I know it's been too long since I've posted here. But I'm still kicking. Life has been busy but wonderful. Christmas was a precious time as always. I got some fun things, but the biggest was a
Dyson DC59 Animal with a Home and Car Cordless Tool Kit from Will and Kate. I know it's not exactly a wild and crazy gift, but I was super excited - it's the first decent vacuum cleaner I've ever owned! And it was completely unexpected. Kate has one that she loves and uses constantly, and I've used it at her house. I was thinking it was a Shark and that it also was a steam cleaner, and a few months ago when we were looking for something to buy to use on our laminate flooring I called and asked her what kind she had. She told me it was a Dyson and that it was just for vacuuming, so I pretty much forgot about it since A) Dyson's are crazy expensive and B) we were looking for a steam mop. Anyway, we found a Shark steam mop at Lowe's that we've loved, and we put an actual vacuum on the back burner since our only carpet was in our bedroom and on the stairs. The carpet in both places was pretty sad, and we had a little Shark hand vac, so we decided to just stick with that for now.
BUT, now we have new carpet!! We're smack in the middle of (well hopefully not the middle of, hopefully more toward the end of) getting our house on the market. Last month we found a house that we really, really love. It's already on the market, but it's been sitting there for 11 months now with no offers. In fact, we looked at the listing last year, but at the time they wanted $30,000 more than their current asking price, and it was beyond what we could even consider. But they've come down to within our price range, and their realtor (who will also be our realtor when we list) told us when he toured the house with us that they are not firm even on the lower price, so they may be willing to come down some more.
One point against it for some buyers is that it is located directly across from the entrance to a rifle range, which scares a lot of people who don't know much about it. But the shooting area for the range is far, far away on the property on the other side of the street and facing away from the house. And it's also 3 driveways down from our community soccer and football fields, which should tell you something about the safety of it. I think the biggest reason they've not had any offers is because of their more or less horrific decorating style. The big dark poofy drapes, excessive floral and gilt, and terrifying 80's furniture is pretty off-putting, but that's their stuff - we're only worried about the house beneath it. And the house itself is awesome. The only cosmetic stuff we would have to change would be switching out a few chandeliers for ceiling fans, replacing the blood red shower surround and matching vanity, and adding a dishwasher. Everything else is perfect, including the fact that it has a ginormous garage for Nick, a huge playroom for Jack and Daisy, a separate room for each kid, 3 bathrooms, generous closet spaces, a massive master bedroom, a laundry room, tons of play area outside, nice landscaping, and........a craft room!!! Can you hear the angels singing?
It's about 2 1/2 times the size of our current home, but it's well insulated and also has a wood stove to help with heating, and the utility bills are actually pretty comparable to ours here. Property taxes are also about the same. The owners built the house 43 years ago and raised their family there, and you can tell that it's been lovingly maintained. They're retired now and are building themselves a little cabin in the country, so they're anxious to sell. And I LOVE the fact that the soccer fields are just a few yards down the road. Morgan played soccer for a couple of years, and Jack and Daisy will likely do the same. And there's a greenway for walking with a playground at the end of it, as well as a dog park along the way. When Morgan had practices Nick and I would walk with the littles and sometimes the dog, and I really enjoyed it.
Now I know, this house is far from being ours. Especially since we're not even to market yet with our house. But we're close to listing, and as soon as we do we plan to put down a contingency offer. We've already gotten pre-approved for the loan, and our realtor seems to think our house will be pretty desirable in our area. And when it comes down to it, if it's not the house God has for us, it just means He has something better.
But, we do feel led to go ahead and get ours listed, so toward that, we've: put down new linoleum in both bathrooms, given almost everything a fresh coat of paint, had new carpet put down in all three bedrooms, the hallway, and on the stairs, done lots of patching and sanding and painting on random wall dings, put up a nice new light fixture in the bathroom downstairs, begun painting our kitchen cabinets white (oh my gosh I love them, why didn't we do this years ago?), and rented a storage unit, which currently holds about 50% of our belongings. We've still got to finish the cabinets, paint the ceilings, paint the kitchen, lay the linoleum in the kitchen (which is in our garage waiting on us to finish the ceiling paint), clean out the garage, clear out some brush and stuff at the side of the house, and hire someone to paint the back of the house. Right now we're in the middle of an ice storm, so the outside stuff is off limits for the moment, but we're working hard to get the rest done.
And guys, I've been doing so much better with keeping stuff clean! Granted the kitchen is in chaos right now, but that's because it's under construction. But the bedrooms and bathrooms always look nice. And the living room is more or less always within 15 minutes of being clean, now that all the furniture from the rest of the house that was moved there during carpet installation has been moved back.
So what else has been happening other than house stuff? Well, Nick and I had an unexpected and totally awesome date night Dec 30. We took the kids up to visit with my parents one afternoon, and they offered to keep all three and sent us out the door! We had gift cards for The Chop House as well as for a movie, so we enjoyed an amazing dinner and went to see The Mockingjay Part One, and even squeezed in a quick trip to Tuesday Morning in between!
We got our income tax return, which is mostly gone now, but we were able to use it to pay some bills, pay my parents back for some money they had let us borrow last year, rent the storage unit for a few months, and do some repairs on Nick's truck. The bills we paid will especially be helpful as they would have all been due on his next check this Friday. Please be in prayer for us, because he used a couple of sick days to deal with removing our old carpet and flooring and then being here while the new carpet went in, which would have been fine, but then his place of business has been closed for the last two days because of the ice storm, so his paycheck will be taking a huge hit, and we still have a number of other bills to pay. But we are just trusting God and praying - He always shows up!
