Monday, June 4, 2012

So much for a busy week...

...would you believe it was a crazy month or two?  Obviously, what kicked things off was Baby G-O's 1st birthday which was crazy-hectic in and of itself.  I made all the decorations and a couple family members joined us to set everything up the day before at the hall where we held the shindig.  After that, we spent a little over a week entertaining family members who were visiting from a ways away.  Then, we were stuck in a quagmire with our escrow with delays in paper work leaving us living in chaos being semi-packed and ready to move and facing the daunting challenge of speed-packing and moving as soon as our escrow finally closed.  (Now where is that cookie sheet?  Oh, yeah...the box under those other five!)  Yeah, and did I mention that we had already given our landlord notice, like, a month ago???

Originally, we got the okay from our lender and our realtor to submit our 30-day notice with our landlord.  We even talked to our landlord when we gave him notice asking if he would be willing to be flexible if we needed a little bit more time, although we didn't anticipate it.  His answer?  NO.  Absolutely, NO.  He needed a firm date so that he could get new tenants in there.  Ok, well, we asked and we didn't think we'd need extra time, and we also understood his side.

Wait...wasn't this supposed to go smoothly?

Flash-forward to the week our lease ran out (due to our 30-day notice) and our escrow still showed no signs of closing.  WHAT?!?!

Mm-hmm.  We seriously thought we would end up homeless for at least a few days.  Thankfully, our landlord had a change of heart and let us stay a few extra days (we of course paid a per diem for those days) and, hallelujah, our escrow closed the day after our 30-day notice expired.  We were able to get everything packed, moved, and thoroughly cleaned out in three days thanks to the help of four of our blessed friends.  The Mr. and I switched on and off between watching Baby G-O and packing/cleaning.  I'll admit it: it was HARD and I was mega-stressed over all of it and lacking sleep with all the hard work it took between vigilantly prioritizing our little one's sleep schedule and trying to make the change as seamless for her while getting as much done as quickly as humanly-possible.

This last month has blitzed by as we've settled in to home-ownership, attempting to unpack and organize things with a walking, talking, climbing one year old, and trying to make this house feel more like a home.  We still have a L-O-N-G way to go, people....a looooooooooooooong way.  Still, it's feeling more and more like, well, like US.  We've painted Baby G-O's room and gotten that fairly set.  We've put up curtains and blinds.  We've been working on keeping up the yard and figuring out our sprinkler system and the Mr. has even switched out several sprinkler heads and done multiple other fix-it projects.  I guess he just needed a house to bust the tool man out in him!  Way to go, Babe!  We're also getting used to the new sounds our house makes...and the sounds our family makes in it, too.

There's so much more to do.  Our bedroom is pretty disorganized as we lost some plush closet space from our old rental.  Another bedroom is utter chaos as it has become the catch-all room for boxes yet unpacked and the garage is another dumping post for all tools, outdoor gear, and holiday decor.  At least our furniture is all where it should be, right?  (Please, humor me on that one.)

Now, life is slowing down as we pace ourselves with the organizing and just figuring out what we want our house to be.  We know we want this house to be a blessing--not just for ourselves--but to our friends, our family, and our neighborhood.  We've already met several of our neighbors and we are so blessed to see several kids in our little cul-de-sac that come out to play almost every day.  We have a few ice cream trucks that drive by, so we try to resist the temptation.

As for this week, we'll be celebrating the Mister's birthday.  I'm excited because we'll be going camping for the first time with our, now, 13 month old...who's almost 14 months old now.

Ah...it feels good to be back here.  It's really a sign that normalcy is returning to our schedule...and that's no small thing.  :)