moving a family: part 4

HOUSE HUNTING . . . sigh.

To date, we've made two trips to Cleveland to look at houses.  The first trip, we all went, and toured seven homes.  On the second trip, I went with Ella on my own and met my mother's husband there.  He graciously volunteered to drive up from Dayton in order to entertain Ella and lay a second pair of eyes on the line-up for that visit - another four houses plus a second visit to a home we'd seen during our first visit.  It's this house that we've been negotiating to purchase for a little over a week now.

It is the only house we've seen that I began visualizing plans for immediately.  It needs some TLC after sitting empty for just over a year's time, but has plenty of square footage for our little family to grow into.  In fact, I almost can't imagine having so much space after living in our tight, 1100-square-feet for the past three years.  We are all eager to spread out a bit!

So, as we wait for news on our last and final offer, I've been browsing children's books all about moving to a new house (thank you for the suggestion Annie) and ordered these two:

A New Home for Kai-Mook by Guido Van Genechten and From There to Here by Laurel Croza. 

Ella and I have also been busy planning her bedroom for a new house (whichever house that may be).  I'll be posting her creative vision later this week!

the center hall colonial

Many of the homes in the areas we've been house hunting are center hall Colonials.  These are homes that have a center hall in a usually symmetrical floor plan that contains the main stair and a foyer.  The rooms that flank the center hall are most typically a living room and a dining room.  When given the choice between a Tudor and a Colonial, we seem to be most attracted to the Colonial.  All things aside though, this wouldn't be my first style choice.  I really do love a good bungalow or even a nice modern, but with zero moderns and few bungalows large enough to fit the bill, I've started gathering some inspiration for what we might do with a center hall Colonial.

I'm completely taken with some of the renovations I've found and seriously excited to get started on the next house, when we find one of course!

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I love the eclectic mix of furnishings in these rooms - a little bit of modern in spaces with lots of traditional details.  They all feel comfortable but polished; put together but not stuffy.  Perhaps that is my biggest fear when looking at this style of home, that I won't be able to create the casual spaces that  match our family's lifestyle in rooms with such formal detail.  These images reassure me that it is, in fact, possible to do just that.

moving a family: part 3

If you've been following my moving series here and here, you'll know that we've been waiting for news from the school we've chosen for Ella to attend this fall.  Well, several weeks ago we received the call we had been waiting for.  Ella will be starting preschool in the fall at a school where we all felt quite at home and so now we can move onto other pressing matters: house hunting to be specific.

We finally received a great recommendation for a realtor and have been talking and exchanging emails with her.  Ted and I sat down and made a list of everything we're looking for in a new home, but there is most definitely an emotional and visceral requirement that I haven't yet found.  Nor can I seem to put my finger on what about a home might compel me to feel that these requirements have been met.  Our realtor has been sending us videos all weekend of homes she has previewed for us. The videos are very helpful, but it's so easy to get distracted by that one bad thing, or even good thing, a house has.  It's hard to prevent yourself from becoming increasingly picky as you view each successive home.  It's hard to remain realistic when in search of the perfect home because, of course, there isn't one.

A tentative trip to Cleveland is in the works for the coming weekend and so I hope to be able to find that "it" quality that I so need to feel like we are making the right choice for our family.  But until then you'll find me continuing to scour Trulia for the perfect home, since I'm sure it will be coming on the market this week (wink wink).

moving a family: part 2

I've been a bit absent here and the reasons are two-fold.  First, the ongoing renovation of our bathroom has kept Ella and I away from home and out of our routine.  Second, we've been working on checking things off of our moving checklist.  Our first priority: to find a pre-school for Ella.

Just before the holidays, Ted and I finally had a chance to talk together about finding a preschool for Ella in Cleveland.  He knows much more about the city and was able to give me an idea of the educational landscape, you know, the Who's Who of Schools.  We started to hop onto websites, make mental notes of application deadlines, program highlights, tuition (wah! wah!), and locations.  We decided to pick it all up again after we returned to Ann Arbor just after the new year.  And ha!, here we are, February.  All those mental notes must have gotten deleted between all the driving, the celebrating, the eating and the drinking of the holidays.  The drinking . . . that's probably what did it really.

In any case, here we are, in February and realizing we've missed application deadlines.  After a momentary freak out, I've been able to get things back on track and have realized that these things are not such a big deal.  Ella will go to school somewhere, I'm sure.  And, she (and we) will be just fine.

But, aside from the application deadlines, the logistics of touring schools in a city where you know only a handful of people is a challenging and expensive endeavor.  Booking hotels, arranging for our dog to be boarded, gas, meals . . . you know, the general expenses one encounters when traveling.  And of course, the toll it can take on a toddler is also a bit of a drag.  Though she might look quite cozy reading to her stuffed animals in the hotel, the quick trip wore her out.

While in Cleveland, we visited two schools.  A third visit was planned but ultimately cancelled because we were exhausted and because the first school we visited happened to be exactly what Ted and I wanted for Ella.  Even she let out an audible "ooooooh" when we walked into the building, and then asked, "Where's the paint, mommy?".  I'm a firm believer in following your intuition with things such as this.  If you feel comfortable, at ease, and confident, you're probably doing the right thing.  And we did at this school.  We ALL did.  Ella marched straight into the preschool classroom without a single hesitation, or goodbye for that matter.  She went immediately to a comfy chair by the bookshelves, grabbing book on her way, and sat down to read; something she often does when the social atmosphere is a bit intimidating (she is certainly my daughter).  Now, we are just in a holding pattern until we hear that they have space for Ella in the class next year.  Waiting and crossing our fingers, so our next trip can be completely dedicated to our house hunt.

moving a family: part 1

Ella's first photograph in our house in Ann Arbor (2011)

For all of those friends who do not yet know, our family will be moving to Cleveland this summer.  My husband will have graduated from school and will be starting a new job there, and that is something to celebrate.  But the idea of moving and the actual logistics of moving . . . these are some totally overwhelming things, that have rendered me full of apprehension, a little dread, sadness, and fear.

And just to get myself more worked up about it all, I made the mistake of typing this exact phrase - moving a family - into Google last week and among a long list of things, these are some of the articles I found:

this New York Times article about moving . . .

and this, from the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychology.

Both incredibly scary and totally unhelpful.

Though life continues on for us here, in much the same way it always has, the talk of moving to a new home and city comes up more often than it used to.  I bring it up to my husband to remind us both how quickly this move will be here, and I bring it up to Ella so that we can begin to prepare her to leave the only home and school she's known (yep, here come the tears).

Though we aren't the first family to ever move, and this won't be our first move as a family, this will be a unique experience for us.  It will be the first time we move with a child who is old enough to know that something is changing, and in a big way.  It will be the first time that we hire movers (thank God).  It will be the first time that we have to remove Ella from a school she looks forward to attending each week, and friends she's met.  And it will be the first time we leave this city of Ann Arbor, a city we've grown so fond of,  and all of the friends and neighbors we've met here.  And that is going to be incredibly sad.

Though I am still trying to find the excitement in this moving experience, I am excited to share this process with all of you.  I'll continue writing about our moving journey here, every few weeks, and I hope you'll share your experiences with us too!