Checking things off....

Today was a crazy busy day.

I managed to get the entire front flowerbed weeded, which was more of a challenge than I had thought it was going to be - but it's done and shouldn't be completely overrun with weeds before we get back from vacation.

Hopefully at some point there will be more flowers in there than dirt, but until everything that I planted establishes itself, it's going to continue to look relatively pathetic.

After I got done with that and got a shower, I took Alex and Daniel into town for their very first official eye exams. I figured that since the older three kids now all wear glasses, I might as well get these guys checked out too.

Luckily, we escaped from that appointment without any new glasses - which actually disappointed the boys. I, however, did a happy dance on the way out the door.

We then ran a ton of errands - stopped at a paint store to pick up some paint chips for a friend, ran to the library to make a whole ton of copies of stuff for Scouts for a big recruitment thing this weekend, got the oil changed in the van, grabbed some (late) lunch, picked up a few things at the store, got gas, stopped and got a new air filter for the van, and then came home to keep working on clearing the fabric pile out of the garage.

Oh. The air filter.

The oil change place wanted $35 to put a new air filter in the van. I might have laughed at the poor kid who was working there when he told me the price. So I bought one (granted, it's still a stupid expensive filter) and changed it myself when we got home.

In the meantime, The Dude went to get the Scout trailer to bring it over here and stash it in my garage as we had planned. I was still out there going through the fabric and suddenly a thought came to me - I walked to the open garage door and reached up and touched the top of the opening with my hand without even stretching (and I'm short). I pulled up the pictures of the trailer on my phone and tried to judge the height of it.

My fear was right.

So now, the garage is cleaned out for a trailer that's sitting in my driveway. Because that's my luck. But the latch has been repaired and it's here and safe for the time being, and I'll work on going through all of the stuff over the next few days and get that all sorted out.

But.....other than balancing the checkbooks and washing the rest of the fabric (those are at the bottom of the list) I've gotten everything done that I set out to do today.

That means one thing - time to make tomorrow's list.

I'm so ready for vacation.....3000 miles in a vehicle with 5 kids will be a cake walk after this week.

Progress.....I think.

*gasp*

Two blog posts in two days? Can it be????

Seriously though, I want to do better about this, plus use this as sort of a journal of the last leg of this house-buying journey.

Alex and Daniel didn't have school today, so we slept in a little bit. I had to get Alex to Wichita this morning for an allergist appointment, so when I woke up I knew we had to get moving fairly soon. I checked my phone to see what notifications I had, and there was an email from Mortgage Lady. I read it and quickly grabbed the laptop.

Basically, what she said was that the Rural Development people had already gone over everything, and there were a couple of things that I needed to do. One was to pay off a really really old bill - back in my past life, an old cable bill had gone to collections and stayed there. When we started working on my credit report, we ignored that one for several reasons, but we knew that it would probably have to be paid prior to closing on the house. When my file went to the underwriters, they made me pay off another one that was in collections, but never said anything about this one - so we hoped that they were going to ignore it. Long story short, they didn't ignore it, and I had to pay it. No biggie - I was prepared, plus today was payday from work so the money was already in my checking account. I dug up the number for the collection agency, called them and paid it in full before I even got out of bed.

I emailed Mortgage Lady to let her know. She would need verification as soon as they processed the payment so I called the collection agency back and they said that they would fax her the info.

The boys and I hopped into the GrandpaCar and took off for Wichita. The appointment went well and we grabbed a quick lunch afterwards. Another email from Mortgage Lady arrived - the "dirt work" has to be done.

"Dirt work" - another long story.

Shortened version - structural engineer inspected the house and it passed with flying colors. On his report, he put a disclaimer that he puts on every single one of his reports saying that there should be dirt put around the foundation sloping away from the house to help with drainage. Rural Development now decided that this HAS to be done. We had a feeling that this was going to happen too, so Realtor Lady already had a spare load of dirt dumped at the house (the woman is awesome). I tried unsuccessfully to locate a wheelbarrow on my way back from Wichita, and instead stopped and bought one. Seriously - I've been wanting one for a while (who in their right mind wants to buy a wheelbarrow? and do you know how expensive those things are? and how hard they are to fit in the trunk of the GrandpaCar?) so I just bought it. Boom.

Came home, changed clothes, bought lunch for The Dude, took that to him, tossed the wheelbarrow in the back of his truck, threw him the keys to the GrandpaCar, and took off to the house.

