Cremona's Kitchen

Ok guys, it has been exactly 9 years since we bought our house. 9 years ago today Matt went to a title company and signed a bazillion documents to become a homeowner at the age of 23. I still remember this night 9 years ago so vividly. We got takeout from Culver’s and sat in the living room floor since we had no furniture (where I am sitting as I write this except on a couch) and we talked about how wonderful life would be now that we owned a house.

And life has been wonderful since we became homeowners. Buying this house has been the best financial decision we have ever made. We bought this house after the real estate market had crashed so we have been lucky to have an incredibly low mortgage payment. This place holds so many memories. This is the house I moved into after Matt and I got married. Where we brought home Pancake. Where we found out that we would be parents. Where we brought home our three children. Where JR, Maxie, and Eloise said their first words, took their first steps, had their first laughs. Where Matt started his YouTube channel. Built a sawmill. Where we dug ditches in the rain for our patio. Where we ripped down walls and walls of wood paneling. Where Matt and I have had our biggest fights and our biggest laughs.

But this house is now too small for us. And it has been for almost 3 years. Three years ago we started to look for our forever house. A house on 10 plus acres. Acres that aren’t just a flat field or tillable land. Two stories. Three bedrooms on the top level. That is it. That is our “must have” list. After three LONG years, we had not put an offer on anything (minus one house in the first month).

Until this weekend. This weekend we found 20 wooded acres in Lino Lakes which would be perfect to build our forever house. It has woods. It has cleared areas. It is only 20 minutes to downtown St. Paul. It is located in the town with the most lenient ordinances for accessory structures we have ever seen. The mayor called me back in under a half hour when I called to get some information about the town (and he was quite nice). We put an offer on it. For the first time in three years, we finally had found a place worth moving to.

Today, on the anniversary of buying our current house, our first offer in three years was rejected. The buyers of the lot decided to accept another offer.

It hurt. The denial made me sad, of course. But honestly, it really just made me feel exhausted. Because there is no doubt that our house is too small for us. The boys literally share a bed. Eloise sleeps in a crib tucked away in a corner of our bedroom. Every corner of our basement is filled with stacked wood. The driveway has a freaking sawmill on it. We are trying so desperately to move. Yet, it feels like we are forever trapped in this tiny house that needs so many updates that we put off doing for three years because we were going to move.

So today, I let myself wallow a bit over the reality that we are going to live in our current house for the foreseeable future. But I also made myself play over the memory in my head this day 9 years ago. Right after we closed on this property. When Matt and I sat in this living room and dreamed of our future in this house as we ate Culver’s french fries. It’s been much longer than we both anticipated. But it’s been way richer and way happier than we could have ever imagined.