Moving...Not Much Fun

We're in the process of moving right now. The kids can't understand why we can't just pack up everything in ONE day and move it over there and be settled and have it done with. Sadly, so am I! I took some pics of the place for "before pictures". I'll have to post them with the after pics next week sometime (when things are hopefully less crazy). We got the kitchen completely painted today. Now that THAT part is out of the way, I can organize everything in there. The landlord is letting my pick the trim/wallpaper-border out so it will match my decor. I'm totally stoked about that! Even though I don't own this house, it'll still feel like "mine", if that makes sense!

We actually spent the night there last night so we could get lots done, well....Chris and I stayed up until about midnight until I started to be emotional from the pain and and "girlie homones" so we went to bed. We didn't get up and moving until almost 9 am. So much for getting lots done in our "lost time of traveling" LOL! And, I must say, that the floors...even though they may be padded well - 2 inch padding underneath plush carpets...are NOT comfy....cushy maybe, but SO not comfortable! Neither one of us slept much last night. *Sigh* We're hoping to be all moved by this next weekend so that I can spend next week cleaning this house so the next tenants (my neighbors and friends) can move in with as little hassle as possible! Pray for us to be strong. Also, pray for my family and Chris's family, there are some rough times going on behind the scenes lately! Gotta love health issues! I'll blog about those as soon as I get permission and/or answers to what's really going on.

Update...

After looking at a couple houses (the two mentioned in a previous post), we've found a house!! HOORAY!!! If all goes according to plan, we should have the keys by tomorrow night so we can start cleaning and moving in!

Holy WOW!

So, I had always heard stories of people being snubbed/discriminated against/etc. for having more than a couple kids. I literally NEVER thought I'd be one telling those stories. I have TWO such stories that literally happened within 24 hrs of each other. How sad is that! That house that I looked at with the old bitty lady?! Yeah, well, she really IS an old bitty (no understatement there)! She not only wanted to raise my deposit because of the animals, but wanted to also charge me a couple hundred extra a month to tuck away for the "inevitable damage" that would occur from my kids destroying the premisis. AND, her lawyers would be involved in assessing the damages to the property. She was also going to add some things to the contract agreement that were mandatory that we comply with (shoes off policy at ALL times in the house....{probably outside too with out anal she was being}, a tray MUST go under our washing machine to prevent major water damage {seriously, if your washer leaked bad enough to cause water damage, a small tray wouldn't help much}, and we would have to come up with a carpet cover for the dining area {we already do have this for my own sanity}). I got off the phone with her and started crying. Seriously, how RUDE can you be?! Why didn't she just come right out and say what she was thinking....."I DON'T WANT TO RENT TO PEOPLE WITH KIDS OR ANIMALS!!!" She should totally put that in her newspaper ad...."no children, no pets please" or "pets and children are welcome at an added $50 per child/pet per month and extra deposit". (I'm not bitter at all, can you tell)

The day prior to this phone call I recieved from her, we were told that they couldn't rent to us because we had too many kids to fit in this "tiny house" (I think I posted about that before).

Wow, people, I'm really sorry that Chris and I decided to go with our feelings of starting a family and following our dream of having a house full of kids....sheesh, what were we thinking....should have consulted with all the old bitties out there before making this decision I guess. But, there is good news on the horizon (I hope).

I called this morning after my mom left for home (*thanks for all your help mom, it's VERY much appreciated....and the kids miss you already*) on a house that is for rent. This house is on a busy street (as busy as Strasburg can get), has no yard for the kids to play in....the part that IS fenced is barely big enough to be used as a dog run for our two k-9's. (I'm trying to stay positive) The house, however, is fairly good-sized with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Shortly after calling to set up this appt for later on this afternoon, a friend of mine from the Ward called and said she had the perfect house for us to rent. They had just helped this elderly gentleman move into an assisted living place and he doesn't want to sell his house. No deposit is required, I can decorate it how I want (if I got the *'hankerin'* to do so, it's on a prime piece of land (right next to the church), all animals are welcome....and the list goes on. She quoted a rent price that is a little out of our reach and I asked how set he was on that price and she said she could probably talk him down a couple hundred just so that we could live comfortably without straining our budget. We're hoping and praying it works out for us. That would be such a relief! We'll be driving by to checkout the outside of the house and if we like what we see, then we can call my friend back up and they can come over and show us the inside tomorrow when their schedule clears up a bit. We're hoping that it all works out for us. Thanks for all the prayers that were offered and are stilling being offered on our behalf....we are grateful for them!

