A Little Better

I think we may be doing a little better. Family-wise and moving progress-wise.

Aiden ended up getting what seems like a small bug (he had a fairly high fever for 24 hours with no other symptoms) and once he started feeling better, he was more open to the idea of moving. Maybe his stress was partially due to him getting sick. He had been acting a little odd for a few days, so I would believe it was a factor in his unhappiness. He just started feeling better this afternoon and then I was called into work, so I'll see if he continues to feel more open to the move as he recovers (and hopefully continue to recover from this random bug).

I have been determined to be as organized as possible for this move, so I've been taking my time with each room....cleaning, sorting....lots of "do we really need this?" kind of stuff. It's not going as quickly, but since I wasn't so organized during our last move (I had a 4 month old baby and a 2 year old, can you really blame me?), I want to do it right this time. I am happy with the way the packing is going and and once we finally get the exact date for getting the keys, I'll be feeling very good about this whole process. I can't promise there won't be some panicking in there somewhere, but so far so good.

Oy

I had heard from multiple sources that buying a home is one of the most stressful things you'll ever do. And I believed that it would be stressful, especially after what we've gone through to just find a home. But really....I was calmer at the prospect of giving birth than I am over this!

Certainly there's the whole fact that it will be OURS, our responsibility, our debt, our life. I mean, this is HUGE. But it's the transition that's getting to me. I am trying to pack as much as I can with two little kids running around and it's difficult. What's making it even more difficult is that Aiden has decided that he is not moving. He insists he doesn't like the house (although he sure likes it whenever we're in it!) and that he's staying here. Or maybe he's moving into the apartment downstairs and those people can move into our new house instead. For whatever reason, he's really opposed to the thought of moving. And I guess I understand. He's at that age where any change is scary and he's beginning to develop more fears. I just wish I could help him process it a little better.

Today though, the top really blew. We had brought many more boxes in on Sunday and some yesterday, so our whole living room is filled with empty boxes. I really needed to work on packing some things today, so I set the boys up with train tracks and I got to work. Aiden noticed me packing up some kitchen things and taking down pictures from the walls and he FLIPPED. Screaming, yelling, threatening, he even started hitting and kicking. I tried so many times to get him to talk through what he was feeling and he was having none of it. He ended up being punished a few times for freaking out more and more, because he certainly needs to understand that he can't behave that way, but it was hard to do because I know it's stemming from fear and stress from the situation.

So bottom line is that he's struggling with this big time. I'm struggling big time because of his struggling. Today was horrible and felt never ending. Even after I stopped packing things, he continued to lash out through the end of the day. This is supposed to be a good thing for our family and any excitement that I should be feeling over this home is overshadowed by my four year old apparently needing therapy because we're putting him through this move. Does anyone have a time machine to push us forward 2-3 weeks?

It's Really Happening. I Think.

We got an email filled with good news from our real estate agent today.

1) It turns out that the government did their own appraisal on the house before putting it on the market and they have been kind enough to include it in our file. This means that we don't have to pay for our own and wait for it to be completed.

2) The appraisal shows that the house is (even in current market conditions) worth more than we are paying for it. We are starting off with some equity.

3) Because the appraisal has already been done and it saves us some time, our broker believes that we can have the keys in our hands in two weeks.

4) We have been given the thumbs up to give our 30 day notice to vacate and we will be turning that in tomorrow.

After that email, it all became very real for me. The room began to spin and I felt slightly queasy. This means I have to start packing and cleaning and organizing. This means we're moving in 2-3 weeks. After all we've been through, it's almost too hard to believe that this is finally happening. But I'm pretty sure it is happening. Although there's a small part of me that wonders if I'll wake up in the morning and none of this will have actually happened.

I wonder how I'm going to get through the next two weeks if every time I think about buying this house, I end up feeling like I might barf. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that I'm excited deep down. It just hasn't hit yet. John went through this realization phase about a week ago and is now excited, so I think it will pass eventually. Maybe by the end of next week I'll be full-blown excited and no longer scared.

Please keep the remainder of this process in prayer as it goes through it's final phase. And also keep Aiden in prayer. He keeps insisting that he's not moving and that he doesn't want the new house. He likes it every time he's been in it, but there seems to be some fear keeping him from looking forward to a new room (which we've agreed to paint blue) and a backyard (with a promised sand box).

Inspection

We had the inspection of the house yesterday and it sounds like nothing big was discovered. Lots of little minor things, but the inspector said that's normal. The biggest thing was a super dirty filter on the furnace and we were advised to get the furnace checked out sooner rather than later, just to make sure it's filtering the way it's supposed to.

