To our house of insanity!

There has been so much going on in this house over the last week or two that it’s been increasingly hard to blog about it all!

First of all Adelynn finally started crawling. Now we have three crawlers in the house! It’s insanity in and of itself! She’s slow and doesn’t move much yet, but I *think* that might actually be worse because she knows she can do it, but I think it frustrates her that she can’t move faster and so then she cries. But Ellyanna and Kynden are so fast. They sort of trail after me or whoever throughout the house. Nowhere is off limits. Kynden’s favorite place that she beelines for ever time I set her down is under the kitchen table because she can always find cheerios or some such thing to eat. (Is it wrong that I let my children eat cheerios off the floor? Do other people not do that?) The other day Josh was trying to unload the dishwasher and one baby would crawl into the kitchen. He would pick her up and bring her to the living room and as he did that, another baby would crawl into the kitchen from the other direction. It just kept going on and on and round and round. It was really funny. Pretty much anywhere I am now, there is a baby at my feet. It’s kind of fun….kind of.

Secondly, we are having a garage sale this weekend. Friday and Saturday. All day. For two days. The last time I did a garage sale, I swore I would never do it again. But alas, we need to get rid of so much stuff and I don’t have time to craigslist it all. Also, the extra money will be a nice addition to the sale of our car that will hopefully give us enough money so we can re-roof the house. So if anyone out there needs some baby stuff…this is the place to come!

Thirdly, this moving thing is getting kind of scary. It’s one thing to be casually thinking about it, but totally another to actually be making steps in that direction. Our realtor (who is also a good friend) today was telling me that it’s always best to sell first and then buy because you’re in a strong position on both sides as opposed to making a contingent offer on another house…that puts you in a weak position on both sides. I knew this, of course, but it seems really scary to put our house on the market without having someplace to go! How do you do that with a family of 7? Does that mean having to move twice? Does that mean having to rent an apartment? Does that mean having to live with my mom? All of those possibilities seem scary to me. The options that we’ve looked at in Corbett seem to have dried up…maybe. The one I blogged about last time we decided is out of our price range. We actually had several (maybe 4) others to choose from, but it seems as though those may also have gotten offers or for whatever reason, wasn’t workable for us. So right now, with literally next to no options for us there, it seems really scary to think about putting our house on the market. Because I know it would sell and probably sell quick. I’ve never done this before. I’ve only bought a house…never sold a house and bought a house! And here comes the understatement of the year…going from renting to owning is a lot easier than going from owning to owning.

Well, Josh is going to be home from work soon and I need to go check on the babies. More updates to come soon!

So…I haven’t updated for a while on the whole Corbett house thing…people have been asking, so I figure I should talk about it! =)

We went and looked at the house..it was all wrong for us. I won’t go into all the details, but since it’s been on the market for over a year, we thought that maybe if we bought it, we’d be stuck with it too. Also, it wasn’t that much bigger than our current house so we knew we’d quickly outgrow it. Plus, there was no yard to speak of and even if we put one in, we’d have to put a fence around it to keep our kids from falling off the cliff! (it was on a mountian) So, it wasn’t a very family friendly house!

This last weekend, Josh and I spent quite a bit of time driving around Corbett and checking out houses for sale. Josh totally fell in love with one that is on 10.5 acres up on Larch Mountian. Unfortunately it was out of our price range and I actually called the realtor on it and he said that the owner wan’t going to budge much, if any on the price…okay, fair enough! There is one other possibility that we’re considering. It’s a fixer house. It’s in a great location and on just over 2 acres. The size of the house is great (1800+ sqft and 4 bed, 2 bath). We haven’t seen the inside yet…I talked to the selling agent about it yesterday and she is going to do some research on the financing on it because of the condition and when she figures it out, she’ll call. I’m certianly not scared of a little hard work and ’sweat equity’…especially if it put us in Corbett…but I certianly don’t want a house that’s going to fall in on us! The asking price is higher than what we can afford and probably higher that I would pay considering the condition…so if we can figure out financing and we decide to make an offer, it would be significanly lower than asking price. But..the house has been on the market for quite a while, the price has dropped in the last few weeks which would indicate a willingness to go lower in order to get it sold, and we know the owner doesn’t live there, so there’s a possibility of her having 2 mortages. All of which works to our favor! But who knows!

I have started to gain a sort of affection for the house though. Maybe that sounds weird to people. It did to Josh! For those of you who don’t know, I make a little extra money on the side by buying old pieces of furniture from Goodwill or wherever and painting them, fixing them up and reselling them. One of the reasons I love this so much is because I see the sad little dresser or whatever and it’s like it speaks to me…”Please buy me. I so wish I could be pretty so someone could love me and make me useful again.” So I buy the piece of furniture and I imagine while I’m painting that it is saying, “Oh, thank you, now someone can love me.” And then I take pictures of it and put it on craigslist and someone does love it and comes to buy it and take it home. Sometimes it’s a little sad for me, because after all, we have built a relationship. But I know that it will be loved and so I let it go. Am I crazy? I might be. When I first saw the house, I was disappointed because it was uglier than I’d hoped…at least from the outside…but then, later on, I started thinking of waht we could do to change and improve it. And then I started to get excited. Because after all, I know the house also wants to be pretty and find someone to spend some time with it and make it feel loved again.

So please keep praying for us. I have been feeling this sense of urgency suddenly. I don’t know if it’s of me or of God. But I do feel like moving would be one of the best things that I could do for my kids. We’re just praying for wisdom!

Since returning from the wedding a couple weekends ago, life has not slowed down! In fact, there seems to be more to do and think about all the time. I am writing this post partially to update friends/family on things, but also to try to sort out my thoughts.

For the past week or so, I have been trying to come up with an idea of something that I can do from home to bring in some extra money. We’re doing fine financially, but I would like to have some income to save up for somethings down the road. So what can a stay-at-home mom with 5 children and no formal education do from home to make money? Well, that’s a hard question. This weekend I spent the better part of my Saturday making strawberry jam. It is a process that is very fulfilling for me. I cook the berries and then put them in canning jars and process the jars. I love the whole process. Anyway, last night we had friends over and as they were leaving, I offered them a jar of jam. They asked if I had ever considered selling my jam. Um, no! The thought suddenly formed wings and started flying around in my mind. I called a friend of mine who has a catering business and talked to her about it and she told me that she is planning on setting up some booths at several bazarrs this year selling her pasteries and such and she offered to let me share with her and sell jam. Bingo! Also since I have the advantage of a husband that builds websites for a living (and does photography) I am (probably) going to have him build me a website and business cards so I can do online orders. I am very excited about all this. I don’t think I’ll become a millionare or anything, but I’m very excited.

Another thing that has been going on…Josh and I have been talking about the idea of moving to Corbett. It is truly a dream of ours…both of us. Unfortunately, Corbett is pretty expensive and we don’t make that much money. However, we have found a house that is actually in our price range and it looks as though it would fit our needs. The downside is that it is not my (our) dream house and we know that it wouldn’t fit our needs in about 5 years. We know we would need to upgrade. So, we are trying to figure out if it would be good to go ahead and buy another “stepping stone” house on our way to our dream house or if it would be better to wait it out. I mean, do people usually buy their dream houses on their second time out? It’s just a lot to think about and I will probably have a definite feeling one way or the other after we look at it. (We’re going to drive by it tonight after Josh gets home and get out and look around since it’s vacant and we don’t want to bother our realtor friends quite yet.)

So if anyone out there thinks of us and wouldn’t mind offering up a prayer for wisdom on our behalf, I would be grateful.