And the Orchard Creek chapter of our lives is….

Closed! And while it is very exciting for us to be moving on to a bigger home, the craziness of trying to sell the thing is over and just how much we are going to miss “the OC” is starting to hit us.  We have so many great memories there! Just to give you a little perspective of how long we lived there, BriAnne and I had only been married for a little over 1 year when we moved in…Katelyn wasn’t even a twinkle in her daddy’s eye yet and Ethan was still a speck of dust in the far reaches of Kolob’s galaxy. BriAnne was a teller at the Bank of American Fork’s Pleasant Grove branch – none of the teller’s she worked with have been there for at several years now. I worked for a company that is now completely out of existence. We not only remember when the Whitehead’s moved in, but we remember when the people they bought from moved in. There have been at least 5 different tenents that have lived in the unit next door. Our good ol’ Nissan Altima has been with us the whole time, but I have gone through 4 different vehicles – a car, a jeep, and two different trucks. We celebrated 18 different birthday’s while there (in case you are counting, 6 for me, 6 for BriAnne, 4 for Katelyn and 2 for Ethan) and I somehow made it through 4 out of 5 years of college while there. I finished my 4 year stint on the HOA committee…2 years ago.  Crazy.

Now that we have officially closed on the transaction, we are digging in and opening full bore the home search. For now though, we are staying in a home that looks remarkably close to the one I grew up in…Oh wait, yep – it is the same one.  But it is very comfortable here and it’s got to be every grandkid’s dream to hang out with grandma and grandpa whenever they want! Seriously, going from 800 sq/ft to much more than that with a jetted tub, projection TV and huge fenced backyard has been “pleasant” to say the least. Maybe we’ll find a home for my parents to move into so we can keep living in their house…

Here are a few pictures of our empty condo and the current living quarter status:

And our current locale:

And Ethan loving hanging out with his Grandpa:

So, as we make some progress we’ll post updates here.  Sorry that we haven’t been keeping up with this (if you care) – you can thank a lot of things including the Federal Housing Authority, mortgage lending industry and Elmo.