Goin' on a House Hunt

Jamie ventured off last Saturday to drive our Geo out to the wild unknown (aka West Lafayette, Indiana). We were slightly worried our little 16 year old PuttPutt wouldn't make it, but it did awesome--even up over the Colorado Rockies, elevation 10,328. It was a long drive, but well worth it. Monday morning he headed out to look at houses. He contacted one

of the Bishops in West Lafayette and had chatted with his wife about a place she knew where the family was moving out. He went and looked at it, and lo and behold, it's perfect! The family that is living there now has five kids roughly the same ages as ours so Jamie was able to see the house with our same-sized family in it. He took a zillion pictures (he might have been feeling a little pressure to find a house by himself), for me to "walk through" the house and get a good idea of the layout and size (I love digital pictures!). He left and went and walked through another house on his list; it just didn't come close in comparison.

Before Jamie left for Indiana, we made a pretty extensive list of "needs," "almost needs," "wants," and "would-be-awesomes." This house had EVERYTHING on our list, with the exception that it has a flat-top stove. I don't like flat-tops because you can't bottle fruit or veggies on them. Well, if that's the only problem out of the zillion things on the list, I think I can find another way to bottle fruit.

It's a 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath home with a yard and a little pond and walking path in the back. As we talked about the house (again, times 5), we thought it was perfect. We felt like Heavenly Father had lead us right to it. Tuesday we chatted with the landlord and got everything set up for a July 1st move-in date. Wahooo!!

That afternoon Jamie went and registered the kids for school. He was able to do everything he set out to do by Tuesday afternoon, but his plane home didn't leave until Wednesday night. PLAYTIME!!! He deserved a little downtime after the craziness of the last 3 or 4 weeks. (Unfortunately, he got sick so it wasn't quite as fun or restful as it could have been.)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I was more than ready to have Jamie home. I have AWESOME kids and I love them to pieces, but sometimes I just want peace. Caleb is almost 20 months and, as our Dr. put it, "He has the ability to do a lot of things, but no brainpower to know not to." He loves to climb and be in everything. He just can't get back out.

I don't know how my friends who's husbands work out of town do it. Kudos to you! Finally, Jamie's plane pulled in after midnight on Wednesday. We eventually got home and got kids to bed sometime after 3. It was late (or really early) but I'm so glad we went to pick him up and the kids got to see him.

Thursday morning the kids--well, Ryan--was up bright and early so he could go to his rock party at school. He was so excited to show off his rocks to his class that ALL of us were awake at the crack of dawn. I thought for sure the kids would sleep in for a long time after such a long night. WRONG! Apparently that's a lesson I have yet to learn as a mother--children don't sleep in unless they are deathly ill or have a test at school. Once we got the kids out the door and Jamie left for the Doctor's, I went about my day by getting on the computer to do bills and e-mail and such. Second lesson for the day: sometimes roses have thorns...This beautiful, perfect house that we set up a July 1st move-in date for; I got an e-mail from the landlord saying it wouldn't be available until August. uuuuhhhh...what? We had been trying to make arrangements to find somewhere to live for a month since our moving truck was scheduled to come in 5 days and we were supposed to be out of our place in a week. Now I have find a place for two months?! Not good; slightly stressed.

I had talked to the current resident and she was fine with July 1st, so what changed? More important, what am I going to do about it and what am I going to do with the 28' trailer scheduled to arrive in 5 days? Not to mention the faithless questions that somehow worm their way in, "If this is so right, why is it not working?" and "Why do I have to stay here longer?--I DON'T WANT To!" (This is my lack of sleep temper-tantrum revving up.) After an hour of stewing, Jamie got home. Poor guy walks in the door from the doc's and gets ambushed by a slightly crazed wife. We talked about options and tried to figure out what we should do, eventually came up with a tentative plan, then called the current residents... "No we weren't thinking of staying another month, we were just thinking that we might not be able to be out by the first, maybe like the 3rd or 4th of July..." Oh. Okay.

Because of this whole process we decided, for my sanity's sake, to stay in our current home for the month of June instead of trying to find a place for a month and get the rest of our stuff packed within a week. *siiiiiiiiiiiighhhh* This is better: now I get to have a proper good-bye to St. George, and I get to have a day off from being Mom/packer/planner. It's amazing how Heavenly Father knows what we need and gives it to us even though we think we need something totally different. I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE OUR NEW PLACE!! I'm so excited!