In September of 2016, my husband and I realized that we were discontent with our lives. An outsider to our relationship would wonder why, as by just looking, it would seem we had the American dream, the thing that all people should be striving for. We were in our mid-thirties, homeowners, with 3 children, adequate income for all the wants and needs, a dog, a fenced in yard, the whole she-bang. Yet, something was missing, so we formulated a plan, a life reset.
Our house was nice. We had bought it for sale by owner for a great price and put a lot of time and effort into remodeling it. I spent quite literally months of my life painting walls and sanding hardwood floors, which to me meant that all that time and labor would soon pay off when we sold our palace and took a leap. Our original plan was to move to Phoenix. I don't know why, I have just always wanted to live there, but in the end, we chose Las Vegas as our next home.
We had a plan pretty well laid out. We had a realtor come check out the house right away, to see if she thought it was worth what we thought. She pointed out some additional things we would need to do, so it was a good thing we had all that extra time to get it taken care of. Our last Nebraska winter was spent tearing down walls and building new ones, painting, laying carpet, and fixing tiny details that really, in the end, don't matter anyway. But by March, it was done and the house went up for sale. This is the part we thought would be easy. We would just sit back and wait for offers to come in, no problem. We had no idea that this part would actually end up being the most stressful. The town we moved from was not large, not a lot of houses for sale at that time, but lots of lookers, so several times we had to leave for an hour or more so people could look. After 3 weeks, we had had enough of that and took an offer from some people we knew, even though we probably could've gotten more, just to get that part over with.
Luckily, during all these months, because we knew the house was going to be sold, we had been packing up things we weren't immediately using and selling other things on our local Facebook exchange site, serious downsizing. However, once the final offer had been accepted, all that kicked into overdrive. I could never have imagined the amount of stuff we had acquired over just 3 years of us living there. So many things were donated, so many things were thrown away, and still, it was lucky that our U-Haul ended up being larger than we planned or we wouldn't have gotten anywhere near what we did.
Then came closing day, with its own little set of stresses and headaches, but at the end of the day, we took the check to the bank and headed outta town. This part was planned to the detail as well. Some of our close friends made the trip with us because, well, they can pull a trailer and we can't. So westward our wagons headed, through the Nebraska Sandhills, the Colorado Rockies, and the amazing plateaus of Utah, before finally pulling in to Las Vegas.
Two months later, we have replenished our furniture and then some. We have Nevada plates and driver's licenses, and we now drive like we are from Las Vegas, trust me, it's a thing. The kids are getting ready for school to start. My husband and I have each lost about 40 pounds. We love the weather, the palm trees, the neighborhood we chose, we are just all super happy. We miss our family and our friends, especially since we came out here literally knowing no one, but we are adjusting well.
For us, the reset made a huge difference. It helped our marriage, it bettered our relationships with our kids, and it gave us back the self-confidence that we had lost in the humdrum of small town life we had become so accustomed to. It forced us to try, actually try, rather than just sitting back and waiting to see what happens next. I am looking forward to what life has in store for us next.