I spent the next 3-4 hours moving wheelbarrow loads of dirt from the driveway to the side of the house, as well as battling the boys to NOT throw piles of dirt in the driveway, and to stay out of the truck, and to stay where I could see them, and no I'm not driving across town just to get you a drink, yada yada yadaaaaa......

Suddenly another truck pulled into the driveway. A man and a woman got out and the man introduced himself to me as the seller.

Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh......so YOU are the man who has been a total pain in my ass since this thing started? I had to stop myself from saying it out loud. The woman with him was his mother-in-law, who also happens to be his realtor.

Great.

We actually had a very nice visit. We chatted about the house in general and I told them how I had immediately fallen in love with it. I told them about some of our plans, and as soon as I mentioned putting a clothesline in out back, I immediately got on the mother-in-law's good side and she joined in on the conversation. They shared a little bit more about the history of the house and I told them that I was interested in learning anything that they want to share about it. It was awesome, and they admitted that they were relieved that someone wasn't going to just buy it and flip it, but was instead going to fix it up and live in it and love it. I told them about how I had lost everything and was days away from being homeless a few years ago, and how that made this whole process so much more important for me. All in all I think that it was a great little chat and having that face-to-face interaction was a nice surprise prior to meeting over the closing documents.

I did find it amusing that he is planning to pay someone to move the pool table out of the basement just so that he can sell it. I told him that he is more than welcome to leave it there, but he really wants to sell it. I'm curious to see if it actually happens or not - it honestly doesn't bother me one way or another. It would be nice to have, but I can use the added floor space just as much as I can use the table.

Oh, and they're taking the rocks out of the one flowerbed. Yes, the rocks. But, in his defense they're from various camping trips all over the country, so they do actually have sentimental value.

He also warned me that the neighborhood can be kind of competitive when it comes to yardwork.

Ha. Bring it.

In the meantime, more emails back and forth. Mortgage Lady was having trouble getting the verification that she needed from the collection agency, so I called them again. As it turned out, I had to fax them something with my signature for them to release the information to her (and you didn't tell me that this morning because...............?????) and since The Dude's truck isn't equipped with a portable fax machine, I had to cut my dirt moving short, drive back to town, stop at my bank, scrounge up a piece of paper, write out the authorization, and have them fax it to Mortgage Lady. I emailed her to let her know that they now had the authorization - so hopefully she got what she needed from them.

Back to the house to dump the wheelbarrow into the garage, then to The Dude's work to swap vehicles with him, then out to grab something to eat. Then home again.

Baths. Cleaning. Laundry. Preparing to go back to work tomorrow. Hoping that The Dude is over his stomach bug enough that he can handle the boys all day while I'm stuck in Fast Food Hell. Still trying to figure out how to deal with this whole job thing. Making lists of things that need to be done in both houses before/during/after the move. Hoping to win the lottery just to make life easier.

Just another day.....

So we got a few things done today....

Every now and then, we have one of those days when we just don't stop moving and we get tons of stuff done. I'm sitting here trying to think about everything that we did...

I started out by getting up and making the kids pancakes for breakfast. They all ate and got ready to go and then we took off and picked The Dude up at his house, then I took the older kids to Ex1's house and The Dude (and Alex and Daniel) and I went and met with the realtor to look at a couple more houses. They both had potential, but were a bit smaller than what we really need. However, like the other ones, we haven't ruled them out yet.

Then we came back to town and went back to his house and parked the van and then walked back a couple of blocks to a local store that was having a sidewalk sale.

I threatened to buy a big goofy hat to wear while fishing...

But instead we opted for lunch from the hot dog truck that was there. Two naked dogs for the boys, a bacon-wrapped dog for me, and a fully loaded Mexi-dog for The Dude.

In typical Dude fashion, he had to pose with Sr. Weiner.

After that, we went back to his house again, and we loaded up a bunch of stuff that needed to be donated elsewhere. We took a bunch of books to a local used bookstore, and a bunch of clothes and other stuff to the local thrift store. Then we stopped at one of the city offices to get our landfill coupons for the next project.

Back at his house again, we started on the yard. It had gotten pretty overgrown along the fence and was making it difficult to mow, so I cut all of the branches down and we loaded them into his truck and took off for the landfill to get rid of them.

