Today is our anniversary! Brandon and I have been married for nine years. We’ve been parents for four of those years, and homeowners for six.

I’ve been trying to push him toward a new adventure for us and our family, but we weren’t in agreement. I wanted us to pick up and move to San Francisco for a year.

I love it there! You will too, and the kids will think the streetcars and trolleys are the best things ever! Plus they haven’t settled in with school yet! You’re home now, and I can work from anywhere! We’ll just rent the house out while we’re gone! It will be fun!

And so on.

Brandon is more practical.

It’s an expensive city. It’s hard to find a nice place to live, especially when you’re new to the area. We have a dog and three cats — that’s not attractive to renters. We have a lot of stuff. Our family is here.

And so on.

Eventually, he relented, but it was not an excited let’s go! kind of thing. More like fiiiiiine, let’s go. I was disappointed. I’m not going to drag us all out there if he isn’t into it. An exciting year in another city would be marred by resentment, don’t you think? If we’re going to make a big change, we need to all be on board.

I’d been looking at real estate listings for months, finding amazing homes in the Chicago area that were way out of our price range. I wasn’t really looking for something, just browsing the same way you might watch House Hunters. Of course, it’s all too easy to type in our town, start narrowing it down by budget, number of bedrooms… You know. Just to see what’s out there.

Then I went on that Housewalk, and oh boy.

There are still things to do to this house, and I think Brandon would be happy staying put. It’s a great house, and we’ve made it really nice over the last six years, but there’s only so much we can do before we start to over-improve a property. If we knew we were going to stay in our home for another six years, we wouldn’t worry about it, but I’m ready for new projects. A new adventure! And when I talked to Brandon about it, he agreed that he was ready too. We’ll be looking for a new home, here in Oak Park, but hopefully in the historic district.

We’re going to see what our house is worth (I have an idea, but I’d like an expert’s opinion), and we’ll start preparing to sell. I mean, I love pink paint in my living room, but I’m pretty sure that’s only going to appeal to a very small segment of the market. I think the Edison chandelier in the bedroom is probably pretty taste-specific too.

Our house should be ready to hit the market in a month, if not sooner. I’ll be sharing our progress here, of course. We’re excited!