An update on our current state of chaos.

Things have happened since I last checked in.

We sold our house. In six days. In a market where the average house is listed for 64 days. We were so surprised when the offer came in and it wasn't a low ball. It was absolutely an answer to prayer. While on the job hunt at the end of January, I prayed that I wouldn't get the job I wanted if the house was going to sell in February. Against all odds it did and, if you'll recall, I bombed that interview in spectacular fashion.

We weren't completely prepared for what selling our house in a week would mean. We are so grateful that we didn't have to keep it on the market for long. Even though it was, in a way, easier to keep the house pristine than just normal level of tidy, it was still exhausting.

Going into this, we knew we didn't want to move in winter. Four years ago, we moved out here in the middle of a very long, cold winter, and it was brutal. I'm not sure what the rest of the continent is like, but we are still in full winter mode here. It might not be -40 anymore, but we did get 35 cm of snow this weekend and people are still digging themselves out. 

Now that we've finished the uncertain phase of selling the house, we get to enter the next one, which is almost more uncertain. Initially I had dreamed of moving straight from this house into a new one in Victoria. Bless my daydreaming soul, but that isn't our reality. 

Karl and I aren't transferring jobs or moving because we've been recruited (like last time), we're going in with nothing. That means that we're not able to qualify for a mortgage until we've at least both got jobs, so we're going to be staying with my mom for an indeterminate amount of time. She has lots of bedrooms, but only one bathroom so you can pray for us if you think about it. And pray that no one gets food poisoning.

On the job front, Karl already has a couple offers and is set to start working a couple days after we arrive. I've got an interview already lined up for next week, and a couple other positions I've applied for that I suspect I'll hear back from. Hopefully the job market in Victoria isn't as brutal as the one here. We also have a few childcare options to interview next week. The thing is, if we don't find childcare before I find a job, because Karl already has a job, I'll be turning down any potential offers until something gets lined up. Kids are such liabilities.

Can we talk about the extreme stress of finding childcare? Never mind leaving your kids with complete strangers that you know next to nothing about, it's going to cost us at least 50% more in Victoria than it would in Regina to have two kids in daycare. It's in such high demand there, too, that I emailed over 70 providers in the last few weeks, and heard back from maybe half a dozen of them that they might have room. Factor in some negative reviews I got on a few of them, and we're interviewing two places this week, maybe three. Pray for no secret sociopaths.

We'll be doing the move in two trips because we're fun like that. The first trip is going to be really short. It'll take longer to get there than we'll actually be there. We'll be towing Karl's Mustang, bringing as much stuff as we can, and interviewing/being interviewed out the wazoo. After that we turn and burn, come back to pack up the house, say our final goodbyes, and leave before the Easter long weekend. Pray for no more blizzards. And that we can get the car out of the garage.

When we're not battling colds, I've been slowly packing up the house. It's a weird thing to pack up in phases. We packed some things before we listed the house that we knew we wouldn't need for several months. Now we're packing things and labelling them to go in storage until we get into our own house, or to go to my mom's house with us. Some will get unpacked, some will hang out in her basement. Is it weird how much I'm going to miss my pots and pans? And coffee mugs? And food processor? And blender? I have attachment issues to my kitchen gear.

While I may be sentimental about my small appliances, I'm surprisingly not about a lot of other things. We've sold our couches, are getting rid of most of our dressers, and are trying to sell our bed frame. And the house. I love this house so much, but I'm finding myself less sentimental about it than I expected. Sure, it's our first house, we brought our babies home from the hospital here, and made a lot of memories here, but it's just a bunch of walls and a really nice roof. We'll see how I feel when we say our last goodbye, but I got more emotional last week after my final appointment with the doctor that delivered our kids and saying goodbye to him (not pregnant) than I do thinking about leaving this house.

So here we go. Our year of chaos 2.0 continues.