The Reed Family: The Rest of July and a New House!

I don't have many pictures from the rest of July because on a whim, Joel and I decided to put our house on the market, and it sold that day! And we closed 3 weeks later! There's not a whole lot I remember about July. It was a whirlwind.

Finding a new house proved to be difficult. And, it was made even more difficult due to the fact that we couldn't just move into an apartment for the time being because there really aren't any decent ones in our school district. There were a few stressful weeks trying to figure out what to do and in the end, the easiest thing to do was to move in with Joel's parents because they were zoned for our school. There was really nothing on the market that we were interested in at the time. We decided that we weren't going to settle for just anything and we would take our time to find the right house this time, in the neighborhood we wanted.

Some of our friends alerted us to a few houses in the neighborhood that potentially may be looking to sell, and so we put some letters in mailboxes to see if we could get any hits. We actually had a couple of calls and one of them worked out! We ended up putting that letter in the mailbox at the perfect time. The previous owners had built the house and actually passed away (they were in their 80s) 6 months apart from each other, and the son was putting the house on the market with an agent the next week. We convinced him to sell us the house without an agent and he took the agent fee out of the price, and we think we got a great deal! It definitely needed a lot of TLC - it had not been renovated since it was built in the 1980s I don't think! But, the bones were good and we could see ourselves there! We have never met sweeter people that we bought this house from, and it's a home that has been well loved for a long time. There are even bible verses written in between the walls when the house was built! We really think it was meant to be ours. So anyway, here is our project house (before anything had been done!):

We are currently mid-renovation. I was hoping we would be in the house by Christmas, but it's not looking so hot. I still have a sliver of hope though. We moved some walls around, new kitchen, new bathroom, new flooring and paint everywhere, added a dormer window to the front of the house and are going to paint the outside of the house too. It's been a lot of work, but I know it will be so worth it in the end!

Below are some pictures from the rest of July. Clearly, we did not do a whole lot but pack up the house, and nobody wants to see that mess! :)

These pictures are from the 4th of July. We shot fireworks with some friends that night!

We also watched Thunder on the Mountain late that night! Oh and unbeknownst to us, right next to that golf cart below was a copperhead! Eeekkkk!!!!

The people buying our house literally brought a thousand people over to the house to give them estimates throughout the inspection period and prior to close (it got SO ridiculous!!), but it did give us some time to make early morning runs to get donuts while we had people in the house! There's a bright side to everything!

Joel's cousin is a firefighter in Vestavia and brought over the emergency vehicle one night when we were all having dinner. It was such a fun, impromptu visit, and the kids loved it. Thank you John!

Boys in stripes are always cute! :)

Poor Harrison never gets any play dates, so we did venture out to the zoo one hot July day with his buddy David. We had such a fun afternoon and ended up in the splash pad because it was way too hot!