Making A Move!

Our soon-to-be new home!

In 2016, we made a decision to move from our suburban home to a small acreage with my husband's Mom, sister, and nephew. His Mom's health was failing, and his sister needed our help. So they moved to Texas from Oklahoma, and we all purchased five beautiful acres on a dirt road in the Sam Houston National Forest. The two homes that came with the acreage housed his Mom, sister, and nephew, and we bought a new manufactured home and had it placed about 100 feet away. We got quite an education on mobile home living, as we knew nothing about aerobic septic systems, having power lines brought in, and having water pipe laid!

Driveway to our current 5 acres

In 2017, his Mom passed away, and since then his sister and nephew have wanted to move back to Oklahoma. With two of our grandchildren being born to our daughter since 2016, we also wanted to move closer to them in north Texas. Plus, taking care of 5 acres was beginning to wear on our senior citizen bodies - it's a lot of physical labor. So we made the joint decision to move, put our properties on the market as one listing, and waited to see what would happen. It would have to be a very special situation for someone to want acreage with three houses, but surprisingly, we had a few interested parties. The last one made a full price offer, and we have a closing date of September 28.

His sister found a home in Oklahoma very quickly while we looked online for houses. In mid-August we had a list of a dozen houses and made a trip north. We fell in love with the first house we saw, half-heartedly looked at the other houses, and made an offer on the first one. That deal just refused to work, and we were very disappointed. So back to the drawing board. The problem we encountered was a hot market all over north Texas - every time we put a house on our list, it was in contract within a day or two. Finally on August 31 we had a list of six houses and made a fast trip north. As we were driving, two of the houses we really wanted went to contract. So we had only four left. The first two looked great in the listing but weren't so great in person, and the third one had foundation issues, so we dejectedly traveled to the last house on our list.

As we parked out front I saw two beautiful white crape myrtles in bloom on either side of the house. White crape myrtles are my favorite trees - it had to be a sign! We liked what we saw inside, and the neighborhood was nice, so we decided on the spot to make an offer. Now that the option period has ended, we are feeling enormous relief and can finally say we are moving.

We will only be 60 miles (currently 250 miles) from our daughter and two littlest grands and 30 miles from the border of my beloved Oklahoma. We have lived within 40 miles of our son and family since 2012, and we hate to be so far from them (280 miles!), but those three grandchildren range in age from 17 to 21 and are leading busy lives. We are very excited to begin this new journey.

We will miss our garden and the views of the forest but not the dust from the dirt road!

My fabric is packed into boxes, and my sewing machine is going in for maintenance this week, so I will miss sewing and posting, but I will try to keep up with your blogs while I anticipate moving into my new sewing space!