We blessed Isaac on April 16 and enjoyed having Nathan's parents, my parents, and my sister Minda's family in town to share that occasion with us. Things got really interesting within a couple hours after the blessing when tornadoes touched down in Raleigh. Fortunately they didn't affect our house at all. I was really worried about where I would stuff 14 people away from windows if necessary.
The next day we had two showings for our house (more relief that the tornadoes didn't damage us) and one of them put in an offer, which we accepted. It was more heartbreaking than exciting, really. The sad reality is that with the declined market, our mortgage is under water, and there was no way to come out ahead. Our realtor advised us that the final offer wasn't too far from probable appraisal value. Maybe there were buyers out there who'd offer another thousand or two, but a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush. Agreeing to sell at such a low price really hurt. I actually started crying after I called back to convey our acceptance. Dear sweet David asked what was wrong, and when I told him we didn't get as much money for our house as we needed, he snuggled up closer and said, "Mom, you can have my money." I love that boy! Of course, we're not going to take his savings. We'll get by, but I sure appreciated his willingness to share.
Shortly thereafter we were inundated with the parade of people coming to inspect, appraise, give repair estimates, etc. Most of them showed up the week Nathan was on a business trip to Dallas. We played chicken with our buyers over the repair agreement. They were being absolutely ridiculous in their demands, but we stood firm on our end despite their threats to walk away, and they finally backed down at the last minute. More relief.
Next we needed to find housing in California. Nathan went out there last week for business and took a couple days to find a place to rent. Plans to buy a house in Los Banos got obliterated the moment we agreed to the offer. No more cash for a down payment. We planned to rent an apartment there for a little bit anyway to get to know the area, test the commute, etc, but we were surprised to find out that there are only low-income housing apartments in Los Banos. Nathan did not want to rent a house for a variety of reasons, so we scrambled to find potential apartments closer in to San Jose. It was a long, frustrating couple of days to look at endless apartments that were too small for our family and too expensive for our budget. Nathan was feeling pretty low about how this decision to move to California would impact the entire family. We decided to see what kind of houses we could rent, and revisited the Los Banos idea. I found a beautiful home advertised on Craigslist, bigger (and cheaper! yeah!) than our current home, in the neighborhood we are interested in eventually buying in. Nathan drove out that evening to meet the owner, got on an airplane home the next day, and after a week of waiting out the application process, we finally got confirmation that they wanted to rent to us. One more "whew!" for this tale. So glad to finally have a forwarding address! (Not going to post on the blog--email me if you want it)
So the plan now is to pull out of here early on June 16. We will rent a huge Penske truck and are sharing some space with my parents, who are in the process of moving from SC to UT. They will be driving the truck out and we'll drive our van separately. We'll meet at their Utah house to unload their things and then drive the truck out to California. When it's all said and done, we expect to arrive there around June 23.
Meanwhile D1 and D2 had a small round of colds which means David is coughing again. Ugh. We're waiting to see a pulmonologist in California rather than interrupt any ongoing treatment from this end. He is immensely proud of his very first loose tooth and hopes to lose it before we move. I also enrolled him in swimming lessons and he's making great strides there. My hope is that he'll be an independent (enough) swimmer by the time we're done so I can actually go to the pool by myself with 3 kids.
Daniel is ever the happy-go-lucky, distracted little soul. I'm frequently amazed how different he is from David! He likes to spend his days in his little imaginary world, emerging occasionally to ask for something or wrap himself around me and tell me how much he loves me. He's also tuned into Isaac now and loves to give him hugs and kisses, and tells all the world about his baby brother.
Isaac is such a good baby! I feel truly blessed. He is so sweet and content, all smiles and snuggles. He likes to do leg presses and looks immensely proud of himself when we help him stand in our laps. He was slightly tongue-tied so I got that clipped a few weeks ago. He now loves to stick his tongue out (MomT, he reminds me of Lizzie). He's got his hands in his mouth almost as much as David; I guess some teeth are working their way in. Isaac is also a very long baby. He's only 3 months and I just started putting him in 6-9 month clothes.
Somehow in the thick of kids and moving I'm trying to get caught up on my digital scrapbooking. I think I started digi-scrapping in 2004 and managed to be pretty thorough until Jan 2008. In this recent push I've gathered wayward photos from our earliest years and got all those pages done, plus filled in some gaps along the way. I compiled the pages from 2001-2006 into a book at Blurb.com and was delighted to get that delivered this week. I'm glad to be caught up on the earliest years and now need to get cracking on the recent years. It's been fun to revisit this hobby that's been on the wayside for so long.
I think that wraps us up for now. Love to you all--
natals
