The Path to Now, Part 1

Life was great in the summer of 2006, when we purchased this house.  We had two adorable, healthy little girls, and Mr. Four Walls and I were each doing exactly what we felt we were supposed to be doing: running his framing company - him on the job-site and me doing the paperwork from home - and me being a stay-at-home-mom.  I've shared in another post about selling our last house very quickly and finding this one - The One - that same day.  We moved in towards the end of August 2006, and quickly settled in.  The neighbors were warm and welcoming. Jellybean (our oldest) loved her new preschool, and I began to forge what have become some of my most important friendships with some of the other moms.  Mr. Four Walls' framing company was booming, and we couldn't get the jobs done fast enough to move onto the next.  Financially, it was an adjustment tripling our mortgage; we had less fun-money (that we should have been doing more with than having fun...), but we were having no problem making ends meet.  We were even building up a fairly good emergency fund (and that has definitely come in handy over the past couple of years, even if it's gone now...).  We knew when we bought this house that we were going to the outer-edge of our comfort level, budget-wise, but it was only 3 years at that point until Miss Florida (then our youngest) was to start school full-time and then I'd be freed up to work more than just part-time, on Mr. Four Walls' company or for someone else. Wise?  Maybe not, but also not out of the norm for families looking for a "forever" home in a great neighborhood with a good school district.

The first signs that life was starting to change began in the spring of 2007, about 9 months after we moved in.  The housing market started to slow, just a bit.  Not enough to cause great worry, but we could see that we were going to have to tighten our belts a bit more to ride out what seemed at the time to be a slight slow-down in the pace that the builders were wanting us to build their houses.  Not a big deal, really.  Then in September 2007, the brakes started grinding, and we could tell that the winds of change were blowing.  Builders were suddenly pressing pause on entire developments, and lots that had previously been "ours" to frame on were being put on the back-burner.  The home builders were beginning to feel the first blow of the now-notorious "credit-crunch," and we felt it right along with them.  The urgency from the builders for us to get done to move onto the next home was not there, but we were still working...for the time being.....

I'll continue "The Path to Now" in an upcoming entry.