A Mini Tour of the House

This will be short, because I should be packing . . . but we closed on the house on Tuesday, and have been working on stuff all week. Here's a mini-tour comprised of a few pictures I took yesterday & today :)

Walking up the sidewalk from the driveway. LOVE the nice big front porch with a SWING!!!

My view when I was sitting on the swing enjoying a break from unpacking :)

The front door goes into an entry hall. Living room is on the left, kitchen (& powder room) is straight ahead, stairs go up on the right. 

(I have pictures of the living room & kitchen on my phone, but they haven't uploaded to dropbox yet, I'll add them in (here or a new post) when I get them. Off the kitchen is a sunroom. It's functioning as a playroom for Little Bit while we're in transition. Once we get furniture moved, the big toy-stuff will be put away or move to the basement, and it will be more of a sitting space (and soaking up nature space!!! Little Bit commented "it's like being outside, but you can stay nice and cozy!" great description. The long wall is ALL windows (3 of those big ones), and each end of the room is a sliding glass door, one onto a deck, the other with a path to the garage). with some games and toys. for now Little Bit's enjoying the room to play with the tunnel . . .

 And, Lexie made her a "house" out of the box our washing machine came in, so she's having a BLAST with it :)

The only picture I took upstairs is Ashlyn's room. She (and Daddy) painted it yesterday, did touch-ups this morning, and she "moved in" this afternoon. She chose a light grayish lavender paint and a gray comforter for her bed. Bed frame still needs to come from my parents' house but we moved the mattress & boxspring in there so she could "make" her bed.  The curtains that were in there work ok, so for now she's leaving them. She'll also have a dresser, desk, night stand and book case in the room eventually but for not it's the minimalist look :) 

Lexie & Little Bit (and Daddy) painted their room today, so I'll take pictures after the tape is off. Our bedroom just has boxes stacked in it at the moment. Then there's a hall bath for the girls to share and a master bath with large jacuzzi tub, separate shower, and a huge walk-in closet. Right now those areas are all cluttered with the process of figuring out what I want where . . . :)

Moving!!!!

It's slowly starting to sink in . . . we're moving (again)!!! Last Friday we looked at the house, made an offer, and the offer was accepted, all in one day!

We've been casually house-hunting, while trying to decide if we wanted to buy, build, or add-on to our current home. We weren't having much luck. Either the price was too high, or the house required a lot of work, or there were other houses too close . . . etc.

Then last Wed, I looked at a new listing that seemed to have promise. The pictures looked good. Checking out the property using google map's satellite view, it looked like it might work. . . Thursday after music lessons, we drove by it to see if the lot would really work. There are houses nearby, but not too close, and the way the house sits on the lot, it works . . . Time to see what hubby thinks. But he was busy, and didn't really look at the link I sent him that afternoon. Or that evening. Friday morning I asked (again) if he'd looked at it, and he agreed to let me show him the pictures. As I was showing him the pictures, he went ahead and called the listing agent. If he'd waited until we'd gone through all the pictures, it probably wouldn't have worked out. The house is rented, and the tenant gets 24 hour notice before a showing. The girls and I were leaving right after church the next day to go to my parents' house and wouldn't get home until Thursday. BUT . . . if we could leave RIGHT AWAY, we could look at it while the tenants were already out of the house for another showing.

My parents had talked about leaving first thing Friday morning, but decided to stay until mid-day, so they were still here. I'd mentioned the house to my mom the day before, but Dad knew nothing about it until I went out to where they were working on the deck, and told them we were leaving NOW to go see a house. Dad got changed, I got dressed (one of the perks of being a homeschool mom is getting to stay in your jammies till noon some days), we quickly made room for all 7 of us to fit in the minivan. And we left. Got there right on time, looked over the yard until the other potential buyers left, then went into the house. The rooms were smaller than I'd expected from the pictures, but we still really liked the house. My dad was impressed with how well it had been maintained. The girls liked that the "rustic" wood floors have some gaps between the boards, allowing them to "spy" on the main floor from their bedrooms. . .

