It may be back but suddenly life is very VERY busy. Most of these things were still around before, was I just ignoring them all? Or balancing better?

Balance. I think that may be a post-in-the-making for the Roundtable.

One of the problems with being inspired to write is that I am having a really hard time writing about nothing. If there isn’t depth it feels worthless. I know that’s silly - this blog was meant to be a living history of my adoption and later parenting experiences. It doesn’t always have to be deep.

So here’s something fun: yesterday a big ole SUV pulled into my driveway and two classy women with clipboards and pens came to my door. I was in my pajamas, the baby was naked. The house was a little messy. It was not the best time for visitors. I considered not answering the door at all but I did. This is the conversation that followed:

“Hi, we’ve come to walk through your house.”

?????

“We are realtors, is this 111 John Doe Road?”

?????

I tell them “This house isn’t on the market.”

“Hmmm. I have the MLS print out right here.  With a picture of your house. Are you SURE this house is not on the market? I don’t see a sign.”

I tell them “Yes, we’ve lived here a year and just extended our lease 2 years. I’m quite sure this house is not for sale” but really I am panicking. Because it is all there is black and white - that IS our house on an MLS listing from THIS WEEK.

I send them away and look up the MLS and sure as day, there it is! To say that I panicked is probably an understatement. I FREAKED!

The house is being sold, silently, as an investment. Our own lease is secure and is part of the terms of sale. The listing stated that the property is occupied and we should not be disturbed and also listed our lease terms as part of the terms of sale. So obviously this idiot agent made a huge categorical mistake by knocking on my door but damn, it scared me to think that right when we are FINALLY unpacking we might have our house sold out from under us.

I could go on and on all day about the benefits of leasing over home ownership. I think so many people consider leasing to be the Poor Person’s Home Ownership and are surprised to hear that we lease by choice as do many people in my neighborhood.  We have a large beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood in one of the top communities in Texas. We could have afforded to buy a house here  - in fact the homes here are significantly less expensive per sq foot than the houses in Michigan. But why would we do that? Our landscaping is provided for us, our pool maintenance is provided for us. When something breaks (like the entire furnace, the pool filter, the roof, the garage door opener, the electric wiring and various other major and minor issues we have had in just the last year) we don’t have to stress it at all. We don’t have to deal with contractors or worry about what it will cost to fix. We sit back and it is *handled*. It feels like The Rich Life with all these *people* who *work* for us! haha. Add in the lack of concern over property taxes (a big deal here in Texas) and it is one huge weight off our shoulders to lease.

I have owned two homes and aside from the large LARGE (incredibly large) sums of money I have lost in the sale of both homes, the other downfalls for me are gigantic. There is not a single aspect of property ownership that appeals to me. And since the only true perk would be the investment angle and some top economists have since declared that home ownership is no longer considered an investment at all, I truly wish to never own again. I have also leased two homes and both experiences were BY FAR more positive than my home ownership experiences. And when the lease was up? I could just move on if I wanted. Or not! I didn’t have to sell or negotiate a buy. I just chose a new place like I might choose a new car and moved right on in. Oh glorious lease!! How I love thee!!

For a minute I thought my Love of the Lease had forsaken me. I freaked that, at very least, we might end up with a new property management company who sucked. But then I remembered that after we signed our last mortgage, it was immediately sold and then resold again. There is little assurance, even through home ownership, that who you CHOOSE to work with will be who you get to work with the entire time. I guess this is no different. Our lease is being sold like our mortgage, before it, was sold. We weren’t supposed to even know so hopefully it wont affect us at all.

Sometimes we consider whether we will build again when our lease here is up. And then we laugh becuase building is also SO not the awesome thing I think people (who have never built) think it is. It is hard work and a lot of oversight. And it is insanely expensive to pay for all of the little things (lawn, fence, pool, paint besides builders paint, landscaping, mature trees, window treatments, etc etc) that come, for free, with a house that’s been around for awhile. Of course the trade-off is that it is very hard to find The Perfect Home if you don’t build it yourself. There are MANY aspects of this home that I do not love, it will never be the wonderful house we left in Michigan. But it will always be lower maintenance, more enjoyable, less expensive and subsequently it will feel more like home and less like a burden.

This weekend, just shy of one year from the date we arrived here at this house, we did something I like to call Moving In. We aren’t done, not by a long shot. But we started, which is something.Let me explain: we moved very quickly without any notice. We had movers pack our stuff - a first for both of us - and it did not go well. What we got, instead, was everything thrown together in total disarray. Silverware divided between several boxes, individual pencils wrapped in sheets of packing paper, heirlooms thrown into junky basement toy bins, clothing thrown into holiday bins. Imagine the clean-up after a tornado hits your home and that approximates what we brought down here with us. 

So we still have boxes left to unpack. We have three big boxes in the house and countless in the garage. I would toss it all at this point, ordinarily, assuming if we haven’t needed it in a year we will never need it. But the state of the packing makes that impossible. We literally have to go through every box and separate the junk (most of it) with the cherished possessions (little of it). It is tedious, overwhelming, time consuming. It makes me so mad that we did not hold the packing company more accountable.

So…..

I officially finished Addison’s room. Finally. I added the pictures of her brothers up over her crib and added some huge dVider dragonflies onto a big previously bare wall. It looks *perfect*. She LOVES her new “flies” and today I heard her whispering her brothers’ names over and over again when she was supposed to be napping Sweet.

