March 2015 - Sept 2016. What happened?

Its been a year and a half since I last posted and what a busy time its been.

In early April 2015 my family and I came to a crossroads.  In a single day, our townhouse neighbors decided to erect a very large, ugly and cheap (plastic) shed in their backyard, we lost the pussy willow that provided us much enjoyment, and I had a really bizarre encounter with a neighbor from across the street.

To paraphrase an old baseball idiom: three strikes, we were out.

Immediately, we put all our efforts into fixing up our home for sale.  In mid-June, we put the house up for sale.  A week later we had a contract and at the end of July, the house was sold.

This began the longest year of our lives.

The short version is that it took us a year to find a home that was a "reasonable" price, that provided flexibility for family growth, that wasn't a complete disaster, that had some acreage, that was in a county with reasonably low taxes and a relatively agrarian approach to life, that was a driveable distance from my job, and was in a county with good schools.  There were a number of homes we came across that met a few of those requirements, but only a few that met all.  We missed out on two that we were interested in with one of those being one we really loved.

Three hundred sixty two days from the sale of our townhouse, we closed on the purchase of our new home.  On July 28, 2016 we became homeowners again.

Since then we've done a ton of painting, done some updating, moved the family from Ohio where my inlaws graciously hosted Wifey and now three (!!!) kids, and have been working to make the new house feel like a home.  And we've been discovering ways the previous homeowners neglected taking care of the house.  But that's for another day.

And I'm finally chipping away at the garden I've always* wanted to have.  It doesn't exist yet, but it's close.


* Blogger's note: In this context, "always" is defined as "since 2009."