Moving On

I haven’t felt like getting personal on here for a while…a long time in fact! But I do want to update you that yes, we moved.

When I found out I was pregnant, we were living in a little two-bedroom apartment. We’d been wanting to buy, so I thought we could casually look while I was pregnant in case we could make something work, but otherwise we’d be fine in our apartment. However, once I found out I was having TWINS I panicked. Buying a house didn’t seem feasible financially, but I wanted more space both for the twins and for people to be able to come visit/help. So I began the hunt for a bigger rental, and on one of those sleepless nights that are all-to-common during pregnancy, I saw the cutest house pop up at 3am. We went to look at the house the very next day, applied along with like 80 other people, and by the following day we were signing a lease. Luckily the landlords loved us – I think my twin pregnancy story helped ;).

We moved in while I was pregnant and were able to get settled well before the babies came. The house was owned by three sisters whose mother left it to them when she passed away. It had been paid off for years with hardly any taxes, so when we asked them if they’d ever sell (hoping to buy it someday) they laughed at us and said they never would. So while we were bummed there was no hope of buying it, we felt secure there in that we could stay until we were able to buy something else.

We decorated the nursery, had so many friends and family stay in the guest room, loved having the backyard space for Lo, and built out a closet/office for me. We brought the girls home to that house, and it was there we had so many firsts with them. They learned to walk, talk, kiss, eat, and play. We had so many specials moments, happy times, and fought through heartache there.

Most of you probably know that I was on bedrest in the hospital and the girls spent three months in the hospital after they were born. Even after they came home, they had to follow up with specialists and lots of out-patient therapies, so you can imagine what those hospital bills looked like. Buying a house seemed like something we were getting further and further away from.

At the end of May of this year, our landlords told us circumstances had changed and they wanted to sell. Although legally a landlord in California has to give 60 days notice, they incentivized us to be out by June 30 so we started the scramble of looking for a new place. We hadn’t had an income since the beginning of COVID but had worked hard to keep paying rent. With all of the craziness going on it was important to keep our house feeling like a constant, so the timing felt so unexpected and cruel. I knew the house was a rental and was never meant to be forever, but I realized that it’s the longest I’ve ever lived in one house in my whole life. It was only a little over three years, but that’s two little lifetimes right here.

But as we all know, everything happens for a reason. A few things miraculously fell into place, and we were able to buy a home. It’s in a little town further south and a little bit inland from where we lived before, but with more space and land. A lot of you have asked why we didn’t buy the house we lived in. We actually tried to, but without going in to too much detail it never actually seemed like a solid option. We asked the landlords to give us their asking price as soon as they knew it, but never got one and actually didn’t hear back for almost two weeks. Within those two weeks we got so nervous and decided we just needed to find a new place for our family regardless of what our landlords decided to do. In the end, one of the sisters decided she wanted to try and buy the house and asked if we would consider staying as tenants. That was hard to hear, but had already put things in motion and knew that we needed to move on.

We also tried to buy or rent in Costa Mesa, but we had been rent controlled for a few years and rental prices are so much higher now! And buying in Costa Mesa in our price range wasn’t going to give us what I wanted for the girls. So, we ended up about an hour from Costa Mesa, and yes it’s definitely hard to leave the comforts and perks of living in Orange County. The hardest part has been leaving our close friends. I felt insanely lucky to become a part of an amazing little crew, but in true-friend fashion they’ve already come to visit and helped in ways that make this new place feel like home.

And the new place really does feel like the perfect place for the girls right now with all the time we are spending at home! We literally got pushed out of this little nest and on to a new adventure, and that’s something I’ll be forever grateful for. Thank you all for all of your concern and nice messages through the move!

More to come on the new place, very soon!

xx

Jen