I'm sick of sawdust.

Someone or other (I blame John) came up with this crazy idea of sanding down all the wood work on the upper stairs (the house is a bilevel), instead of recarpeting it, and varnishing it to match the wood paneling in our basement and to go with the laminate flooring. We will hopefully finish today. It's going to look amazing, but I have to say that I am heartily sick of sawdust.

New house?

I just got a new listing from my realtor that looks promising, so she's going to take pictures of it and one other house in Hidden Springs for us tomorrow. It's the size we need, and has the stucco John likes and the room count we need as well. We'll see how it goes!

Free at last! (Almost.)

I just paid off the last bit of our equity loan and a year and a half early at that. Man, it feels good to be free of that debt. We still have the credit card to go, but it's manageable and will be gone as soon as the house sells. It's been a long time coming, but there's finally light at the end of the tunnel. Now all we have to do is sell the house! We'll be replacing more carpet soon and the linoleum in the entry way is going to be replaced with laminate to match the kitchen, lv room, and hallway so hopefully the house will sell quickly after that (or before, either works for me).

Better days.

As mentioned, we are doing a lot better now. We've had several showings since we got home, which is always a good thing, and Jared has completely recovered. Jasmine has her yearly runny nose, but otherwise everyones healthy. Fargo/Moorhead is gearing up for the flood fight. They're doing it a bit early, but after getting caught off guard by how bad the flood was no one wants to take any chances. We don't have anything to worry about, since we don't live near the river, but John's parents get flooded in some way every year so we'll be keeping an eye out for that. Here's hoping we don't have the disaster we had last year!

Back to the drawing board, but at least the outline is still there

So, we lost the house in Idaho. Someone else made an offer that got in right before ours, and the bank kept us dangling for weeks and finally accepted his. Turned out great though because he did an inspection and found mildew problems in the crawl space under the house. He withdrew his offer, and the house went back on the market with another $25,000 off the price. It's now a cash only purchase because no bank will make a loan for it. We are just grateful that it wasn't our inspection money getting wasted this time. We ended up driving to Idaho and staying for a week and looking at a bunch of houses and areas to see what we liked, try to find a house to buy, etc. It was quite an adventure.
We didn't leave until 1:00 A.M. Sat morning (we planned on driving at night so the kids would sleep, but that was ridiculously late) because we were trying to tear the carpet out so my BIL could replace it with laminate flooring while we were gone and clean everything else for an open house that would occur while we were gone; ran out of gas in Montana on the way out (the gas sign came on and 3 miles later the car died, wasn't what I would call a good warning); we managed to cruise a few miles closer to the next gas station only for John to realize it was the wrong direction and we were then 5 miles away from a gas station (a nice guy picked him up after a mile or two and gave him a ride there and back); we arrived Sun evening and by 10:00 P.M. Mon evening I was in the emergency room with Jared; by midnight Jared was in surgery for appendicitis and he didn't get released until 8:45 P.M. on Tue leaving me to take 5 kids to look at houses while John stayed with him at the hospital; by Wed Jared was climbing mountains (literally); and Fri right before we headed out of town, we finally agreed to look at one more subdivision (we had been avoiding it because the properties had very little land attached) and John absolutely loved it.
We put several hundred miles on the van while we were there and didn't manage to find the place John wanted to live until the last day as we headed out of town. At least we did find the place; otherwise I would be seriously annoyed and feeling like we wasted all that money and time. On the way home we made such good time that we didn't bother to stop for the night and made it as far as Bismarck by the time for a noon showing of Avatar (we promised the kids they could see it 3D in the theater if they did a good job on the drive back). Got to the theater only to realize that it was cash only and the ATM didn't work. Tried the ATM again and that time it worked, got up to the cashier and she refused to sell me tickets because Jasmine was with us. I just about killed someone. So, we packed back up, grabbed some lunch (which was pretty sparse for me since the drive through at Arby's only gave me my fries and drink and forgot my sandwich; I ordered mozzarella sticks too, so it wouldn't have been so bad but I shared them with the kids since I thought I had a sandwich waiting).
Made it back to Fargo in time for the 4:50 showing of Avatar (just drove straight to the theater) even though we ran out of gas again (same as before; I was watching the gas gauge and it went from 1/4 tank to empty in 5 min flat; at least this time we had a full can with us and could fill up enough to get to the next gas station) and finally made it home at 10:00. That was a GREAT homecoming; a kitchen pipe had burst before we left and apparently the contractor didn't finish all the repairs and cleanup (turns out he had a heart attack scare that weekend of the open house, but everything should have been done by Mon and the open house was planned for several days later on Sun and his episode wasn't until Fri; long story short, it should have been done well before anything happened), and my sister didn't finish cleaning up either. So Sun we had to clean, John had to finish the repairs and put things back together, and we were still cleaning when the first and only couple showed up (Sun was US vs Canada for hockey in the Olympics; no realtor had good open houses that day).
On a positive note, the new laminate floorings look great. On a not so positive note, they look so good that they emphasize how bad some of the carpet looks and we now will probably end up replacing more carpet. At least Habitat for Humanity's store has some that is acceptable and is cheaper than I can get it in the store. Plus, no labor fees because my BIL can lay it for us.
I think I'm good for now; no more family vacations for a LONG time.