The realtor mentioned that there were something like 7 other people who'd asked to see the house either that day or the next and suggested that, if we were interested, we might want to make an offer yet that day.

We went home, talked about it, looked over the sellers' disclosures the realtor e-mailed us and that afternoon, put in a formal offer. After some back and forth with the seller, early Fri evening, the seller accepted our offer and we are buying the house! We'll be closing on it, pending inspections, the end of October.

From the beginning of this journey, I've begged God to make His will crystal clear. I want to know we are making the right decision for our family. And I truly feel how amazingly all the puzzle pieces fell into place that Friday are a pretty good indication of exactly that!

My 2 "don't like change" daughters and I are still reeling a bit, but we're starting to get over the fact that it happened so fast LOL. I keep wanting to plan things out and realize that I didn't pay attention to those tiny little details that I would have noticed if I'd realized we wouldn't be going back to look at the house again. I figure once the tenant has moved out I'll ask the realtor if we can go back in and look at things so I can plan better, but it's not worth bothering a tenant who's trying to accomplish their own move.

I also didn't think to take any pictures since it was our first time looking at the house, but did copy a few off the real estate listing before it was removed.

The outside of the house looks like a farm house:

I love the big front porch! I can't wait to drink my morning coffee on that porch! And yes, I realize it will be November before that happens and I may have to bundle up to do it, that's ok! There's also a deck off the back of the house and a fire pit in the trees behind the house.

The inside has much more of a "cabin" feel.

In addition to a good sized eat-in kitchen and this living room, there's also a similarly sized sun-room off the back of the kitchen. I have to admit, while we've never been huge entertainers, I'm really looking forward to having space to invite more than one or two people over if we want to. And having two living spaces means the kids can play in one while the grown-ups visit in the other. With the girls all old enough to like to do things individually, it will also be nice to be able to read to Little Bit in the sunroom while Ashlyn practices piano.

Ashlyn is looking forward to having her own room. Lexie and Little Bit are fine with sharing a room. Guess which of my children is the introvert LOL. There's room in the basement to do a guest room space and still have room for a "go get your wiggles out" space that will also house most of the bookcases and such.  Another exciting thing for our family full of girls, is 2 1/2 bathrooms! After sharing one bathroom amongst 4 and then 5 of us for the past 7 1/2 years, I have to admit I'm super excited to have a master bath again! I'm also excited to have a large walk-in master closet, though more for storing everything from craft supplies to the clothes that Lexie and Ashlyn have outgrown, that I'm keeping for Little Bit, than my own clothes. I've learned to be content with a minimal wardrobe and will probably keep it that way :) The girls are all looking forward to bigger closets too.

So, now the fun of packing and sorting and such. It's going to make for a busy autumn, but I think it will be a good move for our family.

Weekly Wrap-Up for the Week of September 8

Another busy week! More "fun" digging in the dirt . . . but we're making progress! We, and by we, I mean my dad with very minimal "help" from the rest of us, chiseled through the basement wall and laid most of the pipe. Dad confirmed that the way he wants to insulate it seems to be working. And all that in only a couple days, since Mom & Dad had company coming to their house for the 2nd part of the week, so headed home.

Once they left, we focused on school abit more! The big girls finished up their self paced history course on the Greeks and Romans, and by the end of the week we dove into the Middle Ages :)

Little Bit got to play with friends one afternoon and since her friend had just gotten a new loft bed that day, we helped put it together. She thought it was great fun to tighten the bolts with the allen wrench. (on an unrelated note look how long her legs are getting! Where'd my baby go?) Needless to say, since the loft bed included a slide, once it was assembled, she was more than happy to help them test it out too :)

Near the end of this week Little Bit told me she wants to learn to read. I'm not sure if she really does, though I've been joking for awhile now that if it's possible to learn to read through spelling, she'll do it. She loves to write things down and is always asking us how to spell words, or she'll spell words instead of saying them when she's talking (she calls Mama "M-a-m-a" for example. But this was the first interest she's shown in reading . . . naturally, since I wanted it, I could find all the McGuffey readers EXCEPT the Primer (and book 1), sigh . . . I finally found it this weekend, so may see if she's still interested . . . I have no interest in pushing her, but if she really wants to, I don't want to hold her back either.

