Dance

I love my children. When there is music on they can not keep still. It doesn't matter where we are or what we are doing. They must dance! Not just little wiggling around, but full on dance like no one is watching. What a beautiful way to live. They make me smile.

CAUTION: Adulthood can cause ulcers

Well, it's been an odd week or two at my house. Pretty much everything seems out of the ordinary. Most of the time I'm up for a little excitement, but I've grown kind of fond of my everyday routines. It's one thing if I choose to change up my routine. I can handle that. It's another thing if some uncontrollable outside force decides to change up my routine. The world feels like it's running itself lately. Doesn't the world know that I run things around here? LOL.

Well, we always said that we would buy a house around the time the kids were to start public school so that we could stay put and not have to switch them around. I hated changing schools in elementary. Although I changed schools every year. Once may not have been so bad, but I promised myself that I would allow my children the gift of starting and finishing all in the same spot. There are so many elementaries around here that if you move 2 houses down you are in a new school zone. Brief summary of my longwinded stories: We are buying a house. From the second this whole process started I have had a knot in my stomach. I'm usually really good dealing with big situations and stress. I'm the one that keeps it together around here. Not this time. Buying a house is such a grown up thing and such an enormous comittment that it is really freaking me out!! It doesn't help that my dad thinks I'm an idiot. Anyway, my family is growing, my current housing is toooooooooooo small, and I'm sick of our neighborhood. So why not now? The first day the realtor took us to some houses I went home deflated and finished. It was obvious that Chris and I were NOT looking for the same house. I figured we'd justh have to buy houses next door to each other to come to any type of agreement. The second day we found a house we both love. It has all the things we BOTH wanted. Wow, that's a miracle. We looked at several more houses but found that we didn't care about them and kept comparing them to the one we both liked. So we decided to make an offer. I was already sick to my stomach with the whole thing, but putting in an offer seemed so official. This is the moment my stomach got knotted up and stayed that way. The house was already 10K down fromt the original list price because it's been on the market for 200 something days. We decided to put in a ridiculous offer just to start negotiations at. We offered almost 10K less than the list price which was almost 20 less than where it started. Listed that the seller had to pay for EVERYTHING. All the closing, warranty, insurance, blah blah blah. The realtor said it was good to list too many things for them to pay so that when they throw a few of those out they feel like they are really negotiating. Only thing we really have to be concerned about is that someone else already had a contingency contract on the house. Their offer had been accepted and they would close on the house as soon as they sold their own house. We weren't sure how that would all work. So we put in our offer and waited around. That was Sat morning. About 9 Sun night the realtor calls and says, "They accepted your first offer!" Therefore, the people who were already trying to buy the house we wanted had 72 hours to sell their home or they have to give up the house and let us buy it. Great, now I have to sit around another 3 days! Stomach still sick the whole time. Their 72 hours were up late Wed night. On Thur morning our realtor calls about 10 and says that we win! Yay! So now we have to finalize all the bank stuff. I have to say that Chris has completely amazed me thru this process. See, he's led me to believe all these years that he has no organizational skills and having him take care of important things is more of a hinderance than a help. I pretty much knew it was hooey but I've gotten used to handling the big stuff. Well, he's 100% blown his cover. He has handled every step of the realtor, bank, money, etc with such ease and organization and MOTIVATION that he will never again get away with playing dumb. I haven't had to do a single thing but actually view the houses. It's really nice be in the background for once. I get awfully tired of making decisions. Anyway, bank stuff is all done. We just have to get the appraiser, inspector and whoever else is official and has to look at the house. The bank said we could close by the end of the month. Yikes. I can't pack and clean out all the junk in 15 days. I don't even have any boxes! I don't think I will be able to take the bottle of tums out of my purse until they actually hand us the keys. I have heard too many stories about things going wrong at the last minute. The best part is that this house is a good size bigger than where we are now. So, I can have birthday parties where you don't have to sit on top of each other.

It has a double garage with only one door. Chris wouldn't even look at anything with a split door. But he wants to put his boat in their so I can understand that. It has a big front porch and a nice entryway. It has a sunken livingroom. New tile and the carpet was just put in a few weeks ago. Almost the entire inside of the house is painted in colors I would have chosen myself. So they saved me some time and effort. The only rooms I will need to paint is the kids rooms. The master bedroom is HUGE with super high ceiling. It has a double sink and vanity area on one end of the room. The bathroom is off to one side of it and the walk in closet to the other. I think I will love my closet the most of everything in the whole house. When we were walking around in the master closet my kids asked me who's room that one was. LOL. It's bigger than the bathroom in my house now. It's exciting. The kitchen has stainless steel and black appliances that will match our refrigerator. The master bedroom is on one end of the house and the rest of the bedrooms on the other end. Wow, maybe I will have some privacy. I'm not holding my breath. There is tons of storage, a nice fireplace, the kids rooms are equal in size. I was worried about their rooms being equal. I didn't want to feel guilty because someone got the bigger room. It has a big laundry room. I will be so thankful to have a laundry room. The backyard has a great deck. In fact the deck is probably 2/3 of the yard and it's a good size yard. So bring on the bbq's I guess! Clearly I'm excited. Getting an ulcer, but excited. I'm not sure if the nervousness outweighs the excitement or if they are about equal. Either way, my stomach hurts!

Yesterday was the first day of school. I will fill everyone in on that later. My fingers can type no more right now!