Good luck, Jessie! I’m in a similar position, in that my wife will retire this summer after 34 years in government service. I plan to work for another three or four years, and then pack it in myself.
So…I’ll be needing lots of good instruments to keep me occupied. Guess I better buy 'em now while the money’s still coming in! 
There are few things worth selling a collection of fine items for. Less debt, paid off faster, however, is one of those, and probably the right decision given the exponential nature of mortgages.
That said Jessie, I hope you keep at least one or two favorites, which I think should greatly help dampen losing the rest.
I also hope and trust that you have read any mortgage agreement carefully, and hopefully read by someone with legal expertise if possible. Do not sign anything you don’t understand, and by no means touch anything with the words ‘adjustable rate’.
This comes on the heels of many mortgages which, studies concluded, were complicated to the point of being indecipherable to anyone without business training.
If you have Microsoft Excel or most modern spreadsheet software, you can fairly easily calculate the size of the payment needed to pay it off given the size of the mortgage, interest rate, and frequency of payment. This is not only important, no mortgage should be taken without one. As an add-on, my father’s employer, a law firm, sees many people considering bankruptcy, and the two biggest things apparently are mortgages and , even more so, credit cards (owning more than two is generally inviting disaster).
Sorry for going overboard. I just keep reading these stories of people in these straits, and as a student I tend to be debt conscious.
That said, I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm for your place and I hope you love your new home! Congratulations on the baby!
PS Not knowing what happens when, do we get to know the baby’s name? If anything’s private here, please let me know.
PPS That it’s private, not what it is.
The idea is NO mortgage. 
We’ve decided to go for it. I have everything photographed, but I can’t list it here yet, because I am going with my daughter on a field trip today to a museum in Albany.
Joey (girl) is 4. She’s blonde and blue-eyed. She is enthusiastic, very articulate and sometimes overly sensitive (sound familiar?).
Linus is 19 months old. He’s blonde, too. His eyes were blue, but they are in the process of turning green. He is delightful!
Good luck. It will be worth it in the end!
Yes, especially if she sells me a bloody “E” Sindt 
I don’t have a Sindt E. Sorry.
No mortgage is of course the best option, and things should work out great - if you can do that it’s terrific.
Can I make I guess that Linus is named for Linus Pauling, the great scientist? I can’t help guessing at these things. I feel slightly jealous; I want kids, but am a couple of years away from being able to situation-wise.
If you’re going to Albany, I wonder if you’ve ever been to Syracuse, my birthplace.