things.  There was also a lot of cement cracking in the driveway, a water heater problem, window problems, blah blah blah.  Well we ended up cutting them a 5k check to cover most of the problems and we were able to close on Sep. 29.  A glorious, glorious day!!!!  We now only own ONE home, sold both of our cars and now have a Hyundai Sonata and Cadillac Escalade.  The house is 1200 sq. feet smaller than our last home.  Yes, we've sent LOTS of stuff to DI, sold lots of stuff, and just thrown stuff away.  We are nice and cozy here and hope to someday expand.  The backyard though.... Oh man.  It's incredible.  We even have a hot tub on the back deck!  We are happy here.  The ward is older and there aren't man kids, but we will adjust and learn to love our life over here.  The Lord has blessed us.  There were times during the last few months that I was so stressed out and angry that I really thought I might have a heart attack.  I'm glad that part is over and I can finally relax a little (although the "to do" list is insane).  So "cheers" to our new lives in West Bountiful!