Storybook Hill Series | Part 5
After finding the house that instantly felt like home, we toured it, made an offer, and were rejected. Or at least, that’s what happened on paper. If you’re new to the Storybook Hill series, start with Part 1: The Day I Found My Storybook Hill
There was still one very large problem.
In order to buy the house, we needed our farmhouse to sell for a number that honestly felt slightly out of reach.
And we needed it to happen quickly.
If we were going to catch the September market, there wasn’t much time to waste.
So Labor Day weekend became chaos.
Sweaty, itchy, emotionally exhausted chaos.
We spent the entire weekend trying to prepare ten years of life for listing photos and showings.
And when I say ten years of life, I mean wood piles, projects, tools, animals, flower farming equipment, kids’ stuff, lawn furniture, half-finished hobbies, fully-finished hobbies, and approximately one million mysterious extension cords.
All while I was covered in poison ivy for the second time in two years and fueled by prednisone, a combination that was miserable for my skin but incredibly effective for my to-do list.
The house hit the market.
And somehow, despite all of it, everything started moving.
Fast.
Thirty Showings
Our first open house had thirty parties through it.
Thirty.
I remember staring at the number in complete disbelief.
After months of trying to figure out how we could possibly make this work, suddenly people were walking through our farmhouse discussing whether they wanted to buy it.
A week later, we had competing offers.
The timing felt almost too perfect.
Which is when life reminded us that it was still in charge.
Just three weeks before closing, my dad had a mild stroke while visiting us.
Thankfully, he recovered quickly but for a few days, real estate, and all other responsibilities, became significantly less important.
My brother was out of town. My sister lives in Denver. So most of the hospital responsibilities landed with me, which honestly felt exactly right. I was grateful I could be there.
What I wasn’t expecting was that while sitting in a hospital room worrying about my dad, I’d also be negotiating inspection reports and desperately trying to keep our deal together.
Negotiating from a Hospital Room
At one point I was taking calls from Holly, talking through inspection requests, repair negotiations, timelines, and contingencies while also trying to understand what doctors were telling us.
Or at least that’s what I thought I was doing; in reality, Holly was carrying almost all of it. To this day, I don’t know how she managed everything she did behind the scenes during those few weeks because inspections on old farmhouses are not for the faint of heart.
You don’t get a three-page report. You get a novella. A heavily footnoted historical document outlining every creative, cute decision made by previous homeowners since approximately 1899.
Every time my phone rang, I assumed someone had discovered another expensive problem.
But somehow, from a hospital room, the best possible outcome emerged.
The inspections were resolved.
The deals stayed together.
The dates aligned.
And when I walked out of that hospital, we were suddenly just three weeks away from closing.
Now, had we known we were actually moving, neither Dale nor I would have scheduled the trips we already had on the calendar.
Life, however, had neglected to provide advance notice.
So while we were simultaneously packing a decade of life into boxes and trying not to accidentally derail two real estate transactions, Dale was supposed to leave for a fishing trip to Canada with my dad.
Obviously, that trip didn’t happen.
Instead, he found himself with an unexpected extra week of time at home.
A week he desperately needed.
Because if you’ve never moved a woodworker, let me assure you: it is less of a move and more of a logistical operation.
Moving a Woodworker
Wood.
Tools.
Projects.
Lumber.
More lumber.
Special lumber.
Lumber being saved for future projects.
Lumber being saved for future projects that may or may not ever exist.
It took fifteen guys, two skid steers, and eight straight hours to move Dale’s shop.
It was impressive, honestly.
But somehow, piece by piece, everything started finding its way into boxes, trailers, trucks, and storage spaces.
The entire season felt like life moving at two completely different speeds.
One moment, everything felt impossibly fragile.
The next, doors were opening everywhere.
Not luck.
Alignment.
That’s still the only word I have for it.
It felt like life finally exhaling after holding its breath for months.
The weekend before the move, I still flew to Oregon with my daughter to visit my soul sister Patty. We had tickets to see Stevie Nicks because apparently my approach to major life transitions is maximum emotional significance at all times.
She ended the concert with Landslide.
And like every woman my age, I immediately became emotional despite only having a loose understanding of what the song is actually about.
At the time, it felt like a song about moving, growing, and starting a new chapter. Looking back, I don’t think I understood how much change was actually coming.
We came home from that trip on October 6th to pack the final pieces of our lives into boxes.
Closing Day
And on 10/10 we closed on our old house with surprisingly little drama. Then turned around and closed on our new one immediately afterward.
The next few hours were a blur of paperwork, animals, trailers, hugs and mild confusion.
The kids started collecting dogs and cats and transporting them to the new house.
We swung by our neighbors’ place, where they had generously agreed to let us temporarily store alpacas, goats, and what felt like half our life in a trailer parked in their driveway.
It was not elegant, not polished, just everyone grabbing something alive and hoping it ends up at the correct address.
The Blurry Selfie
And then, somewhere between unloading trailers, counting animals, and trying to remember where we’d packed literally everything we owned, we stood on the porch and took a blurry selfie.
When I look at that photo now, I don’t see a real estate transaction.
I see twenty years.
Twenty years of marriage.
Twenty years of building.
Parenting.
Failing.
Trying again.
Dreaming.
Becoming.
Twenty years of creating a life together one decision at a time.
And somehow, all of it had led to that porch.
To that moment.
To Storybook Hill.
We moved most of our belongings into the house that night, set up the beds and thought we’d spend my birthday weekend unpacking and settling in.
For the first time in a very long time, everything felt exactly as it was supposed to.
Perfect.
We were wrong.
Continue to Part 6 | The House That Held Me Through Grief→
