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Ding Dong

Yesterday afternoon I installed a device that will allow me to hear my music at a louder volume when I’m at home. I don’t want to blast my ears but I do enjoy listening to music at a reasonable level.

Our stereo has always had the capacity to play at the right volume but there’s been a problem. The living area of the home we bought last year is towards the back of the house so if the music reaches a certain level we can’t hear anyone knocking on the front door. We don’t have a lot of people dropping in but I don’t want to miss hearing anyone who might be trying to grab our attention.

Yesterday I finally got around to putting a button for the door bell next to the front door. With the drilling and the fastening done everything’s as it should be. (There was a doorbell in place when we first moved in but it stopped working after a short while.)

The doorbell’s chime is quite loud, and at the back of the house, so I can now enjoy my music without the fear of missing any visitors. Now we just have to wait for someone to come along and press the button.

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Home Sweet Sweet Home

Aug 10th, 2009

by Rodney Olsen.

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I haven’t been around here for a while. I’m sure that you figured out that it’s nothing you said or did, it’s more the fact that we’ve been moving house.

We are now proud co-owners, with the bank, of our lovely new home. Well, it’s new to us. It’s actually an eight year old home but it’s so much nicer than the home we sold. And the best part? It already feels like home. In fact, it felt like home almost as soon as we got here last Wednesday.

We are surrounded by boxes and our days have been filled with wondering what goes best where. We’ve also had a few friends and family members dropping in to see our new place. The busyness is sure to continue for quite a while. I had last week off work to help make the move happen and this week off work to try and get things in some kind of order. We’re discovering all the things that don’t quite suit our style of living and making plans to make the minor changes required to have it even more feel like ‘our place’.

The new home is within walking distance to the school that Emily and James are attending. Up until now, Pauline had been driving around 130 km a day to drop them off in the morning then to go back and pick them up in the afternoon. We had planned this move last year and so Emily and James started at their new school in February, at the beginning of the new school year. We had imagined that Pauline might have a few weeks of driving that distance. We never imagined that it would be over half a year.

It’s so very good to finally be here and settling in.

I certainly couldn’t write this post without acknowledging the fact that so many people helped make this happen. I won’t start mentioning names because I’m sure to forget someone. I’ll just say that from our real estate agent to family members, friends from our old church, friends from our new church and various other dear friends, this whole process has been an incredible team effort. Those who have helped may never know just how much we have appreciated their kindness and extreme generosity.

We also need to thank God for teaching us so much about patience and for providing the right home at exactly the right time.

It’s good to be home.

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The Final Countdown

Jul 8th, 2009

by Rodney Olsen.

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The end is finally in sight.

After so many delays we are now moving to put the final pieces of the puzzle in place. The final approval we needed to sell our home came through yesterday so we’re now about a month away from moving to our new home. You have no idea what a relief that is.

Selling our current home and buying another has been a long process. We’re not there yet but the light at the end of the tunnel is now almost blinding.

Once we made the decision to make the move it took us a lot longer than we expected to get our house to the point that we were happy to have it on the market. There were a few bits and pieces to fix, rooms to de-clutter and a garden which needed a make over. We have many generous friends and family members who helped along the way.

Once the house was placed on the market it sat there for three months without an offer. We then switched real estate agents and within three weeks we had rejected an offer which was too low and accepted one that was suitable. On the same day that we accepted an offer we put an offer on the home in the picture in this post.

The people buying our current home are first home buyers and so they needed approval through the government’s Key Start process. That took over 40 days. We were were 99% sure it was going to be OK but the sense of relief and joy when we had formal approval yesterday was amazing. From the time of approval, Key Start conditions require us to wait thirty days until settlement. So that’s where we are now. In around a month we’ll be deciding where the furniture fits best in our new home.

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Moving forward

May 29th, 2009

by Rodney Olsen.

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Well …. a sold sign may be a little premature but we do have an offer on our home.

