2 days left to September

Ok.. really it's just tomorrow left

And one of the offers we submitted was accepted
3 bedroom with den, no neighbors in the back yard..

And.. best of all..

In a GREAT school district -the absolute best in the area.
There is a light at the end of the home school tunnel!! Or at least an option at the end of the tunnel :-)


hallelujah!!



Now if only I can find the form I need to renew my DEA # before tomorrow...

PS - ya wanna see it?


http://www.redfin.com/CA/Bonsall/5245-Triple-Crown-Dr-92003/home/3133116

3 days left in September

And while I know that my online rants and whines do nothing to change God's timing...
I'm really really really getting impatient.

Yesterday we saw another house that was nice enough but we'd be tied to homeschooling still (aka not in a school district I'd send my kids to). And there was a constant parade of people looking at the house all day, so there will be 30 or so competing offers and it will go with the person paying cash.

Probably.
We'll bid on it just to confirm that's the case

We're waiting on 2 other rejections as well.

And Larry found another house that appears to have a whole inlaw suite set up as a homeshool room. Which we'll see and probably bid on. Again. we'd be homeschooling there as well.

And we checked out a neighborhood way out of town but is in a good school district. But..it's wayy out there. And it will be hot in summer. it was over 90 there yesterday. And it might be a little difficult to resell it. maybe? depending on what the realestate market does in the next few years.

And of course in all this.. we don't really know where Larry will be beyond this year or next year. Civilian residency is back on the list of possiblities. in 3.5 years from now. 

Looking back.. I'm not convinced I'd suggest the HPSP program to anyone in the future. Take out the loans, go to a loan repayment site when you're done. I think you have more control over your destiny that way. And less liklihood of geting your butt blown up in Afganistan.

Hindsight may not be 20/20 but it's far better than the guessing in the dark that we've been doing.

And to add to the suspense.. our real estate agent is selling a house to a guy who will need to sell his house fairly soon if his offer is accepted in the new house. It's a 4 bedroom, 3 car garage in a convenient/decent neighborhood. If he hears he gets his new house soon, then we can proceed to try to get his old house. But that might be October by then.

Just guessing in the dark here. It's what we do best

Still no big news

But I guess that's ok.

That means
No news about trips to the ER or calls to poison control
No pictures of the damage one child has done to themselves

Also means
No rejection on the 2 houses we've bid on.
No final decision as to where we'll be living

And yes. I know God has less than a week to do something about that if it was really Him I heard in my head or if was just that afternoon's lunch talking to me.. 

So.. to keep things interesting. I'll write to my mom-

Mom,

You know I love you.
(and here comes the part where we disagree)

I know you think having 2 dogs is a bad idea I've know this for a long time. We don't have to agree on it and I promise I'll leave them to Andrew in our will (not to you). I also know what you think about his 2 dogs.

Please understand the dog is just a distraction from the other more serious things I should be dealing with in my life, including JM's bowel issues- and, yes, I am all too familiar with them.

This blog is really just just a place to let off steam- take it with a grain of salt.

love ya,
me

Not much to say

The past few days have come and gone and I can honestly say I haven't accomplished much.

Well..

Not much other than
Feeding the kids 3, occasionally 4 meals a day
laundry
diapering
potty training
running a business, dreaming of coming up with a "million dollar idea"
packing lunches
cleaning
dishes

Oh, yeah..

And babysitting a new dog who might come live with us
(breathe, mom, it's ok)

He's a hair smaller than Belle and a terrier-something. A foster dog next door. But he and Belle have sat at the fences howling and whining for each other for days now.

So, we got them together.

The good news is that he's as easy going with the kids as she is, and with him  here, she has someone else to bother rather than us. If we had the option, we'd trade obnoxious Belle for laid back Scout in a heart beat. But that doesn't seem to be an option. Oh, yeah, and he's trained.

He's getting fixed today, I think we'll do a trial with him and her again on Friday.

And we got approved for yet another mortgage.. And discovered that we *could* potentially get a substantially larger mortgage than we were planning on.
But that isn't the plan, still. Although Larry is due for a raise, I'm still counting on that margin in my life.
So we're still in the melee of trying to buy a house at the lower end of the housing market with dozens of other families and hundreds of investors.

We still haven't heard on the last house we bid on- the zero house one. Our real estate agent hasn't sent us the paper work on the 'needs work with pool' house and there is another that Larry expected me to see yesterday that I stubbornly refused to go to see in the middle of the day yesterday.

Oh, yeah.. Larry's project he was working on when my family was here got a standing ovation from the company. Maybe retirement will be in our distant future after all.

And I hear we are appointed on my brother's advisory board. I think the pay will be substantial enough for us to retire as well ;-)  (he he he)

I think we need professional help

Really. The psychiatric kind of help.

So.. now I'm still convinced that this is the month something big is going to happen and we're going to have a place to live or something really big will happen and we won't care about where we live. Last I checked we have 10 days or so left to the month.

But that's not stopping Larry's drive to find a place to live/buy/rent-tho-he-really-wants-to-buy.

