After a storm comes a calm. ~ Matthew Henry

I truly hope this is true in our case. It really seems our lives have been in a whirl wind for months, actually since I was about 8 mos preggo and we decided we were going to have to sell our house and move. That was almost a year ago. For the first time in a long time, the upcoming days on my calendar are not overflowing with little scribbles trying to fit everything we have going on into a little 1x1 inch space.

We moved again this past weekend. Hopefully we will be here for a while. The little munchkin is only 8 months old and she has already had 3 homes. Luckily she seems to adjust pretty quickly. Because we moved into our villa only 4.5 months ago, the packing seemed easier this time. I still had half of my kitchen items in boxes and everything was very organized and purged from having already gone through this so recently. It did seem to go much quicker. I took off work Friday through Wednesday and I was able to unpack and put away most of our stuff. I still sent the munchkin to the sitter while I was off work so that I could actually get some things done. It has all been very exhausting and exciting.

Losing our house due to financial reasons was very hard for us, as it would be for anyone. We knew selling our home and moving on was our best and quite frankly, our only option. While searching for our temporary housing while our house was on the market was depressing, it was temporarily overshadowed by the wonderful arrival of our new baby. I did a pretty good job of putting on a happy face and forging on. I tried to make the best of it. Once we became somewhat adjusted to parenthood, the reality of our situation set in and it was a little overwhelming. We had lost our first home. A home that we loved. The first home we bought together. The home the little munchkin was brought home to from the hospital. Now we had found ourselves in a very different place. I hated the villa and the longer we were there, the more I began to loathe it. The list of reasons goes on and on, and I won't bore you with them all, but it was definitely not the place for us. As soon as our house was sold, I was already looking for a new place for us. The thought of spending an entire year there was more then I could bear and I knew we had to go.

Long story short, I found our new home on Craig's List. As soon as I saw the listing, I had this strange, urgent feeling come over me. The home had just been listed the day before and I called them right away. It was April, and our current 6 mos lease wasn't up until July 1st. We were in no position to already be looking, but everything about this house was perfect for us. Not only was it exactly the kind of home we were looking for, it was only 0.7 miles from my parents house! We went to look at it, and we fell inlove. We told the landlord we couldn't move in until July 1st and ofcourse they were completely turned off by this. They also informed us they already had an applicant ready to move in right away. We told them how much we loved the home, that we would do anything we could to move in there (anything we could afford really). The little munchkin was a big help. She really turned on the charm and you could tell that the wife really liked her. The couple told us they would talk about it and get back to us. We filled out the application, gave them $30 for our credit/background check and crossed our fingers. We left without much hope.

Within an hour they called us back with a deal. If we would pay for half of May, half of June, plus the security deposit, and bring them the money the next day, they would hold the home for us until July 1st. I couldn't believe they were willing to do that for us! Right away, I told them yes, but I wasn't quite sure yet how we were going to make it happen. It was alot of money to come up with and not alot of time to do it. We scraped together everything we had, and with a little help from my grandparents, we made it happen.

So it's only mid May, not July 1st, why are we already in the new house? Thanks to one little tiny paragraph amongst all the other legal jargon in our lease at the villa, we were able to leave much sooner.

"If for any voluntary or involuntary reason, the lease is broken" we had to pay our last months rent plus a fine equal to our rent payment. We were already planning on paying that much anyway to live there through June, but this way we didn't have to continue to pay the utilities there plus take care of the yard. Now we could move into the new place sooner and not throw away the money we gave them to hold it. Yay!!

It all happened very quickly. But it's hard to find a place you love that is available right when you need it. Sometimes you have to just make it happen, and even though we had to really stretch things out to make it all work, it will all be worth it in the long run. For the first time in a long time, I feel really happy. I don't have the ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. The very first day we were in our new home, I felt a sense of relief that our lives were somewhat back on track again.

The crazy thing is, I like this house better then the house we had to sell. Alot better. It is also costing us so much less per month to live there. And I absolutely love love love the location of it. We can walk to my parents house! And the really great part is, that after our lease is up, if we want to buy the house, we get 20% back towards the down payment! And that is definitely something we are interested in.

So we are in the new place. We almost have everything unpacked and put away. We saw alot of my parents over the weekend, with them living so close, and it was wonderful.

The little munchkin is all over the place and into everything. We moved just in time because the old place wasn't great for her at all and the new place is set up perfect. We baby proofed as we went and now she can explore and check out everything safely. She is crawling so fast now and its so much fun trying to keep up with her. She is pulling up and almost standing, but not a whole lot yet. She mostly just pulls up to her knees and hangs out there.

There sure is alot to catch up on when you only blog once a month.... hopefully with things calming down that will change. We'll see. I have a ton of pics to upload. The little munchkin is getting so big! Here's a few for now.

The little munchkin's playmate in these pictures is her little cousin who is only 6 weeks younger then her. This is my sister's baby. Her and her husband have just started blogs of their own. If you want to head over and check them out, here is my sister's blog, and here is my brother-in-law's blog. I thought some of our common friends might like to take a peak!

Here's her and her cousin playing in a big bucket at my mom's house.

Her cousin wearing her "I'm Bringing Chubby Back" onesie that I got her.

And here's the munchkin sitting in a little racecar bouncer.