Where have you been!?

I promised myself when I started this blog that I would try not to feel guilty when life got in the way of posting. However, I am my mother's daughter, and I feel guilty that I haven't updated anything about our family on this blog for the last 2 months. I could come up with great excuses. Time- I haven't had time to blog because between cleaning the house to put on the market, raising two kids (three if we're getting technical), house hunting, house selling, and general life upheaval, I haven't had time. Overloaded with computer time - Since we're moving out of town, I've spent too much time looking at real estate online, researching mortgage rates, looking up random facts about Palatine, and watching the Wonder Years on Netflix. I know the last one isn't really an excuse, but seriously fun to watch an old sit com. Emotionally overloaded - Being pregnant and saying goodbye to all your friends is pretty much a sobfest. Creatively worn out- There are only so many games you can play in a house that you're trying to keep clean with a 2 year old and 3 year old.

So guilt makes me come up with excuses for not blogging. Those are my excuses. On to bigger and better things.

So much has changed since November. Karl received and accepted a call to Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Palatine. It was a really hard decision and one that we didn't take lightly. We've only been in Davenport for 3 and a half years but extricating ourselves from the community has been painful and much more difficult than I anticipated. At least with people at church it is public knowledge, but community spreads so much further than congregation members. Friends from the Y, the neighborhood, family museum staff, and regular Hyvee shoppers all need to be informed as well. The call process is hard enough to explain to a lifelong Lutheran. The Holy Spirit guides this process. It is not a promotion or a financial decision or even a geographical decision. Although I am looking forward to seeing more family in the Chicagoland area (I have to include that since I'm sitting at Kory and Cara's house right now using their internet and eating their M&M's).

Alright, call accepted, congregation informed, community informed. Now on to explaining this to the kids. When we first talked about moving, June had some serious questions that she asked while on the edge of complete breakdown: "Will our new house have rooms or will we have to sleep outside?" then "Can I take my bed?" then (actually crying now) "I really want to take my pink baby!" Every few days we get another question about certain items coming with us when we move. I think she was genuinely excited to see our new house this weekend and pick out her new room (she tried to pick the master bedroom, but was vetoed). She cut a picture out of a magazine of a room decorated completely in pink hello Kitty stuff and pulls it out every once and a while to remind me that she really wants a kitty room for her next room. We still need to jump the hurdles of leaving dance class, Sunday School, and Hallie (really not looking forward to that last one), but I think she's excited to live closer to Lucy and Vera and we're all hoping that helps us survive the Hallie withdrawal we'll be feeling shortly.

Ruben seems nonplussed about the whole thing. He loves the sharpe markers I use to label boxes and enjoys hiding in the newly cleaned out closets. His world still revolves around meals, toys, and parents, but the amazing male influences from church will be greatly missed. What would church be without Matt, Merle, Bill, and Grandpa Lee? Men of Palatine, beware, Ruben will need some new men in his life to teach him important things like how to tackle properly, general farm knowledge, and dog care.

So now we've covered the kids' reactions to the move. Now for the actual logistics of moving. First, find a house to live in. Avoid moving into temporary housing because seriously moving pregnant and then moving with an infant sounds like a recipe for a mental breakdown. Back in early December we put in an offer on 1327 E Sanborn, a raised ranch that reminds me of the house the Sarno's live in (old friends from Woodridge - I lived there until I was five). We just missed the house as the bank accepted a different offer the same day we put our offer in. Darn. The kids stayed in Davenport with adoptive grandparents and friends, and we were back in Palatine to look at all the other houses in our price range. We found one a block from church we loved. Put in an offer, a little negotiating and we're under contract. Awesome. Karl goes for the inspection. Yeah a lot to fix up but good bones until they got to the attic. Mold and very little insulation. Now we're asking the seller to actually fix some stuff because that's just not livable. If you're keeping up with the timeline we've not run smack dab into Christmas so expect some slowing of the process. What we got was a complete standstill. The seller hadn't turned on gas or water for the inspection and was majorly dragging his feet. Thursday January 9 we heard for at least the fourth time that the water was still not turned on because he had not showed up for the scheduled appointment. This is after weeks of drama about an unpaid water bill. Really. Oh, and that mold mitigation that had been scheduled for the first week of January...oh yeah, he's not going to do that unless he's sure we're buying it so....time to cancel the contract. Even if the house was nice and had four bedrooms and was spacious and close to church, we didn't trust the seller farther than we could throw him. Back to square one. Thankfully earlier that week we heard that the Sanborn property was back on the market because the last contract fell through because of financing. So we had put an offer in above asking price (which had dropped $22,000 since we last offered) and prayed. Prayed a lot. And two hours after we canceled the contract on the slow property, our offer was accepted on Sanborn. Oh, and we need to have a cashier's check and original paperwork in Palatine within 24 hours. Guess it's time to pack our bags again. How do people with full time jobs manage to buy a house, it took all day to do the paperwork. Really only 15 minutes at a time with large breaks in between to hear back from the bank and selling realtor. That was yesterday. We rolled into Kory and Cara's house by 8 p.m. after having left our house at 7 that morning. Oh and did I mention that we had to leave our house ready to be shown for an open house, find someone to watch Nova (thanks Schmitzers), and remember to pack the kid's suitcase in the car (that's a whole other story). Today we've spent the day bouncing at a bounce house while it was 50 degrees outside, playing at the park after it had dropped to 20 degree,  driving back to Subway to find Aunt Kendra's purse, investigating a Craigslist scam where someone was trying to rent our property, and enjoying quality time with family. Tomorrow we'll finally get to worship with our new faith family at Prince of Peace and then drive home to meet friends for dinner. It would also be really cool if some of these people who are seeing our house at the open house could put in an offer and we could buy and sell a house in the same weekend. Here's hoping.

That was the housing rant. It has really consumed a lot of our time and I hope future home purchases will go much more smoothly, but we're really excited about the house on Sanborn. The backyard overlooks the bike trail and a "lake" and there is an amazing playground 7 houses down the street. Oh, and it is a really awesome house.

The next challenges to tackle will be meeting and approving the OB I've selected. Figuring out what we're going to do for June in terms of classes or preschool. Living without Karl in Davenport until the house closes. Actually moving. Meeting hundreds of new people. Figuring out where to go grocery shopping. And having a third child. Hopefully in that order.