Things that are going on

I was looking back at my blog yesterday and realized that aside from overheards, I haven't posted anything much at all for a while. So it is time for an update!

Back in April, we started looking at possibly buying a house. We don't have a lease where we live, exactly. My parents rent this place and sub-lease us the basement apartment so we can leave whenever but they have another year on the lease. The plan had been is look casually for awhile and get serious about the search a little after Christmas. This would have put us a little closer to the end of the lease and allowed us some time to save a little more money for closing and down payments and things. We started looking and right away found a house that we really liked, in our price range. We called the realtor and started the process of putting in an offer. Apparently, right before we called someone else called and put in a higher, cash, offer on the house. We decided we were too early in the process to get into a bidding war and passed on it.

We kept looking and saw several houses that were so not right. I found one that looked good. It was listed for 109k and had 1500 sq ft. We looked at it and decided that we really liked it. Our realtor told us that if we wanted it, we needed to move on it because he had 2 appointments over the weekend to see it as well. We opted to put in an offer that afternoon and he said he would call the next day with details about signing the contract. They ended up accepting our offer of 106k. The next day (Friday of Memorial Day weekend), he called and said that something happened with the house they were supposed to be buying (apparently, the woman couldn't afford it so she was selling it but once she had an offer, she quit paying her mortgage meaning she couldn't get a loan to move so they couldn't move so we couldn't move). They ended up, despite some finagling with extended closing dates and things, deciding to pull the house off the market completely. We were pretty bummed but kept looking, at least sort of.

A couple of weeks ago, we decided we should start looking in earnest again and looked at another bunch of houses. We looked at one that the neighborhood was a little dicey. The house was decent enough but the surrounding houses were not great. We also looked at an older one near us that the porch was falling off of and everything inside was scuffed and scraped and creaky. Then we looked at a house near the pool. It was listed at 114k had 1063 sq ft with a decent backyard and an attached garage. As soon as we walked inside, I was fairly sure I wanted the house. It has 3 bedrooms and a kitchen, dining room, living room combo. It is 2 blocks from the pool, a park and the schools the kids will go to when they are older. It is .2 miles closer to the school they go to now. After haggling for what seemed liked the whole night, we got them down to 107k. We got a signed contract the next day. We've met with the bank lady to sign things and we have the inspection Weds at 4. Assuming the inspection goes well and the house appraises out ok (it should but you never know), we will close on July 30th. The plan is to do the painting (the house is a nice neutral color but to get the kids excited about the move away from Nonni and the only house either one has ever known, we promised they could paint their bedrooms) and some cleaning that weekend and start moving over the next week. RF has vacation the second week of August so anything not done by then will get finished up that week.

The long term plan is convert the garage into a family room, although I intend to use it as such right away. The kids can just deal with the concrete floor and avoid the door until we can take it out and add a real floor with carpet. Eventually, we want to move the door to the back yard over and add a second bathroom, at least a half bath, anyway.

That is the big news but other news is that we are out of school for the summer and spending lots of time hanging out at the pool. Wild Freak is doing College for Kids last week and this, which is cutting into our pool time but he is having fun with it. He is doing Lights, Camera, Action. So far, they have done an infomercial and a talk show. MF got into WF's school (not that siblings generally get separated but it can happen) We requested a different teacher for her than WF had. His teacher was nice enough but I think that MF needs a more consistent structure. We'll find out at registration who she gets so we are excited for that. DSD is also visiting this summer. She is staying with MIL during the week and visits us on Sunday and Monday when RF is off. Things are a little better than summers past, but I think it has as much to do with limited contact as anything else. She goes home in about 10 days. I've learned how to knit as well this summer. I made a skinny scarf for MF and I've started a scarf for WF. It is supposed to be ribbed, but I think I've done something wrong, since it has no pattern to it at all.

Moving

Not out of my house but we have moved nearly everything in the house around in the last few days. Several months ago, I set up centers for various activities around the house and it has helped keep my house so much cleaner!! The centers worked great over the summer when dh was working fairly normal hours. Since he has started working nights, they haven't worked as well. The two favorties, art and kitchen were in the dining room, nearest his room. I was forever shushing them and eventually making them leave the centers because they were being too loud. Last week, I decided that I needed to move them into the living room. Well, I don't have enough room in the living room for all the stuff so I had to move blocks and trains into the dining room. I backed blocks up to my desk (partly hide the crap that falls off my desk) and put the train under the bar. Then I decided that I was tired of the laundry room the way it was. We drug out this nasty old cabinet (it was a ktichen counter that someone had tried to cut a sink in and then covered with masking tape when it didn't work) Since we just stored soap in there, it wasn't a big deal. I decided that I wanted to put the dressers in the laundry room so that I could put clothes away as they came out of the dryer. Previously, I had been tossing clothes on the floor (my typical place for storing clothes, unfortunately) and then I set up a basket system, where each person had a basket in the laundry room and I would toss each person's clothes into their basket as they came out of the dryer. This was working well, but the baskets were taking up lots of room and it was hard to get through to the washer. The other issue was putting away clothes because they all go in the room that Evan sleeps in. I couldn't put them away during the day and I couldn't get them back out in the morning either. We have moved the dressers in there and they take up way less room. I still have a basket for Lizzie because her dresser is in the other room and I'm not going to move it into the laundry room. As long as I put the clothes away as soon as they are done, it shouldn't be an issue. We are hanging a bar on one side and hanging up all the clothes in there and a shelf on the other side for non-dresser folded clothes (pants). We are also mounting a shelf for soap and bleach and other things like that and then I'm mounting a shelf over the art center for things that need to stay with it but that I don't want the kids to have access to all the time (beads, hot glue gun, extra paint brushes, etc) Since none of the dressers are in dh's room, he drug his desk into his room while I was gone picking C up at school. Now I have to clean that area up (it has been awhile since it has been vacuumed really well under his desk) and then clean my desk off. Then I'm going to move my desk in to the nook that his was in, next to the file cabinet. Then I have to clean really well where my desk used to be (also quite some time since it has been vacuumed well) and then I'm going the flatten the blocks against the wall. Not sure what I'll do with the extra wall space (our desk have been in the same place since we moved in here 5 years ago) but I'm sure I'll find something to fill it.

So I should be cleaning the dining room but I'm sitting here on my tail blogging about how I'm going to clean it. Lame :)