After we got done at the landfill, we went back to his house and I got the yard mowed - so much easier without having to battle branches the entire time! Then I gathered up the boys and we ran into my work to get my schedule for next week and to grab something to eat before we took off toward our house. Once we got home, we inhaled our food and then I mowed my yard and Nice Neighbor's yard. After I got done with that, we ran to the grocery store to get laundry detergent and then BACK to my work to get the milkshakes that we had forgotten to get with our food earlier. Then it was back home again and baths for all 3 of us.

After doing all of that yard work in 99-degree heat, a shower was mandatory for me.

And now that we got all of that done today, I can lay around all day tomorrow and do absolutely nothing - and not feel guilty about it at all.

And that is my plan.

Random thoughts and stuff.

 ~~As tired as I am of not having my van (or The Dude's truck)....I am grateful that I get to see sights like I did while I was walking the boys to school this morning. The sunrise over the creek running through town was gorgeous, and there was just enough of a chill in the air to make the temperature perfect.

~~Judgmental people are everywhere right now. Holy crap, people - I'm not even talking about blog stuff now, I'm talking about real life idiots who think that they know what's best for everyone when in reality they have no clue!

~~The rain and snow that we've had over the past few months have definitely helped with the drought that we've been experiencing. The creek finally has water in it, but it's still not at capacity, and it's still pretty slimy. But, it's water. And we need it so desperately.

~~The boys seem to be getting used to walking everywhere - and they even enjoyed walking home from school in the rain this afternoon (even though it was barely sprinkling).

~~Wint-o-green lifesavers are addicting.

~~No matter how much time I spend organizing the top of my desk, it still looks like a disaster area.

~~I get more cleaning and organizing done in the 10 minutes before company arrives than I get done all day long.

~~Having a store directly across the street is convenient when I run out of dishwasher detergent, but deadly when I have chocolate cravings.

~~My van is supposed to get towed out of here tomorrow evening and taken to the guy who is going to fix it for me. The parts are supposed to be here tomorrow, a friend is towing it for me, the guy says he can do it, but I won't feel better about it until he calls me and says that it's done because my biggest fear right now is that something else major is going to go wrong and it's not going to be able to get fixed and then we'll be back to square one.

~~The Dude went back to the doctor today to get the results of the MRI on his shoulder, and although there is some damage, it's not as bad as we previously thought - so NO SURGERY! Yay! Best news that we've gotten in the past few weeks months.

~~My legs and ankles are finally starting to feel better after Sunday's little race. I'm still a bit sore, but I definitely survived. Having to walk back and forth to work and to school has kind of forced that issue though (although I may have gotten a ride or two here and there)(I'm human).

~~I need more lifesavers.

Fun, in spite of it all.

The Dude and I got to spend most of yesterday together. We're going through some rough stuff right now but in spite of it all we had such a good time together. I promised to talk about some of those - and I need to offset some of the blah that I'm feeling right now anyway.

You might remember when the universe decided to chuck a rock at my windshield. As it turns out, my insurance does NOT cover windshield damage. But, they referred me to a guy who would still fix it for no charge. So I called the guy and scheduled the appointment, and sure enough he does it for free. Can't beat that.

So we drove to Wichita, dropped off the van, and walked to a nearby Chinese restaurant for lunch. I very rarely eat Chinese food - ever since the time that I rang in the New Year by hugging the toilet for about 8 hours after eating some of it. *shudder* But, it was nearby and it was cold, so we didn't want to walk  much farther than that.

The Dude is the King of the Claw Machine - he can't walk past one of those things without putting a couple of quarters into it, and more often than not he walks away with something. I went into the restroom before we left the restaurant, and he handed me this little guy when I walked back out of the door.

While we were in town, we also took both of my sewing machines in to the repair shop. My "new" one just needs to be serviced and adjusted (gee, I wonder why....) and my "old" one needed to be fixed. I had gotten it serviced about a month or so ago, and then just a few days later the tension knob just broke off of it - or so I thought.

We walked into the shop carrying both machines and the repair guy and I were talking about quilting machines and quilt shows as he wrote up my ticket, and I showed him my broken tension knob. He said, "oh, that's not broken!" and started tinkering with it while we talked. After about 10 minutes, he had it reassembled and handed it back to me - at no charge. So instead of being without both of my machines, I'm only missing one of them and I only have to pay to get that one fixed. Score!

From the You Gotta' Love Wichita files.....

