My family and I have become somewhat accustomed to moving about every three to five years. Usually the move has been the result of a job change (ie. new position or international assignment), but this time it was of our own decision.

We had been living in our current home (see above) for five years - our longest stint anywhere - when my husband and I got the all-too-familiar urge to move. I guess it is lucky that the two of us are on the same page when it comes to relocating. We knew there was not a job move in our near future (never say never), so we decided it was time to find a renovation project. We heard through the grapevine of an old house in our neighborhood that may soon be available. This sounded like a good opportunity to us...

So in March 2009, we decided to put our house on the market - everyone thought we were nuts! The jury, in fact, may still be out on that one. To our surprise, given the current economic environment, our house sold within 30 days! We knew our project would be major in scope, so we would need to find a rental to live in during the process.

As luck would have it, we immediately found a rental just down the block and around the corner - a little, old house that had been completely renovated. So, in June 2009, we began the process of moving a 4000 sq. foot house into a 2000 sq foot house. Needless to say, we have a HUGE storage unit as well.

Without going into a lot of detail, the old house that started this whole project idea fell through for us in August 2009. We had spent a lot of time working with an architect, planning the design & construction etc. Now it was back to the drawing board. In retrospect, it is a blessing that house fell through. It would have been much more existing repair work than we would have wanted. As a friend of mine said, "Sometimes God says NO when we can't do it for ourselves".

Now the task of finding a new project...we scoured our little village looking for a worthy project. We had looked for about two weeks when the rental house behind us suddenly came on the market. Talk about things falling in your lap...