We expect to get the full written report today and if everything looks good, we agree to continue the sale and our broker schedules the appraisal. We have no doubt that it will appraise for what we have offered, but since we are getting an FHA loan, the FHA inspector might require that some of the little things that were found during the inspection be fixed before they agree to finance the loan.

John brought home some boxes from work last night. That made things a little more real. I still haven't started to organize anything to prepare for packing. I'm in such deep denial that this could actually finally be happening. Our agent asked if we were excited yet. And I had to think really hard....and I decided that if I had to think that hard about it, I probably wasn't excited yet. I'm too scared to be excited! We've just had such bad luck so far, it's really hard to believe that it could work this time. John said he's afraid that my denial is so deep, it will be two days before we're supposed to move and I still won't have packed a darn thing! But I'm sure once our agent gives us the OK to give our 30 day notice to vacate the apartment, it will all become very real.

Joseph and the Pharaoh (according to Aiden)

Aiden has been learning lots of bible stories lately and he has interesting thoughts, but this latest one really was the best telling of a bible story by a four year old that I've ever heard.
Aiden was learning about Joseph interpreting what the Pharaoh's dreams meant in regards to the seven years of abundance, then seven years of famine as told in Genesis. This was our conversation last night (somewhat condensed):

Aiden: And there were seven fat cows and seven sickly cows. And then the sickly cows ate the fat cows!! Because everyone was going to be hungry.

John: Was there anything else?
(Here's where Aiden went off in a different direction...)

Aiden: Yes, then there were seven bending sheep and seven bending robots. And the sheep were very sickly, so the robots ate them.

John (after nearly spitting his dinner out): I don't really remember that being in the Pharaoh's dream....

Aiden: Well daddy, there can be new dreams.

John and I both erupted in laughter and Aiden seemed a little confused as to why this was so funny. I think he tried to add more to it, but we were laughing so hard, I couldn't tell you what he said. But after last night, I look forward to hearing more bible stories from him!

Mortgages, Inspections, and Paperwork...Oh My!

One hour after our offer was accepted on Monday we got a call from the mortgage broker we had been working with since last fall. He decided to just now inform us that they no longer do mortgages for government run bank owned homes. Fantastic. It really put a damper on the day because John and I both had to spend quite a few hours finding a new mortgage broker. Thanks to our agent though, he has plenty of good contacts for mortgage brokers and we were able to get in with a very experienced guy that same day. He got us our pre-approval within an hour and we scheduled a meeting for the next morning to do the full application and get the loan paperwork started.

Tuesday morning, we dropped the boys off with Karla and went to our meeting. Our real estate agent joined us because we had some more paperwork to sign to get the purchase agreement finished and sent off to the government office in Seattle. It was overwhelming and my head was spinning by the time we left. Buying a house is one of the most stressful things I've ever experienced.

So right now, John is meeting with the mortgage broker again to sign some more paperwork and get the final numbers on our down payment and closing costs. We have the home inspection scheduled for next Tuesday morning and hope that nothing major is discovered. We're definitely further in this process than we have been before, but I'm still a little wary. I am going to avoid doing any packing or pre-packing organizing until the inspection is finished and we get the OK on that end. I realized yesterday that I'm too terrified to get excited right now. And I don't think I'll really be able to breath until I have those keys in my hands and I can walk through the front door.

We have a tentative closing date of June 24th, as the government paperwork states that the closing date must be no later than 45 days from start of contract. That's our 45 day mark, but our mortgage broker thinks it won't take that long. We should have a better idea after the inspection.

Fourth Time is the Charm?

Our fourth house offer has been accepted!! We will sign some more paperwork later today and be under contract within the next 48 hours. My head is spinning. I can barely believe this. We do still have a lot to do within the next month to make sure this sale can actually go through (inspections, appraisals, etc), but we're on our way so please keep us in prayer throughout this process. But to think we could be moving into this home within the next 4-6 weeks is simply amazing.

What's Been Happening

Now that I finally finished the vacation posts, I can get around to telling you all about what has happened around here lately.

Aiden started a four week soccer camp through the parks and rec department. He's halfway through and he loves it! After the soccer camp is over, he starts a four week PE class. I do have pictures from his first day, so I'll do a larger post on this later to share those and the story behind him getting into the class.

In more Aiden news, after countless talks with the pediatrician and preschool teacher, reading every book ever written on the subject, and using every trick and treat known to man.....Aiden is finally completely potty trained. He finally decided that pull-ups were no fun and ditched them almost three weeks ago. He's even dry at night. We have to be careful with how much fluid he has before bed though. One night he poured himself a big glass of milk right before bed and there was some laundry to do the next day! Poor kid. Otherwise, he's doing very well at getting up in the morning and going straight to the bathroom. We are thrilled! We are continuing to use the potty chart to keep up the encouragement, and he had been told that as soon as it's completed, he gets a trip to the Children's Museum and a day with just mommy and daddy to the Aviation Museum. Now to work on Nathan.... Nathan is actually getting a great start and while he's still in diapers and hasn't switched to pull-ups yet, he does go potty successfully every night before bed. I still wonder why God made it so boys take twice as long as girls, but as long as I don't have the same struggle with Nathan as I did with Aiden, I'll be happy.

