houses

how we ended up this way (homeless)

Posted on by mommyinthemidwest

I know I have gone on and on about this but truthfully, it is dragging on and on and has been one of the most stressful times of my life.  Our lives.  We close on our house next Thursday, but I have to work next week so we pretty much have to be out of here by the end of the weekend.  Meaning the boys are staying at nana and pop pop’s while we finish packing and move all of our stuff to storage.

It hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday that we will not put our little boys to bed in this house ever again, after tonight.  They won’t come back here. They won’t play with magnets on the fridge or kick a ball across the yard.   This is it.  It’s over.  We’ve done all the living here we are going to do.

We carried 2 brand new babies up the sidewalk and through the front door. We painted nurseries and picked out baby names here.  My dad died while I lived here and I cried myself to sleep more times than I can count.  We were just 24 and 26 years old when we sat on the front step of the house and made an offer on it because we didn’t want to let it get away from us.  We tore that step out and put in a big porch.

We have made so many memories here and I know we aren’t leaving the memories behind, but it feels weird.  It feels bad.  I can’t imagine some other totally lame family doing the same thing in my house. Our house.

Maybe it would feel different if we had somewhere to go.  We did have somewhere to go, but it fell through. It didn’t fall through, we backed out.  After the inspection we found out that this house…

this beautiful house that we had a contract on, needed a new roof in a few years.  But not bad enough yet to replace, so we couldn’t justifiably ask for it.  It needs a new roof in 4 years (ish).  Well, as you can see, the roof is super steep. Which means it costs a lot more to replace.  Like $20,000.  That’s just not a burden we were willing to take on.  So this house, which was starting to feel a lot like Home Sweet Home to us, turned into Nothing Sweet Nothing but a lot of wasted money (earnest money, inspection money…down the drain). But we made the responsible decision to forego this home knowing about the impending expense. 
Of course that means now, that we have no home.  We are going to stay with Ryan’s kind and gracious parents for a minute while we figure out what we’re doing.  We are considering building, but we are still watching the market and hoping for that perfect home (with a flatter roof) that we can get into in a month or so.  
Cross your fingers.  Say a prayer. Knock on wood.  Wish us well.  Do whatever you want to do if you think it will help us find a home and not feel so homeless and hopeless.  
So that’s what’s been going on.  Has anything like this happened to you?  Did people tell you a billion times it will all work out and everything will be okay?  And did you roll your eyes because, while that’s true, it hasn’t and it’s not?  I know I’m being dramatic.  But y’all?  This sucks.  Bigtime. 
~C~

i miss this place.

Posted on by mommyinthemidwest

It’s no secret that I haven’t been around here as much as I used to be.  It’s not by choice at all, I just haven’t had the time.  I don’t know when or how to make the time anymore.  It’s not that I don’t want to be here. I actually think about some of my blog friends quite often and miss reading their posts and comments on my posts.  I’ve found some wonderful ladies who have similar stories to mine.  It’s easy to bond this way, becoming friends with someone you’ve never hugged or high fived.  Thank goodness for mobile Facebook, I’m able to keep up with a couple friends that way.

In related news, I completely tanked on my Project 365 and that makes me really sad.  I don’t think I’ve taken a picture in at least a week.  That makes me even sadder.  (Even more sad?)  I haven’t decided if I am going to try to resurrect that or just let it die in peace.  Maybe I’ll start all over again later this year.  This blog is overdue for a photo post and an update on the boys and I will try to get to both of those soon.

Life is just crazy right now.  We sold our house and we have nowhere to go…literally.  We are going to have to shack up with friends, stay in a hotel, or decide to get an apartment.  There’s a house we like (a lot) but a lot goes into this decision.  It this the house we want our kids to grow up in?  We don’t want to move again until they are out of school.  We are putting a lot of pressure on ourselves to make this huge decision and going nuts in the process.

Dexter has pinkeye.  Wonder who will fall victim next?

miss you,
~C~

quiet time, reflecting on my homelessness

Posted on by mommyinthemidwest

The boys are in bed, the house is clean, and brownies are baking in the oven. What I should be doing is working on Dexter’s first year photo book, but that’s a lot of work and I’m feeling a little lazy right now. Can I just say I didn’t really get the rage about an iPad until we got one? Love this thing.

So I’m just sitting here, looking out the window at our big, pretty backyard, thinking how much it’s going to suck in a month WHEN WE’RE HOMELESS. Yep, we sold our house in 12 days, and if everything goes smoothly from here on out, we will be closing at the end of May. And living out of suitcases in our car. We haven’t found anything we want to buy and since we’ll be spending a lot of money and a lot of our lives on this purchase, we’re not going to rush because our lives are inconvenient right now.

Could someone please remind me why we thought it would be a good time to do this with a two year old and an 11 month old? Can’t remember for some reason.

We are still having Dexter’s party at the house in a couple of weeks. Weird to think that it will be the last time most of our friends and some of our family ever see this place. It was so much fun buying this house and making it our own. I wish I had photos of the transformation over the past 8 years. It has been a work in progress, that’s for sure. It’s home to us and it’s hard to imagine any other house feeling so much like home. Home sweet home.

It’s where we became a family. We loved here, we fought here. We rejoiced here and cried here and celebrated here and lost here. We are only the third owners of this fifty year old house. We are as much a part of its story as it is a part of ours. We are really going to miss this place.

~C~