I think someone needs to loose their ad agency. Or the ad agency
needs to loose their proofreader.

Thank you so much, local businesses, for clearing your parking lots.
How about doing the same for your sidewalks? I really didn't
appreciate having to climb over 2' high piles of snow to get to where
I needed to go. 

I'm still always amazed at how he and I can have such a good time doing even the most mundane stuff. But from what I understand, that's what relationships are supposed to be like so I shouldn't complain. There are some other stories that I could tell about yesterday - but some of them I am going to keep to myself. I need to be able to have some blackmail material just in case the need ever arises.

Tomorrow's agenda: church. oil change. laundry. cleaning.

Excitement. It never stops.

Our day in pictures

Town is pretty deserted at 5:45am
I'm still trying to figure out how *I* got roped into getting up that early to
take Sarah to Ex1's church for a youth group thing.

Yeah. It was that early.

But there was a prize involved. 

My van is really starting to irritate me.

The boys and I went into Wichita to run a
whole bunch of errands.

Even the pigeons were enjoying the beautiful weather.

Yep, that's the river. Or, what's left of it. Hard to believe that it was full
and frozen when I did the Valentine's Day run.

Downtown Wichita

This was after 4 or 5 of the errands.

Backseat driver.

That's a mighty big...
...rooster.

Lunch

It's so hard to get a decent picture of this kid. But I need
to frame this one.

Dessert

We had some time to kill, so we went
to a park.

They had a blast.

....and there were tons of kids there to play with.

Fall is officially here.

On our way home after about 6 hours of running around.
This would be right before we had to pull over because
Daniel thought he was going to puke.

Once he decided he wasn't going to puke, he felt like he had to poop.
And we got stuck.

Still holding onto the barf bag, just in case.

So, it was a long day, but we got so much accomplished. We dropped off some donations, delivered some Halloween bags that I had made and sold, dropped off one of my sewing machines to be serviced/repaired, went to lunch and the park, returned the sewing machine that I borrowed, picked up some hand-me-down clothes from a friend.....

....and we came home exhausted. I sat down on the couch to relax and woke up almost 3 hours later. The boys were just watching movies the whole time, so after I got up we made some sandwiches and they got ready for bed. Daniel is now curled up in mine and Alex is watching another movie - but they're both going to be going to bed shortly.

Tomorrow, Alex is supposed to be going with his father for the day, and Daniel and I will go to church and then just hang out and relax for the day. If the weather is still good, maybe we'll go to a park again. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Poo. I still need to unload the box and bags of clothes from the van. I should go do that....

A dirty day

Daniel didn't have school again today, so he and I spent most of the day with The Dude, running around and doing errands. The first place we went to was this little garage that sells used tires. This place was totally old-school - it's owned and run by a man who invited us out to the garage while he took the old tire off of the rim and mounted a slightly-less used one on it. Daniel and I wandered around the garage and took a few pictures while The Dude watched the guy change out the tire.

My favorite shot of the day

After that, we went and paid some bills, grabbed some lunch, and while I went and shopped for some plants for my house The Dude took Daniel to a dollar store and a video game store nearby. Daniel came out with a "treat", but I'm not sure which one of them enjoyed it more!

They had to trade hats...

After that, we went back to The Dude's house and hung out for a little bit until it was time to go get Alex from school, and then the boys and I ran to the grocery store to get a few things for supper before we came home. Then we went outside and started playing in the dirt. While I have a yard that is more than big enough for a garden, I have no outside water source (stupid ghetto-esque house) so I just got a few tomato and pepper plants to put in buckets on the porch.

I also got some strawberry plants to put in my hanging bags to see if maybe, just maybe, I could grow them this year. But when I got everything planted and ran inside to fill the watering can, I realized that I had a problem.

Figures. Guess I'm adding "watering can" to my next shopping list.

Alex found a pet

After we were done playing in the dirt in the front yard, we went around back for a while so that the boys could make sure that they got dirty enough to be happy.

While they played, I sat on the back steps and surveyed the yard and realized what I am going to do for the 6 hours that I am totally kid-free tomorrow (Daniel has a zoo field trip)...I'm going to be cutting the grass. Yay me.

After that we came inside, the boys got baths, we ate supper and watched TV, Alex pooped on the floor, the boys went to bed, I mopped the living room and worked on laundry.....

Yep. Just another day.