As was mentioned in a previous post, we lost the house that we'd waited seven months for. We met with our agent two days after to begin looking at home again. We didn't want to waste any time moping over what we had no control over. The good news in this is that prices have lowered a bit more and so houses that were not in our price range before, now are. We actually found two houses, both at the same price. But one is a townhouse and has high HOA dues while the other is a full detached home with low HOA dues and is 5 minutes away from John's work. They are both in great neighborhoods and are close to elementary schools. The difference is that the townhouse was a normal sale and the detached home is bank-owned. Bank-owned works differently than short sale and is government regulated, so there are very strict timelines in place. Why can't short sales work that way??

Anyway, we ultimately decided that we would put an offer in on the full detached home with the two car garage. The only downside of this house is that there is almost no backyard. There is a deck and a small patio (which we could tear up and put in grass), but it's not huge. It's still fenced though and there's plenty of room for a sandbox (that has always been a goal for the boys...they love sandboxes!). The house is also four houses down from a neighborhood play structure and the street is safe enough that I would feel good about sitting out front with the boys and letting them ride their bikes or play ball.

So now that the offer is in, we will know by Monday if we have the house. You will certainly get an update. I do hope that this is the end of our house hunt, but I've also learned to not get attached to ANYTHING.

I know there's more to tell you about, but those were at the front of my mind and my kids are wanting to paint, so I'll end it here. I certainly hope to have good news on Monday.

Vacation: Day 7....Going Home

We successfully checked out and even caught some of the free breakfast - go us! For our first major hotel stay with both boys, it went pretty well. Aiden slept like it was his own bed, although Nathan had some trouble adjusting to sleeping in the same room as mommy and daddy.

We had arranged to meet Brady and Carrie at a Mexican restaurant for lunch to see them one last time. We had a fabulous lunch (I had been determined to get some good Mexican food in Southern California and this did not disappoint), which also happened to be our anniversary meal. Sometimes I still can't believe it's been five years, even though we've been together for over nine years.

After lunch, I hopped in Carrie's car while Brady rode with John in our rental and we headed out to their place. We were not going to leave California without seeing where they'd settled during this hopefully temporary stay in another state. The boys had fun running up and down their stairs for a while before we finally decided they probably needed to run around outside before we stuck them on an airplane. Luckily, Brady and Carrie's complex has a playground just around the corner from their place.

We finally had to tear ourselves away from them and get to the airport. This is where I have to brag that even with all the different places we drove in one week, I did not get us lost once. Who needs GPS? :^) On our way to the airport, Aiden announced that we might be going home, but he was planning on returning to Disneyland the following Saturday. I love it!

The boys did wonderfully again on our flight home, but the other children on the plane did not. One two year old boy spent a good 75% of the flight having a screaming tantrum, while a three year old girl kept screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs every 15 minutes. When she had to go to the bathroom, she got into the place bathroom, shut the door, and flipped out. She was screaming and beating on the bathroom door so violently, the flight attendant came running back to see who was being beaten! Yikes. I was so proud of my boys.

When we arrived and went down to get our luggage, Aiden decided he was going to take over one of the suitcases to get it out to the pick-up area. I so wish I would have gotten a picture of this little four year old holding onto this huge rolling suitcase and making his way out to the curb. He ended up getting stuck in the circular door once, but he made it!

Karla picked us up and after picking up the car from John's grandparents, we made our way home. It was hard to adjust to the rain and cold, but my own bed was fabulous. It was straight back to work and school for us the next day, so no time to dwell on wishing for more vacation time. But I can tell you that we are very excited for the next family vacation and where we might go. Aiden continually campaigns for another Disneyland trip and honestly, I'd be quite happy to oblige.

Vacation: Day 6 (after noon)

We headed into the Disneyland park after our lunch and any thoughts I had that it wouldn't be busy because it was a Monday quickly went out the window. Never, ever go to Disneyland during California's spring break. Plus it was super warm, so that made it worse. We hopped the train to get over to Splash Mountain and we realized that Aiden was going to have to wait to ride it. The wait time was 2 hours!! John did the FastPass and even then, our FastPasses weren't valid until 10pm. This was at noon. Yikes.