So we saw 2 more houses. One with a yard needed quite a bit of work. Or rather,  could use quite a bit of work. All it NEEDED was carpet and a fence around the pool (and I think I've made it clear how unwelcome a pool is in my life..) But it has a really really screwy floor plan from one random addition after another that taking out and moving a few walls would nicely fix..

House B had zero yard. Or.. about the same amount of yard you'd find in a town house situation.
In a more established neighborhood and needed substantially less work.

Now.. we have little to no chance of getting the needs-alot-of-work house.
We have been told we might have a chance at the Zero yard house

And...

Larry's having "buyer's remorse" about a house we don't even own or have bought.  He thinks he's rather have a different house- the more work house, several of the other houses we didn't get that we bid on..

Seriously.  Send the professional psychiatry help now, because if I'm not crazy already, I can promise you THIS will make me crazy.

I don't know what he's decided. The contract is sitting on the table unsigned after getting approved for yet another mortgage to be even able to bid on it.

*sigh*

I think I know where the kids get their uncanny ability to make me go crazy. It seems to be genetic. 


But in other news...
Using a fulfillment center looks like it will be a bit too costly so we're looking to hire an employee. So if you know a reliable person in the Oceanside area who can work in chaos for a job with no benefits and pay somewhere just above minimum wage but who has a passion for shipping cloth diapers and needs a job- send them our way.

We are back

From our first baby convention.

And I'm a bit short on time since I'm procrastinating  making dinner here.. and have a 6 year old helping to cook because she wants a cookie and it's been promised "after dinner"

But.. I have a very funny story and one that Larry has told me I shouldn't blog publically about.
In fact after he heard about the 'going out of business' rumor from my blogging he's had alot more to say about what I shouldn't say or post publically..

 So...

if you want to hear it, email me.

I'm just dying to tell someone
:o)

Day 12 update on house

In all this waiting and house hunting/bidding drama..

He still have been waiting for an answer on our short sale house that was the first choice among the original 4... Ya know? The one at the end of a street with Solar Panels, Fruit trees and the homeschooling family down the road?

Anyway.. that house has had more drama than most daytime TV and even the life of my in-laws-  This is the couple who own it didn't file taxes for 2 years, then weren't sending in paperwork that they needed to proceed with the short sale, then sending in paper work that contradicted the previous paperwork (because when you don't file taxes you don't remember what you made for  money and your answers don't always match up..) And then they filed bankruptcy which stopped the sale of the house, then the bankruptcy was continued.. and in the middle of all this they are getting a divorce and it's a bitter, angry and uncooperative situation.  And then the selling agent on the house had enough and baled out of it, so our sellers agent took it over and he's now representing both of us (I think he really wants to see this sold and to us so that he can stop showing us other houses. I hope)

So.. Today I get an email from our agent.

The bankruptcy was dismissed.. because.. drum roll please.. the guy didn't send in the paperwork he was supposed to- which has been the big problem all along with him.

Could it be that this will be the house for us after all? It is September. And it met all my wishful thinking wish list and it's only negative is that it has a pool. (which I know for some is a positive and maybe it will grow on me if the kids can swim and I don't have a overwhelming fear of them drowning. At least this one in fenced in)

Of course this is developing quickly just at the time that Larry and I will be out of town for 3 days for a baby trade convention.
But our timing seems to work that if it's going to be inconvenient, that's the time it happens.

Stay Tuned...

Day 11- Poison Control

This was the first time I called poison control and they said "get to the hospital right away!"

Lovely.

But.. as a PSA- there is a tiny crack under some ovens and you can sometimes pull that out enough to get little fingers under there.

And I guess that's the exact place pills roll to when they're dropped on the floor.
And pills you didn't drop can be there, so you didn't think to move the stove to look for pills. 

So JM comes to me choking on something and I think he's choking on the popcorn he's eating and I ask him if he's eating popcorn. He shakes his head "no" I look at him strangely and when he's swallowed what's in his mouth I ask him what he was eating.
He hands me a pill.
And it's not wet- it hasn't been in his mouth.
I ask him if he ate one.
He says yes.
I ask him where he got it, he shows me.

I take the pill, call poison control and with the little numbers/letters on it and they determined it was toxic and we had to get to the ER STAT.

Of course that was the pill he handed me, not the unknown whatever he ate. For all I know it was a vitamin.

He seemed fine all day. The recommendation given if he ate the pill he handed me was to observe for seizures the rest of the day in the ER. Lucky for me, I already knew they nurse from the weekend I was there (with all the kids) passing a kidney stone. And the guy had great memory and remembered I was a NP so after 3 hours they let me go on my own recognizance to observe him and keep JM safe and return him should he have a seizure. (but see the post about military healthcare because I spend another hr at the pharmacy waiting for them to tell me they didn't have the anti-seizure med they wanted to send me home with)

But- send me home to keep him safe???

