Big question

Something came up yesterday. One of our neighbors who lives one street over from us told me that she and her husband and 3 kids were going to be selling their house. She thought we might be interested since she'd seen us looking at another house for sale on their street. (This was when Husband was tossing out the idea of buying a bigger house, and I wanted to get a sense of what our options were.) I've had opportunity to look around in this house before because this neighbor has a daughter Sister's age and they've had playdates together. The house is very nice, with glowing wooden floors, lots of windows and light, and a warm feel to it. And it's big.

So I'm asking myself this question again. Could I leave our little house for another one, after all the time and work I've put into the garden? And listen, I HAVE PUT SO MUCH WORK INTO MY GARDEN. But just for the sake of thinking through this, here are the potential plusses to moving to this other house:

1. It's only one street over, so we'd still be living in the exact same neighborhood, with the exact same friendly neighbors.
2. We already know that at some point we would be building onto our current house. If we bought this other house, we'd save ourselves the expense and what would likely be a lengthy disruption of our regular life.
3. This other house has a HUGE screened back porch. If you don't live in the South, you may not understand the importance of the screened porch in this climate. Mosquitoes, y'all. Thick clouds of them for most of the year.
4. The kitchen in this other house is on a par with our extremely big and fabulous kitchen here. No small thing given how many of the kitchens in this neighborhood are original to the late 60's era in which the houses were built. Plus, if you haven't already figured this out, I cook a lot.
5. We could bring all of Husband's parents' things from the storage unit, and this would make Husband very, very happy.
6. Betcha that house has a dryer in it. Yes, our current house has no dryer, and if we wanted one here it would have to go outside in the utility room because that's the only place to put one.
   
7. Might I hope for a sewing/craft room? I think I might, and I am practically breathless at the thought of it.

The disadvantages to moving into that house?

1. I love my garden, and it would be hard to walk away from it. Especially if the new owners, like, cut it all down to install a fucking lawn or something. Which morons will do!
2. I like having a small house. It feels cozy to me, and there's not as much cleaning to be done. Have I mentioned how much I hate to clean? I really hate to clean.
   
3. When we did decide to add on to this house, we could add on just as we pleased. It could be funky, we could use green building materials and solar panels and shit like that.
4. We'd likely have to buy more furniture for that other house, and what if we couldn't find it all on Craig's List? Expensive.
   
5. And just our spending in general would be tighter. We have a nice chunk of equity in this current house, but still. The other is substantially more money than we spent on this one.
6. I'm just really attached to this house. It's our first house! We planted a dogwood tree when we first moved here in honor of Husband's mother! Husband built a treehouse for Sister here!
   

It's a tough question. I'll keep y'all posted on what transpires. If anything does, it's likely to happen quickly because these neighbors want to act once school lets out in 2 weeks. This is a lot to think about...