Homeschooling, for reals

As my kids would say. John and I decided several weeks ago that we wanted to pull the last two kids out of school and start home schooling all of them after our move. I thought it would be a huge decision, like it was with the older boys, but it actually was fairly easy for us.
Tonight ended up being the big decision, which is to pull the boys out now. As in, tomorrow. We've come to dislike our dual schedules (one public school schedule and one home school schedule) more and more as the days have gone by and finally decided that enough was enough.
All the kids have been home all week due to sickness, and I have loved it. I have been in the best mood today. The house is clean, my kids are happy and the sick ones are better to the point they were set to go back to school tomorrow, Jasmine took herself to the bathroom to poop in the toilet... I thought life couldn't be any better until I sat down with John tonight and started discussing the boys going back to school tomorrow and realized that I really don't want them to.
I have thought about it before, of course I have, but haven't wanted to pull them out during the school year. I was worried about them missing out on stuff and having no idea where their teachers left off, different things along those lines. Ok, I wasn't worried about that with James. I mean come on, it's kindergarten. I did worry about that with Joseph, however John (as usual) managed to reassure me and calm my fears.
So, tomorrow is it. My sons will not be going back to public school tomorrow; instead I will print off the forms tonight to pull them out of school and I will not be looking back. Though I WILL be handing the phone to my husband to talk to his mother every time she calls for the next few weeks, since I know how much she disapproves. She's old school, literally, and has only been retired from teaching for 2 yrs or so. John believes that he would have been a much happier kid if he had been home schooled and she refutes it every time and tells him he would have been miserable. She's his mom, we both love her to death, but sometimes she doesn't know her son very well and it's not unusual for her to disagree with the choices we make in parenting. But, she IS the kind to (overall) mind her own business even if she does disagree. See why we love her so much?

Why Idaho, you ask?

Several reasons, actually. It's warmer than here but still allows us to have snow occasionally, it has three temples and we can live within 30 minutes of one, it has a nice sized LDS population without overwhelming us with members (I'd like to have an occasional missionary opportunity!), it has mountains and rivers which is a must for John, the home school laws are great, the midwifery laws are great, it has a medical school.... The reason are endless. The house we found is another fixer-upper; built in 2005, but the extras were never completely finished because it is a high-end home in an expensive neighborhood and the bottom fell out of the market and the builder couldn't sell it. So we figured, why not? We can finish the house, landscape the yard, and if we don't want to stay sell it for a substantial return with very little comparable output beyond man hours. No matter what, we will move to Idaho within the next few months because of the above reasons. The only question is when and if we will be buying. If this falls through we'll just rent while we save up to buy land and build.