How we ended up moving to Idaho

Back during tax season, Nate decided that he was done with tax seasons and never seeing his wife and children for 3+ months of the year. He never planned on being in public accounting his entire life, and with where he was at in his career, it just seemed like a good jumping off point. Fast forward a couple months, we start doing improvements to the house to help it sell (minor things like replacing some outdated kitchen lighting, painting, etc., it really was in pretty good shape to begin with), and Nate starts looking for jobs. He isn't too aggressive because we have things planned like our Bryce Canyon trip and other things that we want to do in the summer, so we figured we will move in the fall.

I spent my free time researching and looking online at homes and home builders. I have always wanted to build a house (rather, have a house built for me) so I poured over floor plans and found a few I liked and Nate and I decided on one particular plan that we thought would fit our family really well. We look at the different cities/subdivisions it was available in and make a spreadsheet (nerd alert!) comparing how much each would cost. It happens to be that the most affordable subdivision in the northern area of Meridian also the perfect lot! In fact, I described my dream lot, and then we looked, and it was there! So, we scheduled a time to look at it when we went to visit my parents at the end of July.

We looked at the lot, and then looked at a model home of the plan we liked, and decided that it was too perfect to pass up so we put down money and the builder grated us a one month contingency so we could get our money back in case we couldn't sell our house, Nate couldn't find a job, etc. Nate found several jobs he was interested in, but none of them worked out so he talked to his company and they were thrilled to have him stay on for another tax season and work remotely. So, he still has one more tax season, but he will get to work at home so he can at least eat meals with us, and he doesn't have the commute time so he will have a few more hours a week to spend with us and/or sleep.

We listed our home after we got back from Idaho on Zillow and we had an offer over our asking price by the next day. The next few weeks were filled with worrying about inspections, appraisals, etc. but everything worked out and we closed on September 27th. We found a short-term apartment lease in Meridian that allowed dogs, but it didn't start until October 7th, so we rented our house back until then. On October 8th, Nate drove a 24-foot Budget truck and I followed in our car all the way to Meridian and unloaded into our 990 square foot 2-bedroom apartment and storage unit. Somehow, everything fits perfectly! Our apartment is on the 3rd floor, which is a challenge with kids and dog (I am so excited to be able to just open the door again to let the dog go potty instead of having to take her all the way downstairs). We have really enjoyed it so far and Jared loves his new school!

The original estimated date of completion they gave us back in August was February 3rd. They are flying and I wouldn't be surprised if they are ahead of schedule by a couple weeks!