Movin’ on Up to the East Side

We’re moving to the East Side.  As in thirty miles east to Folsom.  We’re in escrow on a really nice house.  It has five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a pool, and a wooden playground for Miss Charlotte.  If all goes well, we’ll be moving in early June.

Chris and I have been pretty conflicted about our decision.  On the one hand, we’re ready for a bigger house.  Charlotte barely has any room to move around downstairs, and we know we want another baby at some point.  On the other hand, we really love where we currently live.  We’ve lived here for almost five years, and it’s become a home.  We have great neighbors, we have good friends who live barely a mile away, there is a beautiful greenbelt that extends for a mile in each direction, and we’re close to downtown.  At the same time, we’ve been worrying about the direction of our neighborhood.  It’s in a bit of a transition as most of the original owners are retired or close to retiring and their kids are grown up and out of the house.  There aren’t a lot of young children, as evidenced by the fact that two elementary schools have closed since we moved here due to lack of enrollment. 

Folsom has excellent schools, thousands of children, and an intricate network of bike trails and parks.  As we were mulling our decision to make an offer on the house, we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood to get a feel for it.  It was a Saturday, the weather was gorgeous, and yet the street was eerily quiet.  Where were all the kids that Folsom purportedly has?  And then we saw it as we turned the corner--Folsom Kids Play Park, also known as “Castle Park” because of the turrets and other castle-like features.  And we heard the children’s gleeful shrieks before we saw it.  There must have been a hundred kids playing!  And just down the street from Castle Park is a top-notch elementary school.  That, combined with bike trails around this marshy area with plenty of birds and other animals pretty much sealed the deal for me.  Oh and seeing three wild turkeys cross the road didn’t hurt either.

The not-so-exciting part of this?  Having to sell our current house.  Originally we considered holding onto it as a rental property, but the more we thought about it, the more we realized that it would be too much of a hassle and a risk to hold onto it.  So we’re getting the house ready to sell and hope to have it on the market in the next two weeks.  Here’s hoping it sells quickly!

We’re very excited and hope to celebrate Charlotte’s first birthday (and Chris’ not-quite-first birthday) in our new home. Tanning by the pool.