It is a cold, miserable and biting day here in Carroll County. We listed our home for sale on Friday, January 17. We had targeted February 1 to be on the road. Then, in December, Jen’s First Lego Robotics Team—including my two oldest kids—qualified (unbelievably, in the opinion of all the affected parents) for the Maryland State finals, to be held March 1, 2014.

This actually furnished a little breathing room in our miracle-driven schedule. We settled in to enjoy the holidays, and continued to ready the house for a sale in early 2014.

We have for some inexplicable reason had a stream of unseen clients banishing us from our home since the listing started, so they could inspect the grounds and the mansion. Kick the tires.

This morning we received an offer on our house. Sounds like a good offer. An offer that makes the sacrifices and fights and missed sleeping-in weekends nearly worthwhile.  If we accept it, we will go to closing as early as March 7. A Friday.

It is a little sad to begin putting things on our family schedule not just with an eye toward, “is there a conflict?” but with an eye toward, “Will we be here?”

And why write all this stuff down? I can’t speak for the rest of the crew. I hope fervently that they’ll be speaking for themselves periodically as things progress. They are a lot more interesting than me.  But as for my own motives, I like to blog in part because of an experience I had many years ago, listening to Ruth Carter Stapleton, sister of then-president Jimmie Carter. She said at the time, “we have this habit, when we have a life crisis, of withdrawing into our safe place, our cave, where nothing can touch us, while we are so vulnerable. Later, when the problem has sorted itself out, we emerge, to share our insights about our changed selves.

But isn’t it more risky to describe life in the midst of change? To tell a story when the end, or even the next chapter, is up in the air? Looking at my old journal, I came across a post from September 15, 1976: “Tomorrow’s gonna be interesting. For probably the first time in my life, I’ll be alone and having no idea where I’ll spend the night.“

While I won’t be hitchhiking this time, I am sure we are in for an interesting time!