On another note....here's a couple of pics of the kids in their Easter outfits! Hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend!

(I made the girls' dresses)


(My smart little nerds)

(coloring eggs)

(the hunt...Tyler figured out that the plastic eggs had candy in them...he'd find them and squat down and eat the loot)


(Celeste in one of her outfits the "Easter Bunny" bought for her)

Sad...

We got a call back from that lady and went on a walk-through of the house. It was nice, small (well, smaller than what we're used to right now) but would have suited our needs. This lady, however, was an....well......for lack of a better word.....an old bitty! She was SO anal about the kids being hyper (they'd been in the car a good portion of the day, c'mon) and was asking if they were like this all the time (lol, that's a loaded question). She then informed us that she wanted a couple hundred more on the deposit because of the pets (which is fine and understandable except I'd already discussed the pets with her over the phone and she assured me the deposit would be this set amount), and told us a few things that we HAD to do as part of the contract agreement. That's fine, we'll agree to those things. Chris then filled out his portion of the application and then took the kids out to play on a nearby park-set. After they left, she kept asking me if I was SURE the kids wouldn't structurally damage the house or color on the walls with crayon. Ok, my kids get "creative" but they would never damage the actual structure of the house beyond repair. If she's so worried about that, then she shouldn't be renting it out in the first place! And, CRAYONS WIPE OFF WALLS REALLY WELL!!!! Not that I know from experience or anything! We decided that if we didn't hear back from her with the results of the application (criminal/credit check), we wouldn't further pursue it...I don't really think I want HER for a landlady anyway!

Then, today, we called on another couple of houses and asked to go walk through them (they're owned by the same person...he was out of town so sent his secretary to show them to us). The first house we went to, she had grabbed the wrong set of keys, so we didn't get to look inside that one, but the second one was ok. It was smaller than we were used to, but would have done the trick. It would have helped us save money like crazy too. Everything was going great, they were even willing to MAYBE work with us on the dog issue (our's are a few inches larger than their insurance will allow), until we told them how many kids we have. This lady handed me the application and told me to bring it to the office and they could take care of everything today. So we followed her to the office. Well, either on the way to the office or as soon as she got there, she called the owner up and freaked out about how many people there would be in this tiny house and that was not acceptable! The owner thought that the rent was the issue so offered to rent out another house for $50 less than advertised, but then realized that the dogs were bigger than he'd thought so told us that he couldn't rent to us because of the dogs, but if we decided to dump the dogs, then he'd reconsider us. He then explained what the secretary had told him about the number of kids we have and he was concerned about that as well. We tore up the application and I cried on the way home.

I'm SO frustrated right now with how we're being treated because we have kids and animals. I could understand the animal concern, but really folks....kids aren't like animals. You can't just dump them off at a shelter to be cared for and then come pick them up weeks or months later. AND, our animals are part of the family, so that's out of the question anyway! This seriously makes me feel like getting a sitter for the kids the next time we go to a walk-through of a house so that we don't get "found out", but then the thought occurs to me, they'll find out sooner or later, might as well be now so they know what they're up against. Chris keeps suggesting places that are for rent out of the area, but to me, that's not an option. We've been promising James that he could go to school this next year, but anywhere else, preschool is upwards of $150+, which isn't something we can afford. Plus, I KNOW that this school district can help him in school. He has some issues that are of concern to me and I've talked to the preschool teacher about them some, and seeing what they've done for Terra so far, I'm confident that they'll help James imensely!

I'm also digging my feet in on not leaving the area because, finally, for once, I have friends that genuinely care about me, not just "flakey say I'm here but seem put-out if imposed upon for help". I don't want to give that up. I finally "fit-in" somewhere, only to be faced with the possibility of it being ripped from my life. *sigh* Everytime I pray about this, I feel at peace about it, so I know we're doing something right, but I'm getting anxious and stressed. I HATE house-hunting with a deadline! So, I'm asking for all your help out there. Please pray for us to find something this week, or we'll have to move out of the area. That's pretty much the decision we've come to :o( !!