As the boy stood on the bed while the Dr was trying to talk to me in the ER and tells me "I fly" as he jumps off the bed.
Sure.
At least if he was going to need stitches, we were already in the ER.
He has a black and blue chin from "flying" off the side table next to the couch and landing on a wooden puzzle box, chin first a few days ago
And now has a black and blue eye and eyebrow from walking into a display case- today.

So- once again- I win mother of the year.

But after spending the entire morning at the hospital, waiting for a place to live took a definite back seat.

Day 10 and other randomness

Day 10. No house

But other than that..

We are having potatoes with dinner tonight.

Isn't it funny how something can always conjure up a memory?
Every time we have potatoes, I think of my grandfather.

Why?

No, he wasn't a potato farmer.
He didn't have a well known love for potatoes.
He was a retired police officer (among many other things) and visiting us for some time in the summer.
And I look back fondly thinking of the time we got to know our grandparents when they'd visit for a month or so most every summer(well, I was a kid, I don't know exactly how long they were there)

But back to the potatoes...
We opened a big brown bag of potatoes in preparation for dinner and there among the potatoes was a small package of unknown/unlabeled white substance in cellophane.

You know the war on drugs was big then, and the first thing thought of was...
"it's drugs! hiding in the potatoes!"
And the police were called

Yes, yes, they were.

And sometime between calling the police and their arrival someone read the package of potatoes.

It said "Salt Potatoes" and in smaller letters somewhere on the package "salt included"

Life was never dull but it was especially not dull when they were around.

I pray that my kids will have similarly fond memories of their grandparents visits.

Miss you Poppop
XOXOXO

Day 9 in Not waiting Patiently

Still nothing- no glowing neon sign, no accepted contract, no house singing to me "this is it!"

Not for lack of looking.

We saw one very interesting property waay out in the 'country' which for here means about 20 minutes from 'town' and about 45 minutes from Oceanside. It had a pool in the middle of the U shaped house(ranch-ish house) and the 4th bedroom was not attatched to the rest of the house except through the courtyard the pool was in.
And it was in the fire path of 2007- literally was in the fire- the house is still standing but the fire was there (I'm still kinda amazed how many houses were standing after that fire went though)

Larry liked it. I'm unsure. Ok. I didn't like it enough to move there. I wasn't thrilled that the 4th bedroom is virtually unusable excpet as a office/guest house and the pool in the middle of the house and being so far from 'town' (ya know I'm used to living NEAR stuff now- it's rather convenient and should fedex be unwilling to pick up our packages from there if we're still the ones shipping our stuff- I'd have to drive to town just to drop them off several days a week)

Saw a rental last night.

And while it was in a area I thought I wanted to live in and had 4 bedrooms, it was in rough condition.
And if we're not buying it and renting it.. the carpets were just ewwwww. I don't care how much money we're saving in rent- we.are.not renting something with gross carpets. The gross carpet here is the #1 reason we're moving.

So.. I have an APB out with EVERYONE I've come in contact with here- from my old growth group to my brand-new women of faith bible study, put a 'wanted' ad on craigslist.. and now we're waiting.

Day 3 in not wating patiently

I checked the online rentals and sales listings. I guess time isn't right.

Larry has to decide if he's going to apply to flight school or stay here.

And reality- THAT needs to happen before I feel any need to buy a house, I don't-care-what-real-estate- experts-say-that-this-is-the-time-to-buy. Because..Really- if he goes to flight school, it will be 6 months in Pensacola (for him, the entire family isn't moved so he understands) which means we *could* put everything in storage and rent something there like we did last time we did when he was in Pensacola.

But we wouldn't be as free to do that if we owned a just-bought-house here.

But he is at a 1 year position and someone important suggested that Larry could stay here 2 years at this position. Which would be 1 more year of super unlikely to deploy. And I'm pretty excited that one of my few friends' husband is his same battallion unit. So the "family fun day" that only the unit's families go to- I'd have a friend there. cool! and the other side- in the event they deploy, we'd be in the same boat.

So.still no answers. Still living in limbo. But limbo has become the "new normal" around here. If I had the ability to plan more than 6 months ahead I think I'd have an anxiety attack. Welcome to the military- no need to plan, the government will do that for you.

But today- I can plan.
We're going to hit the 'percent off clearance' sales at the outlet and exchange to see if we can hopefully get some good deals on clothes and shoes for the tribe for next year.

And then we're going to hit legoland and visit the Indiana Jones area with the intent to tie-in the scenery and stuff with the unit we are doing on Ancient Eygpt.

I wish there was somewhere nearby we could tie in "ancient Rome and Greece.." without going to Las Vegas.

yes. I did

mess with my blog layout
And no, I don't know what I did exactly or how to make it go back to the boring blog it was.

todays' laugh

Courtesy of my brother

At his blog

It is now September

So.. back to the housing saga...

Remember that answer to prayer I had (or what ever I had) that said "wait until September" ?

OK God, It's September now.

I kinda wish you gave me a little more details- like a date. Or at least early/mid/late September..

Waiting Patiently isn't my strongest suit here.