Just Another Day in the Park: Our next BIG adventure!

So - I know many people already know this, but....we are moving! And we finally have some exciting things to share! We bought 8 acres of land in McCutchenville, Ohio. The land has several buildings on it and a huge hill. Tim and I have been talking about building a home for us since we got married and we have been working on the plans ever since, even though we weren't sure where or when it would happen. Once we had our two little squirts we realized we were going to quickly outgrow our current home. Eventually, it made sense to look for a piece of land near our family and Tim's job in northwest Ohio. While I have loved living in Columbus for the last 10 years and there are many things I will miss about it, I am very excited for this next chapter in our lives! We just finalized the purchase of the land a few weeks ago so the next steps are:

1. Renovate one of the existing buildings on the property to become our new interim apartment. (Tim is primarily responsible for this :) ) The building used to be a children's resale business and already had electric, a bathroom, laundry hookups. Tim and many of our family members are working on putting up a few bedrooms, installing cabinets for a kitchen, and renovating the bathroom so it has a bathtub/shower. It is a bonus that we will be living rent-free and so close to our new home, making it much easier for Tim to work on the construction while we are just minutes away :)

2. Move out of our home in Columbus (list it for sale) and then move into our new interim home (see step 1). I have been working very hard to pack things up and my parents have been amazing in that they have taken L&L for the past few weekends to give me some alone time to actually accomplish something! As you can imagine, I get little to no work done running after them! We are planning on moving very soon!

3. Finalize our home plans...they are really close, we just need to make sure have a few final decisions made. We also want to make it to the Parade of Homes in Columbus for any last minute ideas we might want to use!

4. Break ground and start building!! Hopefully sometime in July.

5. Move into our new home (goal = end of 2013)....Ok so I missed a few steps here, but this post would be too lengthy if I put in all the gory details. I will try to post through the summer/fall updates and pics as we get through this.

I am excited/nervous for everything that is going to be happening over the next 6 to 12 months! It's definitely going to be fun to be able to build our own home, but I'm sure there will be many challenges along the way. I'm staying positive because I know this is such a great thing for our family!

Our new home will be 10 minutes from both Tim and my parents' home, and we'll be close to many relatives. Also, it is 10 minutes from Tim's job. This will be such a great change for him, as he has been commuting to NWO since he moved to Columbus 5 years ago. I know it has been hard at times to make that drive and spend so much time on the road, so this will truly be a great thing for him! I am planning on keeping my current job as an accounting consultant out of Powell, Ohio. I can do my job remotely much of the time, and while I will need to travel back to Columbus for client meetings occasionally, I'm looking forward to having a reason to make it back down here. As I mentioned before, there are many things I will miss about Columbus, so it will be nice to still have it be a part of my life! I'll be sharing more updates soon, but just wanted to finally let you all know some of the details!! I have a few pictures below of our land and interim apartment.