Johnson Household

When January rolls around every year I get really excited. It’s my month to recuperate from all the activities of the previous months. It’s nice to sit and veg because lets face it there is not much to do. So, with that said, what do we decide to do? We decided to put our house on the market. Sometimes, I really think we are crazy. This just might be enough evidence to prove that.

We met with our awesome Realtor, Sharon Diamond. She basically told us that if we want to take advantage of the tax incentives we need to put our house up on the market in two weeks. I wish I had a photo of our faces, because I am sure they were priceless. In all seriousness, the fact that there are not many houses on the market right now with first time buyers looking and we have lived in this house for more then five years, it’s a good time to sell. Craig and I were planning on selling anyway in the next year or so and move to Brighton. More on that later.

Getting back to the two weeks time frame. I wasn’t too worried about the living space. I am very proud of how we fixed our “fixer upper” up. This house was a mess when we got it, Craig and I fixed it up to be a little gem. What concerned us was the basement. It had (notice the past tense) so much crap down there. Honestly, I think things multiplied on their own. When my Mom moved back from Hungary and when we got new furniture we just put stuff down there, it was the easiest thing to do. I have been planning on cleaning out the basement for a couple of years, but every time I went down, I got overwhelmed and went back upstairs. But, nothing is a greater motivation then wanting to sell your house! So, we rented a big a$$ dumpster and we threw junk away, we donated a lot, and we are in the process of selling stuff off. So, I am proud and excited to announce that our basement is once again a basement and not a maze. It is currently storing what it should be, like the furnace, water heater, washer, dryer, and the boxes we already packed for the move.

We listed our house this past Friday and by Sunday afternoon we had three offers on the house! We weren’t ready for that. We didn’t think it would happen so fast, we honestly thought we would have at least a couple of weeks before any offers would be made. It was a bittersweet moment. We were excited and flattered that people liked our house that much, but with that said we were also bummed. We love our house and reality set in that we were leaving the house that we made into our home.

Umm… so, one small detail is we still don’t have a new house. There is nothing on the market in Brighton. Our Realtor is assuring us that the market is going to be picking up in the next couple of weeks. If we close before we find a house, we will have to get an apartment with a short-term lease. Craig and I decided this is the best route. We will be a stronger candidate when we put an offer down on a house and most importantly we won’t have to settle for a house.

Here is the link to our listing.
And, here it the audio tour of our house.

We all did our share to get our house ready.

helping out

Besides putting our house on the market and selling it (pending inspection) here are some other things going on.

• Dagny went to the dentist for the for first time. I was so impressed and proud of her behavior. All is great with her pearly whites.
• Dagny only speaks in Hungarian to my Mom, English to Craig, and she goes between the two with me.
• Dagny loves to wear Craig’s shoes. I am actually very proud of Little D, she can put her own shoes/boots on without help.

kind of big

• Dagny loves it when we quiz (lack of a better word) her. I finally was able to capture some video. The quality is not the greatest, it was recorded on my iPhone, but you get the idea.

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• I went to my friend Jessica’s baby shower. Baby Mason is scheduled to arrive on February 25th. We can’t wait to meet him.

Jessica and Mason

• And finally we got Dagny’s NYS Birth Certificate! We are so excited that we were able to do this for Dagny.

It’s been a very long month with lots of things going on and I don’t see it calming down anytime soon. I will end this post with a shot of the most important people in my life.

my favorite people

Barbara