We have to book carpet cleaners, of course scrub all the walls, fans, baseboards, and everything, and do all the outside stuff (Yup, that means Thak's going to have to do his once a year mowing). Of course, there is also the grout. It would cost about $800 to have it cleaned, so we're definitely doing it ourselves. Most of the kitchen is done, and so are both bathrooms, so there is still a lot to do, but some level of progress at least. Tomorrow, we're hoping to be done with all the bedrooms completely by the end of the day so that we can have carpet cleaners come on Tuesday. We also have to replace the blinds in the kids' rooms because they destroyed them, and still have to paint over Erin's fun with Sharpies. Yeah, yeah, the landlord said don't paint. We're not leaving the walls with Sharpie marks on them. That would be really bad.
Another job in and of itself is going to be getting the crayon marks off the walls throughout the rest of the house, from when Orren went through his phase of drawing on the walls. At least we know how to do that. Go-Jo hand cleaner works wonders on crayon marks on walls! Nothing else works.
I'm also going to take a TON of pictures, if I can find where my camera went, to document what the house looks like when we move, because in removing the furniture and appliances from it, I can see that there are some things that are probably going to get us charged some money. Where the water line in the wall came undone, there seems to be some mold growing. That was behind the refrigerator, so we didn't have any way of knowing it until we moved the refrigerator over here yesterday. Also, where our dresser was, the baseboard seems to be separating from the wall. I KNOW these things are not our fault, so if we're charged for them, I'll be pretty mad.
I'm just really glad to be out from under this renting thing. We were sick of living in houses that don't belong to us, and we can't do whatever we want with. It's a whole different ballgame already with this house. Our builder is amazing. He has worked with us so well, and done so much for us. The neighborhood is awesome. It's really funny because the two houses across the street are owned by people from Thak's old battalion, and there's someone else from the battalion just a block over. We know a lot of people in this neighborhood.
There is a lot we want to do for this house, and it's going to take some time, of course, but we're definitely going to do it all eventually. Erin's room is going to get painted purple. Orren and the baby's room is going to be a lovely shade of spring green, with a woodland theme. We actually got all the furniture to fit in there really well. Erin's room is smaller than her old room, so she had to give up her desk and her bookcase, but it's not that big a deal. She has her own room. A lot of kids would kill for that. Orren and the baby's room is bigger, but again, there's two of them.
We also have to seed the backyard in grass, and build our raised bed for the garden (it's really the only way to get anything to grow here). Thak found an ad on Craigslist for free horse manure, and wanted to go get some today. I convinced him to wait until all our stuff had been moved. Horse manure all over everything, and moving into the new house like that, is not the best idea.
Now, the other million dollar question of this move is, are we keeping Erin in the same school. The answer is, if they'll send us an acceptance letter for next year, you bet your ass we are. We haven't gotten an acceptance letter yet, though, and the first batch of them went out over a week ago. We haven't heard anything back yet on our application for readmission, so honestly, I'm kind of assuming best case scenario, they overbooked the 2nd grade and haven't held the lottery yet, or worst case scenario, they have held the lottery, and we didn't get in. When we know something, we'll say something. (Oh, and no, our new house isn't "like a million miles" from Erin's school. It's an 18 minute drive, all highway. From the old house, it was 20 minutes, everyone else's school zones, and ten million red lights. Plus, have we EVER been the kind of people who would let distance dictate where we send our kid to school?) We also do not know if Erin will be attending summer school this year or not. We haven't received notification of that yet either, only that there will be summer school. My gut feeling says that she will be on the list for summer school. She's on the list for everything. There's no way this would be any different. So no, we don't know anything really about the school situation for next year. We only know that this school year continues most of the way through the month of June.
Orren is, well, Orren. He's outstanding. He's still 100% on potty, and just growing up so fast. He loves trucks, and points them out to us in traffic all the time, the bigger the better. He loves concrete mixers, garbage trucks, UPS trucks, semis, everything. He also really loves playing in the dirt. He's also a total daddy's boy now that daddy's been home all the time for the past week or so. He doesn't want anyone but daddy. Mommy and sissy are well and good, but daddy is just better.
The baby is doing fine. He/She is still big, and not breech like we'd thought for a while. I am very much over being pregnant, and don't really want to do this anymore. Between the terrible heartburn, having to pee every 5 minutes, being hot no matter how cold the house is, and not being able to get comfortable at all, I haven't been able to sleep hardly at all in weeks, so I'm completely exhausted, and everyone wants everything from me. I am at least happy that I'm not sick anymore (knock on wood), like I was for the past week and a half, and that Thak finally helped me with some of the move. Plans are still going forward for our homebirth. Within the next few weeks, we'll be buying our homebirth kit. Alyson says people have to have all that stuff by 36 weeks, just in case, even though we don't expect this baby to come anything before 41 or 42 weeks. We'll have everything on hand very soon, and since our new bathtub is way smaller than our old one, I've given some thought to renting or buying a labor/birth pool. I haven't told Thak about that yet, though. The good news is that our bedroom here is enormous, so there's more than enough room for one!
Anyhow, here are some pictures of the house:
(Does this one give some idea of where it's located? We're WAY closer to the mountain now!)
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