So since the Winnie the Pooh ride is right there, we got in line for that and I hoped that we wouldn't traumatize Nathan. The last time John and I went in 2007, a child behind us on the ride was flipping out. Those heffalumps are a little scary and Nathan had hated every ride we'd taken him on. But he hugged his Pooh Bear the whole time and seemed to do fine.



After the ride, we got right in line to meet Tigger and Pooh. This is a memory that will stick with me forever. When it was our turn, Nathan went straight into Pooh's arms and didn't move. We snapped the family picture and then realized that getting Nathan away from Pooh was going to take a miracle. I have never seen him so happy in my life. He was snuggled into Pooh's arms as the person in the costume stroked his hair and made kissing sounds on his head. I actually had tears welling up in my eyes to see my child in such a state of bliss. The entire trip was worth it right there.

The family photo.


"Come on, Nathan....it's someone else's turn..."

Saying bye-bye to Pooh Bear and getting one last hug and kiss...

"Good bye Nathan..."

As I was attempting to hide my silly parent tears, we waited to meet Tigger. The boys were excited, but nothing was going to top Pooh for Nathan. As the couple in front of us took their turn with Tigger, I noticed the guy whispering something to Tigger. And then suddenly, he dropped down onto one knee....

He proposed!!! The whole crowd waiting to meet Pooh and Tigger was cheering and screaming. I got a little teary over this too - what can I say? I'm a sucker for proposals. Oh, and she said yes. :^)

So finally, our turn and the boys gave Tigger some big hugs. Tigger then attempted to steal Nathan's Pooh Bear from him, but Nathan wasn't having that, so no luck for Tigger. We could hear the guy inside laughing as Nathan wrestled his Pooh back.

Once we were done, I put Nathan back in his stroller and this was the scene within seconds.

Completely passed out, holding Pooh Bear tightly, just as content as could be. Insert silly mommy tears yet again. He was so contentedly asleep, he even slept through the Tiki Room!

We did some more favorite rides from the previous two days and found a few more that either hadn't been far up on our to-do list or we hadn't noticed. One of them was the Casey Jr Circus Train. John said he didn't even know it existed and honestly, it is a little hidden. But we loved it! It was really cool, it goes a little fast, and Nathan actually liked it.

We were first in line, so we got to pick the Monkey cage and they seriously lock you in. Nathan was nervous at first (as you can tell), but when the ride was over, he started crying and yelling that he had to go again! Since that was the ONLY ride he'd said that for, we got right back in line.

After this, we exited the park to grab an early dinner at IHOP right across the street. The boys ate free since we ordered entrees and it was good to get out of the heat. The day had gotten quite hot by 4pm or else I don't think we would have considered eating dinner at 4:30. We stayed for a good hour and drank LOTS of water and by the time we headed back across the street to the park, it had started to cool down significantly.

We puttered around the park some more and John and I took a few moments on the tiny bridge at the side of the castle to take a picture of us and our rings. It's the spot where John gave me my beautiful ring on our 2 year anniversary trip. It was nice to come back for our 5 year anniversary and bring our gorgeous boys along with us.

We took a little stroll through Innoventions and saw the very awesome inside of the "house of the future". I want it. Aiden loved playing some of the games and had a fun time playing Rock Band and watching himself on the large TV that they had set up.

Don't you just love that look on his face??

Since it was our last night, we wanted to stay for the fireworks and we found a spot with some seats off to the side. We quickly realized that the trees were blocking most of the big ones, but we were about 30 feet away from the smaller, closer ones they were setting off. Wow! Amazing sight and the ground shook every time one was set off. Nathan got scared though, so he spent the entire time curled up in my lap. We also had an amazing view of Tinkerbell as she zipped back on forth on the line. So if you don't mind not seeing some of the larger fireworks, off to the left of the castle (towards Frontier Land) is the place to sit.

After the fireworks, we could use the Splash Mountain FastPasses finally, so we headed over that way. Of course no one wants to get soaking wet at 10-ish pm, so the normal wait was only 5 minutes and the FastPass line was longer. John took Aiden on it while I stayed with Nathan and I kept myself occupied by buying a Winnie the Pooh Disneyland key chain. I love looking at it and having that reminder of our first major family vacation whenever I go somewhere.

Aiden, of course, LOVED going back on Splash Mountain and didn't mind the cold wetness at all. He begged to go again, but it was so late and we had to check out of the hotel in the morning, so we said our goodbyes to Disneyland and headed back to the hotel. It was a little sad to leave, even though we were very ready to sleep in our own beds. The visit had been exciting and amazing, and I will always remember the joy on Aiden's face when we first walked into the park. And the happiness you could see in Nathan as he snuggled into Pooh Bear. I'm so glad we went.

The next day: One last Minthorne visit and our departure....