After nearly four months on the market and two real estate agents, we got a suitable offer on our home. We’re pretty excited.

A young lady visited our home during last Saturday’s home open and told the agent that she’d like to make an offer the following morning. He had an appointment at her home last Sunday morning at 10:00. While he was chatting about the offer, we were trying very hard to concentrate on the sermon at church. After church we waited for the phone call to come. Finally, our agent phoned and told us about the offer. While it wasn’t huge, it was what we needed to be able to move forward with the moving process.

Once we got home from church we signed the necessary paper work and our agent rang the buyer the buyer with the good news. Of course we still need to wait for approval from her lender but we’re very confident that things will run smoothly.

On Sunday afternoon we visited a couple of homes in the area where we want to live. We’ve seen a lot of homes in the past few months but it really came down to just two, and we were convinced that one of them wasn’t really all that suitable. Unfortunately we had heard that a successful offer had recently been made on the other house which was the one we really wanted.

We went to see our ‘second favourite’ house, more or less to rule it out before starting the search all over again. We were very surprised. It seemed different. It seemed so much better than we had remembered. We phoned our own agent who then dropped in to look around and give us his opinion. We then went to the other place, the one we couldn’t have. It didn’t seem quite as good as we’d remembered. Our agent said that he liked the other one a lot more. So did we.

We headed back to the house we thought we didn’t want, excited about how wonderful it would be if we could buy it. We made an offer and a short while later we got the call to say that our offer had been accepted.

So after all the months of waiting we sold one house and bought another all within a day.

Our new home is just a few minutes walk from school for Emily and James. Pauline won’t miss having to drive 130 km every day just to get the kids to school.

As I mentioned, we’re ‘not home yet’ with the deal. We’re very confident that we will get the finance we need and that the person buying our home will get their approval but at this stage it’s a matter of waiting.

We should have our approval sometime next week but our buyer’s approval is unlikely to be given for about another month. After that, it’ll be another thirty days before we move.

We’re not done with waiting yet but we are seeing movement in the process and we’re thrilled.

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Lonesome for a Place I Know

Feb 18th, 2008

by Rodney Olsen.

16 comments

I was listening to an old CD by English duo Everything But The Girl a few days ago and one of their songs got me thinking again.

Lonesome for a Place I Know talks about the connection we have to our home lands. We can often see the faults in our own countries or cities and see the benefits of other places but there’s still something that calls us back to the place we know.

I love the second verse of the song that talks about being born outside of place and time. If that were the case would we still choose to live where we do? Do we live where we do because it’s our choice or because we’re tied by birth or something else? If those ties didn’t exist, where would we choose to do life?

Lonesome for a Place I Know

So here we are in Italy
With a sun hat and a dictionary.
The air is warm, the sky is bright,
Your arms are brown you’re sleeping well at night.
So why does England call?
The hedgerows and the townhalls.
After all, there’ll soon be nothing left at all.

If we were born outside of place and time,
To make our choice, well this would be mine.
To live and die under a sun that shines.
But something pulls, something I can’t define
Tells me England calls, whatever she’s done wrong.
Always calls, “This is where you belong.”
And I’m lonesome for a place I know.

Oh but Florence you tempt me (here) to stay,
Amidst your hills to while my years away.
But your roots in soil lie, mine in paving stone.
And I hate what it’s become, but in my bones
I’m lonesome for a place I know.
Why does England call?

I must say that Australia, and in particular Perth, is a fairly good choice all round. I haven’t travelled as much as I’d like but I have been overseas and through much of Australia and I would still choose Perth over anything I’ve seen.

Having said that, I need to question if that’s the ties of being born here or if I’d still choose Perth if I was born somewhere else. I guess I’ll never really know.

What about you? Have you chosen to live somewhere other than your homeland? Does your homeland still call? Can you feel truly at home in either place?

Have you lived in the same place for most of your life? Would you move if you had the opportunity?

What does ‘home’ really mean for you?

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