A Day In The Life...: #casadevoigts

April 23, 2015

On March 20, 2015, we closed on Prairie Meadow Dr. The whole building process went over much smoother than we could have anticipated. It was fun to make all of the interior selection for the house and our builder was really easy to work with.

It was the actual closing that was an absolute nightmare and was pretty much the cherry on top of a really long, stressful journey. I have been trying to recall the exact timeline of our two days of "closing hell" but my mind seems to have repressed the details.

The closing of our previous two houses were fairly uneventful so we assumed this one would go off without a hitch as well....HA the universe had different plans. In a nutshell, our closing was delayed three times and then cancelled twice over the course of two days. In the meantime, we had packed up the apartment so we headed to a hotel. We had to cancel our movers twice and reschedule all of the installation appointments that we had scheduled weeks in advance.

When closing was cancelled on the second day, I lost it. All of the stress of the last 15 months pushed me off a cliff. I was frustrated, angry, overwhelmed and completely helpless. We had waited for this day for soooooooooooo long. This was a hard lesson in "best laid plans..." and the fact that you really don't have control over much, if anything, in life.

When we finally got to sit at the closing table, the situation didn't get any better. What normally takes 45 minutes to an hour took us over 3 hours. But at last we finally had the keys to our castle in hand. We rushed "home" to let in our movers who had been waiting hours for us and began the long process of unpacking.

(Finally, in our new{est} home!)

Over the next several days, we were able to get all of our installations completed (window treatments, sound system, TVs hung, etc.), bedrooms set up and unpacking all of the stuff we had managed to live without for 9 months. Makes you realize how little you really need in life!

Our house was the first completed on our block and entire street. In fact the day we closed was the day they broke ground on the house next door! Our lot was only 5,000 sq ft. The backyard was tiny (which we loved) and the houses were right on top of each other (ended up not loving this so much). We didn't have any landscaping for almost 3 months and living in a construction zone was a challenge but we survived, we were finally home.

(Living in a construction zone was fun for the boys.)

(Construction begins on our neighbors house.)

Willow Park East was the newest subsection of Stapleton (a neighborhood in NW Denver) and since we were one of the first people to move in, it was so exciting to see it take shape. The pace of the construction and development of parks and pathways was incredible.

Looking back, I have to say it was all worth it. The hard times in life are the ones that give you an opportunity to make yourself better, a chance to really look within and find a new strength in yourself. The stress put us back in bi-weekly sessions with our beloved therapist, Anne G (What?! You don't have a marriage counselor? Oh, you really should!), but we came through with a new sense of ourselves and each other. Eight months after moving in, our marriage was stronger than it had ever been.

The neighborhood was full of young families, with children close to our kids ages. Neither J nor myself are super outgoing people but it was easy for us to meet likeminded people and develop friendships. We had finally found our niche. We were happy.