Funny (not funny) how this title could have been written anytime in the past two years. In fact, I know a lot of people who moved between 2020-2022 because the pandemic rearranged a lot of our priorities. It certainly did ours, and we’re certainly grateful for the grand adventures we had during the first half of it all. But this last 18 months has been a doozy and a huge practice in acceptance and embrace of uncertainty.

Let me back up to what we’ve been up to since the last time I posted two months ago (yikes!). Our little family has been pining for a homestead and a place to take new roots for much of these past two years. A lot of places got our hopes up, but we’d get down to business of planning it out and something would derail. It’s okay, it just meant it wasn’t meant to be and a lot of no’s would eventually land us on a yes. We are crystal clear on our yeses. We are picky, we know what we want and what won’t work for us.

We started to look at properties early spring on Colorado’s western slope. Two or three small towns specifically (once again, being very picky). We got our mortgage docs in order and started shopping. We all know how bonkers the housing market has been, but we figured we could take our time for the right thing because in rural places things move slower and there’s less of the wild competition for housing compared to the front range. We found a house we liked OK and put in an offer that was accepted, but the deal fell apart once we completed the inspection because there were just too many things to overcome that we didn’t want to be paying for for decades to come. (It wasn’t a hell yes.)

Back to the drawing board and back to family separation, because Zach has continued working in Utah and making trips back to the metro area as weekends and our budget has allowed.

About a month ago I started looking at real estate listings in rural areas of Utah. We’ve always enjoyed it as a place to visit, (hello 10 year Moab Thanksgiving tradition,) and Zach’s been falling more in love with it everyday. Could we be open to living there? Without knowing a whole lot about the areas we could afford we put an inquiry out to Zach’s landlord who is also a realtor. We started texting her some listings we liked and let it lie for a few weeks. As soon as the kids finished their online school year, we hit the road for an extended break in Provo to visit Zach’s current town and to hopefully find our next place.

We went into this week completely open minded, maybe we’d find a nice Provo rental so we could be all together every night, maybe we’d find some new little town within commuting distance. One of the listings we had sent to the realtor kept speaking to me though and I kept thinking about that little place. Maybe we should just look at that and start there, it was on our way into Provo after all.

That travel morning the kids and I stopped for a “quick” hike in Moab and I very quickly remembered why we love that place so much. Spring was very abundant in the desert and everything was green and blooming. It was also unseasonably cool so we didn’t mind hiking 5 miles in May. After a full morning we hustled our way to Fayette, Utah about 3 hours northwest to make our showing appointment where we’d meet Zach and the realtor, Emily. Upon first look, we really liked this place, but I was very disoriented and almost sick feeling from the long hike and drive, we also had another appointment to make in another small town 45 minutes away. The next house was in a more convenient town with more amenities, but it was creepy AF with the grandma’s antique doll collection everywhere, and the house needed more work than the first place. Emily agreed to send us more listings in the coming days and we finally took our rest at our Airbnb in Provo that night.

The following day we talked about what we’d seen and bookmarked a few more listings, but when it came down to it, none of us could stop thinking about the Fayette house, nothing else we had seen or were considering from the listings even came close in comparison. As the week went on we enjoyed all of Provo’s beautiful surroundings, did lots of outdoor things, and kept talking about the house as we walked, as we made meals, as we relaxed. By day three of our visit we decided we didn’t need to look anymore, we just wanted to put in an offer on the Fayette house. After a little back and fourth we signed a counteroffer and went under contract!

After having an inspection burst our bubble on the last old house, we were sort of holding our collective breath. This house was considerably older (built in 1908), and although extensively improved, you just never know until you start looking past the cosmetic work. We scheduled our inspection for the following week, and in the meantime asked if we could take another look at the house overall with fresh eyes and better perspective after spending our week in Provo. Good feelings all around this time, we met a neighbor, saw lots of kids doing kid things, visited the Gunnison store – the closest town with amenities, and fell in love with the house and property all over again. We headed back to Colorado the following day, tired from all the miles but so excited about the prospects of building our future in this tiny place.

Happy to report that the inspection passed muster! Zach returned to Colorado for the long Memorial Day weekend and we celebrated how all has been moving along smoothly. We have a closing date of 6/17!

I’ve been overthinking how to exit Colorado this time. There are a lot of logistics to consider having our lives spread out across three states (the bus is still parked in storage in New Mexico), I keep joking that just for today that’s not for me to figure out. We’ve started telling family and friends how we’d love to get together. However, Covid had different plans / timelines. Last Thursday Natalie woke up feeling crummy, this after Zach saying on Tuesday he had felt almost hungover all day (at the time we attributed it to the long drive back on Monday). I tested Natalie and told Zach he’d need to test as well after getting her positive. Sure enough, he had it too and he thinks he brought it to us over the long weekend. Camden registered positive today but felt the worst yesterday. So far I’ve had no symptoms aside from paranoia that I’m getting it. We’re masking while we’re indoors and I’m keeping my distance from the kids aside from being the bringer of food and drinks.

So all this to say, we are moving to Utah! We’re hoping with the timing of our quarantine that we’ll still have about a week to say our goodbyes to friends. Reach out if you’d like to get on the schedule. We can’t wait to move to our little homestead, so much so that even Covid can’t get our hopes down.

Enjoy some more house pics!