"Guided by Destiny: Embracing the Perfect Timing for Our Move"

Whenever I tell people the story about our journey of moving to Georgia and how the timing was so meant to be I literally get goose bumps! It is so special that it just warms my heart and makes me feel like it was all meant to happen just as it did.

Upon returning to California I asked my Realtor for an estimated date of when we were scheduled to close. I assumed that just like in California I would be able to digitally sign all the documents and it would be no big deal. Boy oh boy was I wrong. I was informed that we would have to be back in Georgia in about 30 days to sign all the closing documents!!! I was not sure at the time if it was just because of the Escrow Attorney that we happened to go through not being willing to do digital signatures or why this had happened, nevertheless, it just about turned my world upside down!

I had just gotten back from our trip and was very busy getting things caught up from being away. Now I had just found out that we were either going to have to fly out a second time, or we were going have to do all we could to be on the road packed and ready to be in Georgia within 30 Days! Me being the crazy overachiever that I am I said, "I can do it"! We had moved around the Valley a few times since getting married trying to find our perfect little place to call home. You would think that meant that I moved lightly and would not have a lot of stuff. Unfortunately that was certainly not the case. I had held on to almost all of our stuff from move to move because it just didn't make sense to get rid of it when we were moving within a short distance. Moving across the country on the other hand was a whole new experience.

We happened to be moving during what I like to call The Great California Exodus. Many people were unhappy with the way things had become in California and were so tired of it that they were uprooting their whole lives in search of something better. Well you would never expect this but there were so many people leaving that they were having trouble keeping up with the demand on ways to move your belongings, from U-hauls, Pods, U-Haul shipping containers, to professional movers, they were all extremely expensive. U-Haul was literally flying people out to other states to pick trucks up and drive them back to California! When I called to get a quote on their biggest moving truck I was quoted $10,000!!! This was just for the truck rental, not for the mileage or the gas it would guzzle down during the trip. I was blown away! This lead me to make the decision that it was time to purge the majority of our belongings.

I began the crazy process of trying to sell what items I could, donate whatever I didn't think would sell quickly, and giving away a LOT of stuff! In just 30 short days I had to whittle our belongings down to what would fit in the back of my Husbands truck, inside the car we were towing, or fit around the cat kennels in my Schoolie (Yes I have a converted School bus that I love dearly) that I was driving out to Georgia. This was such an overwhelming undertaking! It was so hard to part with items that I knew I would basically be turning around and rebuying once we arrived in Georgia, but I kept reminding myself that no matter how much I wanted to take them that it was not worth the price of a U-haul to take it all with me. I purged everything! Photo albums, art I had created while in college, things I had built from scratch, my favorite pieces of furniture that were super unique...everything! We pretty much kept our clothes, some kitchen items, clothing, and whatever other items that we thought would actually fit in the small space that we had. I even stuffed a giant Pre-lit artificial Christmas Tree in the cab of my car because I loved it so much! LOL!

In the middle of all this craziness I was also doing everything I could to get the house looking amazing so that I could do all the photos of it and have some drone photos done of the property in order to get the home listed on the Market. It took me about two weeks to be ready. This is where the fate part happens that gives me chills.

On the day that I put the home live on the Market there happened to be a celebration of life going on for the Gentleman who alongside his wife had built our beloved mountain home, and painstakingly created our "Park of a Garden" on the lower property. I had always wanted to meet them, or even just to talk to them to share with them just how much I loved all that they had done. When we moved to the property there were signs still there that were hand carved with their names and the year the house was built. In the shop room there were the plant tags for over 20 kinds of roses that had been stapled to the wall giving me names to all the varieties of Roses on the property. Fishing signs, tools, and Fishing poles adorned the walls. They had all been left behind in the shop and we pretty much left things as they were. We noticed there were some little kids snoopy fishing poles and thought it was great that we had fishing poles if any of our friends kids wanted to try fishing since we lived right on the river. We had decided that the sign with the families name above our back door should stay because this was their beloved home that we would have never had the pleasure of living in had they not done all the hard work that they did.

The sign that the family left behind. I later found out that one of the daughters had carved it for them.

Well...during the Celebration of life many stories were shared of their memories Joe. The grandkids had so many fond memories of going up to visit their Grandparents up in Springville. Every summer he would host a fishing tournament for all the grandkids at the Pond that sat just below the house on the lower property. He would even make up little awards to present them with; for the biggest fish caught, the littlest fish caught, the hardest fight, and a variety in between. These memories were so fond that they even carried snoopy bobbers at the memorial. During the Celebration of life they all talked about how great it would be to get Grandpa's property back. It was a property that was so full of memories and it was so special to them all. One of the nieces asked her Aunt (the daughter of the couple who built the home) to look up the house on the internet just to see if maybe there were some photos that they could look at of Grandpa's place. That evening their Daughter was stunned when she looked it up on Zillow only to see that the property was for sale! As she flipped through all the photos of the home she came across an aerial photo with the property circled in a heart. I know... you are supposed to outline the property boundaries, but I loved our home and I put a Purple heart around it.

The next day I got a phone call from Keri, the daughter of the the couple who built the home. I was so excited because I had finally found my link to the former owners! I could not wait to hear the stories about the property and about her parents. Even hoping that I would get to talk to them to tell them how much I loved what they created. That is when I found out that sadly Joe had passed away. We talked about so many wonderful memories about the property including the stories of the fishing tournaments. In the tool shed there was an outline of every tool where it hung, I had always wondered what that was about, well apparently he had found a way to keep track of tools he had lent out to friends that had a habit of not coming back! I loved it. I shared with her how I had spent the two years we lived there working my tail off to bring the gardens her Mom had made back to life. I told her of some of the things I loved about the property, about what a special place it was, it was a wonderful conversation. Then she told me that she had seen the photos of the house on Zillow. She told me about the memorial and how everyone had talked about how amazing it would be to have to property back. But the one thing that was a sign to her that it was meant to be...Her name was Kari, she liked to dot her I's with a heart! The one thing I had done to the photos that was different than I would do to any other property I listed was the one thing that showed her that they were meant to have the property back in the Family!

If things had not timed out exactly as they did, if we had not been told we had 30 days to be in Georgia, if we had decided that making it out there in 30 days was just not doable, they would have looked online and saw some photos of the house from the previous sale when we bought it, and they would have went on knowing that in was someone else's home. The timing of it all was so incredibly perfect that I knew that even though I just about lost my mind in that 30 days, that it was all meant to be. Their family all came together to pitch in and buy Grandpa and Grandma's place back. Our Springville home was so special to us, even though we were excited about our new adventure out in Georgia, a little piece of my heart wanted to hold on to that special place. Knowing that it was being returned to the original owners, to a family that would cherish it and all the memories that it held meant so much to me. It was at this moment that I knew I could trust that everything happens for a reason. That we were meant to cancel that trip to Mexico and fly out to Georgia on a whim, that deciding to buy a house after looking in an area for just one week, and finding out we had 30 days to be back to sign closing paperwork, as crazy as it all seemed, was completely meant to be.