I also hung four shelves in Noah’s room and finally put his name letters on his wall. I put up both Dalton & Teegan’s wall shelves so now their trophies and prized possessions have a place of honor.  I think, aside from new furniture, Dalton & Teegan’s room is done too. Noah needs new furniture and he wants his room painted and decorated in some sort of jungle animal theme.

Tony and I made a dent in the garage - the most daunting of tasks. There is SO MUCH STUFF that needs to be thrown away or donated so we can even get to the point of purging and reorganizing what does belong in the garage. But I am reclaiming (or claiming, I guess) that space. I love that garage, as dumb as that sounds. And it is going to be functional for us.

We hung unused bikes, we went through two HUGE wardrobe boxes full of sports equipment and purged TONS and organized the rest into our sporting goods organizers. We set some stuff aside for garbage pick up and set lots of stuff aside for Goodwill. But it is all just a drop in the bucket. When we moved here, we took everything. We had no time to purge. Now we are purging.

Here is the remaining mess:

All that stuff in the front left is garbage/donations. All the stuff in the front right are the bikes that four kids use daily. Everything behind it is mess that needs to be sorted, pitched or donated. We have a long way to go. Back there somewhere it a utility tub I could have really used this weekend that I didn’t even know existed until Tony told me about it when I was complaining that we don’t have one! haha. THAT is BAD!

Among the boxes in the garage are 2 dozen or so book boxes filled mostly with Tony’s books but also with kids books and books of my own (although I had already purged my own book supply before we moved). I am selling off Tony’s book supply on half.com and over the weekend I went through three boxes of my own/kids books and purged some and moved the rest up to our gameroom….the final stop on the eventual completion of Moving In. There are three more waiting for me tonight. I can not WAIT to go through all of these boxes and get that much closer to organizing the most messy and disorganized room IN our house.

Last but sooooo not least, I tackled the tedious job of painting our playhouse. I have wanted to post pictures of this beast since my Daddy built it but I wanted to wait to get the paint done. In my mind, I pictured it as a pretty minor feat but boy was I wrong. It was ALL trim which meant TONS of taping off. Add to that that I was painting weathered wood - you know, the kind they make wooden porch railings out of? It is awful to paint, the paint does not just glide one. Plus I had to paint every single spindle and then I had to paint trim *through* the spindles since the porch is not big enough for actual people to get on. Now I know why the previous owners of said playhouse never painted it! After four hours of painting, I got exhausted and quit. I did the entire outside and some of the underside of the roof. I need to apply the quarter round to the outside and then it will be finished outside. Inside, I still need to apply trim around all four windows inside and paint all that trim including the ceiling planks. Then I need to hang christmas lights in there and I think I may paper the particle board that is the roof with some cool scrapbook papers - that would be cheap and sooooo super easy, right? And cute!  I’m so excited to finish this project.

So after a year, we are finally Moving In. Getting pictures hung, paint on the walls, making this house feel like a home. We have SO far to go but the fact that we did so much this weekend makes me feel 1000 times more at home. And let me tell you - I will NEVER hire packers to pack my stuff again! How hard is it to just pick up the utensil tray and lay it in a box? Harrumph.

Can you believe I forgot to include Arbor Day on my list of holidays that we do not decorate for?! Today was the day. And not a day too soon for Noah who definitely considers this a True Holiday right up there with Valentine’s Day. We mistakenly thought LAST weekend was the big A and bundled up the fam to head out to the festivities when I realized I had screwed up the dates. So the anticipation has been….intense….for Noah. He came running down the stairs yelling “Happy Arbor Day” to anyone who would give him the time of day.

Our community holds a rather ambitious celebration. And even though it is as Cold as a Cast-Iron Commode* I still dragged out all four kids to celebrate The Trees. I left the camera at home thinking how many pictures could I possibly capture in a cement parking lot in the freezing cold? Dumb.

In addition to The Trees, apparently our community mascot, a large spongy acorn, was celebrating a birthday  - which involved free cake and cupcakes. He invited a few dozen of his favorite costumed friends including Dora herself (wearing the infamous Backpack), Spiderman and the Houston Rockets mascot whose name I can never remember. I’ve never seen so many costumed characters in one place at one time outside Disney! Noah and Addison just love them!

There were also a bunch of those inflatables that the kids jumped through, slid down and threw themselves around on. We really are going to have to check out one of the local indoor inflatable places soon. The kids had so much fun.

There was also a petting farm full of the most friendly animals ever! I’m usually not a huge fan of the petting farms but this one was really nice. Noah just loved the baby goats and Addy thought it was so cute to see the baby goats nursing. She was amazed to be able to pet a real live chicken. She also just loved the piggy. Its the first time she’s seen a lot of these animals up close and personal so it was pretty exciting for her.

But of course the main reason we went, other than the free cake and cupcakes, was The Trees! I think we ended up taking home at least few dozen trees of all different varieties. I really wanted some pecan trees and a few more magnolias but we also got pine, elm, maple and other varieties.

Best of all? ALL FREE!!!!!!!!!! I’m going to have to file this away as reason #5467 why I love it here. Of course now I have to plant them out in the Cold as Cold as an Ex-Wife’s Heart*. But we’ll live. At least it isn’t snowing.  

* I am practicing southern phrases. I have the strongest Michigan accent you will EVER hear. I didn’t even know there was such a thing until I moved here and am repeatedly reminded of this every.single.time I speak to people. So, in an attempt to fit in, I’m adding some new phrases to my repertoire. They might lose something with the wrong accent, I’m afraid.