I couldn't resist snapping this picture during Lexie's violin lesson this week. Their teacher has started having Ashlyn accompany her occasionally, which is a learning experience for both of them, but what really struck me is how LONG Ashlyn's hair has gotten. she often wears it up, so I don't notice how long it is. I love this picture! They're getting so grown up, sigh!

After music lesson, we stopped at a nearby playground. During the summer, Little Bit had wanted to play there a couple times but there were quite a few kids there. Now with school back in session it was empty, so since the weather was nice, we stopped and had lunch there and the kids played abit. Even my "grown up" girls aren't too big to enjoy the swings :)

As has become our tradition, on Friday night we grilled out for supper. Lexie decided on grilled eggplant with fresh made tomato salad. She insisted on "plating" our meals for us (why yes, we do watch the Food Network, why do you ask?) and wanted me to take a picture LOL.

And that pretty much sums up our week. Sabbath was Rodney's birthday, but it was a rainy icky day so we pretty much just went to church and relaxed at home. Next time my parents are available to watch the kids, he and I will go out to eat for his birthday :) 

Weekly Wrap-Up for the Week of August 31

Our week can be summed up as . . . lots and lots of dirt and rocks! 

My parents were here most of the week and our "project" was working toward getting the sump pump line buried underground. It turned out to be a MUCH bigger project than any of us realized. . 

First we worked on digging by hand. Lexie and Ashlyn were AWESOME help and spent the better part of at least one day, maybe two (the whole week kind of runs together in my mind), hand digging a shallow ditch.

Then we decided to rent a trencher and use it to dig down deeper (and not have to worry as much about the line freezing). But we still had to hand dig closest to the house/septic line/generator, so they dug down deeper there. Little Bit got in on the action too!

And helped Papa!

Even getting down into the ditch to help dig out what the trencher missed.

 What we discovered, when we used the trencher, was that, as soon as you get down past the topsoil, our yard is FULL of rocks (see the pile in the foreground of the picture below, those are just a few of the hundreds we pulled up)! The trencher couldn't handle them, so it was extremely slow, hard work to dig with the trencher. We finally decided that, for this winter, we'll just get the water past the driveway (to approximately where Lexie's standing) and pipe it across in front of the garage. Next year we'll figure out how to get it on back behind the garage, our long-term goal.

Ashlyn had to have a picture of the biggest rock that she and Lexie pulled out during their hand digging near the house. She has big plans for using it in the flower beds along the side of the house that she has claimed as hers :)

And that was pretty much our whole week. The girls did very little school, but plenty of "physical activity" LOL. Little Bit happily monopolized Mama's time as much as possible, but was also really good about understanding when we all were busy working on the dirt and rocks. And as seen above, she "helped" too! By the time Mama and Papa headed home on Friday afternoon, the digging was, essentially, done. This next week's project is actually laying pipes and filling it all in.

Friday night the weather was lovely, and while I admit my energy level was such that take out pizza sounded like a perfect supper, Lexie (current supper "cook") and Daddy (grill master) both voted for grilling, so we did. The girls and I enjoyed grilled corn and tried grilled peaches (they could have been riper, I was concerned that too "ripe" would just fall apart and fall down into the grill . . . I think I prefer my peaches raw, but we'll see if the girls convince me to try again sometime). And tofurkey hot dogs.  Daddy enjoyed chicken.

 Even after all their manual labor this week, the girls weren't too worn out to do an impromptu dance after supper, silly girls! Both big girls got new flip flops this week that have hard sole so they "clack" nicely on hard surfaces, I think it was that click clacking that inspired their dance. And of course, once they were dancing, Little Bit wasn't about to be left out.