Oh, something kind of funny (in retrospect) happened last month. Nick and I had made arrangements for someone to watch all three of our kids overnight. His dad and stepmom were taking Morgan and Jack, and my parents were taking Daisy. This is not common. In fact, other than that night, it has never happened. That was Jack's first (and so far only) sleepover. And prior to his birth, the only time Daisy had been away from us overnight was when I was in the hospital during my pregnancy with Jack. That means that Nick and I had not had a whole night alone in over 5 years.
Now we didn't have any big romantic plans. We just needed the kids out from under foot while we (he) installed the linoleum in the bathrooms and painted. But still, we were looking forward to the night, blasting our music from the 90's and painting in our underwear if we wanted, and who knew where the night might lead?
That night our church youth group went ice skating, and Morgan, her bestie Allie, and Allie's boyfriend were all going. I was to pick them up afterwards, then drop them all off where they were supposed to be. Now normally, Allie rides the bus home with Morgan on Friday and we drop her off at home Sunday night after church. I joke that we have custody of her on weekends, although really her parents are a bit presumptive about leaving her with us. It kind of gives us an extra mouth to feed almost half the week since they never send her any money to eat on, and I never get a call from her mom asking if it's okay for her to stay. But normally it's fine. Truly. She's not a problem, and we're her only access to church since her parents don't attend anywhere. If it was a major issue, I would have a talk with her parents, but generally it's not a problem and she's welcome in our home.
But a few days before, Morgan had gotten grounded, and she had told Allie that she wouldn't be able to stay over that weekend, although she was still welcome to attend the youth event and church services with us. Allie was fine with this and understood, but apparently her mom assumed she would still be staying with us for the weekend. So after the ice skating, I picked the 3 kids up and dropped off first Allie's boyfriend, then Morgan, saving Allie for last because she lives just down the road from our neighborhood.
On the way home, she had tried to call her mom multiple times to tell her she was on her way, but couldn't get an answer. I had mentioned several times while the kids were in the car that Nick and I were going to be alone overnight for the first time in over 5 years, and there was never any question that she would be going home. But when we got to her house, it was locked up tight as a drum, all the lights out. Allie doesn't have a key to the house, nor does she know the alarm code, and her parents turn off their phones when they go to bed (which it turns out is before 10:30 PM). After dozens of call and texts to both parents and 20 minutes or so of standing in the freezing cold while multiple doorbell rings as well as increasingly aggressive knocks on the door went completely unanswered, Allie even tried knocking on her brother's window to no avail. It was 24°F out there, people. Even had I been willing to leave her there to fend for herself if it had been warm (I wasn't), there was no way I could even think about driving off in any circumstances with it so cold. So I sent her to the car to warm up while I tried one more time to wake someone inside. I called Nick and told him what was going on so that he would be prepared (ie. not painting in his underwear when we got there), and drove her home with me.
Bless her heart, she stayed up most of the night cleaning and organizing Morgan's room while we worked (her idea, not ours!). I think she felt pretty bad about the whole thing, although of course I couldn't be mad at her. Her mom on the other hand, I was pretty put out with. Even if she had been supposed to spend the night with us (which she hadn't), what if there had been an emergency? What if she'd been in a car wreck or been injured ice skating? In my book it's pretty inexcusable to make it so that your kid can't reach you in an emergency, especially when you've not verified where they're going to be overnight! We got a text from her mom about 5:30 the next morning full of apologies, but of course by then it was too late.
It would be just our luck though that we worked so hard to get overnight care for all three of our kids and ended up having someone else's lol. The good news is that Jack did well overnight at his grandparents' house, and they expressed a willingness to keep him again sometime. So maybe we'll eventually get that night alone after all.
DD has been more or less MIA around here. In the last 2 years there have been 10 serious spankings. The last discipline of any sort was over 5 months ago. Not that I'm keeping some kind of tally, but I do post about it here every time it happens, and it's a little sad for me to look back and realize just how sparse it's been. I think it just leaves me feeling a little...untended. I know that right now we are extremely busy, and the DD dynamic is always the first thing to go. Or maybe not the dynamic, per se, because he's still the guy in charge, but it feels more like it's staying that way because I want it to rather than because he's enforcing it. And I guess that's really the way it should be. And it's not that I actually want a spanking. As long as it's been, I do still remember just how much they hurt. I think I just miss knowing that the boundaries are real and that they are solid and hurt to run into. Bah, this is stupid. I know it's a pot best left unstirred, and besides, all our "stirrers" are in storage. I think it's just the fact that I'm generally pretty well behaved and it's not something that's ever really discussed, or at least if I bring it up he just kind of nods in acknowledgement and basically refuses to contribute anything else to the conversation. It kind of makes the whole thing feel like a figment of my imagination. But I suppose 10 years into it there's not a whole lot about it we need to discuss. Meh. I won't be bringing it up.
What else? Daisy's stomach has been bothering her again, so I guess we will try seeing her doctor again. Tons of tests and visits last go round didn't turn anything up, but she's with a new pediatrician now, so maybe they can get to the bottom of it. Jack took a flying leap off Daisy's bed and smashed his poor little nose into Morgan's bed last week. It bled forEVER, and he had a bit of a bruise, but he doesn't seem to have broken it, and the bruise has more or less disappeared.
Jack turned three last month (me sobbing quietly into a pile of tiny little baby clothes). We didn't have resources to do a party this year, but my parents gave us the money to take the 5 of us to Chuck E Cheese's, and it was the greatest experience of his young life. :)
Hmm, I think those are the highlights. Anyway, I'm off to do more housework!
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