Kids Quote Of The Day

*when I get the kids from school, sometime we go to the Conoco in town and pick up some bug juice and cheetos*

James - "Mom, can we go to the "Cheeto Feeder" today?!"
Terra - "NO!!!! It's not the Cheeto Feeder!! It's the Bug Juice Store!"

Personally, I like the "Cheeto Feeder" as a name.....I think I'll use that from now on instead of Conoco!

News On The Fore-Front

Well, let's see....a lot has happened since we last "talked". The dr. finally called back the next day about James and said that the urine analisys came back normal, but he was still worried that something might be underlying so referred us to a pediatric urologist. I'm still not convinced that there's anything wrong...let me explain this. At first, *I* was the one with the concern, thus we brought it up with the dr and he ordered the urine culture to be done and wanted to follow through with the referal. We decided to get a chart for him to fill up with stickers (we've tried this before with him while potty training and it didn't work) and he's been doing fairly well with it, and if he pee's himself, a sticker gets taken away. He is completely devastated when one gets taken, so much so that he'll stay dry most of the time. So, I REALLY don't think there's anything underlying, so I'm cancelling his appt for next monday.

News on a place to live...well, I called on someplace last week and got the address so we could drive by it and decide if we wanted to request a walk-through of the place. We finally got a chance to drive into town to look at it and decided it'd be ok for a while, so called to schedule a walk-through and the lady didn't answer either of the numbers listed so I left a message for her to call me back, I'm hoping to hear back from her tomorrow. We're cutting this a bit close, yes, but we've also had a few things fall through on us, so we haven't been lazy about this like some people have commented to me.

Terra is having a rough time with school skills after her Spring Break, even though we DID work with her on that so it wouldn't be a total loss of skill...I'd hate to see what it would have been like if we'd just scrapped the whole 'homework' idea. James is getting more and more excited to start school and we've finally convinced him that it's ok to wait a little while longer to start. Tyler and Celeste are just chillin' out here at home with mommy and generally being good kids. Can I just mention here that I'm SOOOO looking forward to next school year when it's just gonna be the 3 of us here...it'll be SO quiet and nice.

Easter...I made dresses for the girls and am almost finished with them. Here's a couple pics of them...

(sorry, I didn't edit these before posting...just turn your monitor sideways :o) )

The adventures of BamBam...our cat decided to jump on the Penske truck that Kat and Ryan had to get their stuff out of my basement so that it'd make it easier on us to finish packing and moving our stuff from one place to another. Well, he had a nice LONG ride to Ogden, UT from Denver, CO. He'll be coming back out here with Chris's other brother who is coming out for a visit this weekend. Poor kitty!! LOL I can't imagine that the back of that truck was very comfortable to ride in....hot and muggy!

I also went to the chiropractor because I was in a lot of pain....actually Chris just scheduled an appt for me and came home and told me...."YOU'RE GOING!!" They took some X-rays and the diagnosys isn't that great, but could be worse, I suppose. About 7 years ago, I was diagnosed with a back condition called spondalolysthesis (sp?)....this is where one of the vertibate in the lower back slips forward and the rest of the back compresses on it...constantly being pulled out of alignment. It can get extremely painful (just ask my sister who had surgery on her's)! Well, when I was diagnosed, it was only at stage 1 and I was told that it wasn't anything to really worry about. I was also told that I had mild scoliosys that wouldn't even make a huge difference with anything. Well, I am now at a stage 2 (stage 4 is when they do surgery, generally speaking), and my scoliosys is getting worse, causing hip displasia. (TMI ALERT) My pubic bones, if they weren't held together by cartilage, would basically be sitting one on top of the other, that's how far displaced I am. She said (the dr) that it's a wonder that I can even make it through the day being like this. I can just tell that moving is going to be a blast this go around...*sigh* Oh well! Life goes on and we all muddle through somehow!

I just wanted to let you all know that I AM reading your blogs, facbook posts and emails, but life is rather hectic at the moment for me to actually get a chance to sit down and reply! Please know that I'm not ignoring any of you and will be getting on the ball soon enough! Hope to talk to you all soon. Love and miss you all!