One Year on the Range

Today, we're celebrating. Our Home on the Range has been online for one year! So we're taking a look back...

A few milestones:

• Kansas Dad finished his dissertation and then successfully defended his dissertation.
• First Son graduated from diapers and pull-ups.
• Kansas Dad had minor surgery and then, as soon as he was feeling better, dislocated his ankle (and was in a cast), just three weeks before my due date.
• Second Daughter was born.
• We bought a house.
• Kansas Dad started his first official tenure-track full faculty position.
• Kansas Mom switched from full-time to part-time.
• First Son started his reading lessons, making us an official "formal" homeschooling family.
• This blog has been visited more than 3900 times, which is more than my previous two blogs combined (from May 2004 through October 2007).

I think we managed to hit all the most stressful good milestones! We have indeed been stressed, but we have also been blessed. Our children are healthy, our land is fruitful (and it's ours!), our pantry is full and our hopes for the coming year are expansive.

Some things we learned:

• Christmas Eve is not always fun.
• How to build a square foot garden, dissasemble a washing machine, repair a computer, install a dishwasher and (coming soon) rebuild a water softener. (Kansas Dad did, at least.)
• I love Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education.
• Our favorite way to prepare pattypan squash (whole wheat chocolate cake; seriously, it's fantastic).
• You can trade books you don't want for books you do want, just for the cost of postage. (I've received 41 books so far!)
• It is difficult, but not impossible, to care for a preschooler, a toddler and a newborn while packing everything you own and then unpack it while caring for a preschooler, a toddler and an infant.
• Some people (we won't name names) do not take very good care of their houses.
• Some babies really are good sleepers. Some toddlers are not.
• Our new parish is delightful.
• The mice will always be with us.

Last, but not least, I leave you with my favorite post.

We've Moved!

We rented a truck on Sunday and headed down to our "new" house! Most of our belongings fit (where did it all come from?) so we're still going back and forth. It's little frustrating that I've spent the last two weeks at home alone with the kids in our rental while Kansas Dad worked on preparing the new house for us and tomorrow I'll be alone with the kids in our new house while he finishes up at the rental, but it'll all be worth it when we're settled in.

We've lost some storage space, but we've more than made up for it in living space, which I think is a great trade. It's good incentive to clear things out a little, when we have time.

So, we have a lot to do and sadly blogging will be sparse (though I'm constantly thinking of things to say or pictures to show, if only I could find the camera). In addition to all the normal moving stuff, we still have a lot of fixing up to do on the house, but the new paint and new carpet are absolutely wonderful and we've already started to eliminate some boxes.

I must sleep now. I'll need to be alert tomorrow (yikes! later today!) with the kids since we don't really have any kid areas set up yet. (I know; it would be good for their stress levels to do that early on, but we spent the day cleaning the old rental and working and tonight clearing the kitchen enough so we could actually eat here, which we haven't done yet.)

Home Sweet Home

I meant to post this last night.

And Oh Yes...

We bought a house today!!

Right up until the end we weren't sure everything would work out. The underwriters had to go through our flood insurance work again (we don't need it, but had to document it because the creek is a flood zone though the house isn't in one) and their office was in the line of one of the hurricanes so the work had to be transferred to another office and was delayed until this morning. It all came through on time, though.

We took the kids with us and they were remarkably good, especially considering First Daughter missed her nap. (All of the parties were very considerate of the minor chaos created by the kids.)

Would you believe we didn't drive down tonight? We were exhausted after a full day and decided to just get the kids home, fed and in bed. I've already started a box of cleaners and supplies for a trip down tomorrow, though. There's lots to do so we must be busy busy busy!

You Might Be a Red Neck if...

You walk down to your creek and find not one, but two, cars rusting in the overgrowth.

The inspection was today and went pretty well. There are a few things we have to follow up on, but he didn't find anything that would preclude the sale (not even the cars).

We Bought a Farm

Not the farm, a farm. The older two kids went off on an adventure with Grammy. Second Daughter and her Gram joined us for a modest lunch outing followed by a contract signing for our farm.

I can't believe we signed a contract to buy a house with a four day old. Maybe the sleep deprivation impaired our reasoning.

If it all works out, we'll be closing around the end of August and will be the proud owners of a little house, almost 7.5 acres, half an out-building, a lagoon, some trees and (best of all) a creek! (Well, part of a creek.)

There are a lot of contingencies so we're trying not to get too excited yet. I have to admit, the thought of packing up and moving in the next month is a little scary, but it would be worth it in the long run.

A Momentous Day

No, baby hasn't arrived yet. In fact, I had a doctor's appointment and he said I'm not even close. Even if I was interested (I'm not), he wouldn't have scheduled an induction before his vacation. So now we wait and see.

For the momentous news - Kansas Dad and I are ready to make an offer on a house (and land). We have the contract and just need to read it and sign it, both on the schedule for tonight after Kansas Dad's class. We're offering a lot less than the asking price, so we may not hear anything at all though I'm expecting a counteroffer. Again, we wait and see. The land has lots of possibilities, but it's not absolutely perfect so we'll be okay if it doesn't work out.

I almost forgot! In other news, Kansas Dad has lost the cast! He's off crutches and just has a brace for his ankle. Hopefully he'll continue to heal well.

The Offer that Almost Was

Kansas Dad and I drove down to look at another house yesterday. It's still a little crazy to me that we're actually looking at houses, but this one was well within our price range and just the perfect distance from campus, so off we went.

It was very muddy. We didn't even drive all the way down the driveway because we were afraid the van would get stuck. We had the kids with us and they waded through the mud in their boots. I'm sure we made quite a scene: Kansas Dad on crutches, me nine months pregnant and the two little ones. The house needed quite a bit of work, but had its good features, too. Last night we debated and debated and decided to go to the bank this morning.

We are officially pre-approved for a mortgage loan. Craziness.

Kansas Dad called about making an offer on the house after lunch. (Yes, we were really willing to buy it, contingent on inspection and so forth.) Not too surprisingly (given the price), they had already signed a contract. So, we haven't made an offer.

We're scheduled to see another place tomorrow. Now that we're pre-approved, I told Kansas Dad I wanted to look at a variety of places so I could get a better idea of what's out there.

Most of our friends have already bought their first house (and second and even third!), so please feel free to email with advice.

House Hunting

I suppose this is a momentous post to say we've finally started house hunting, but it's still a bit premature.

We did go look at a house this morning - a house that needs much more work than we're prepared to devote to it (like new roof, wiring fixes, walls to build, and on and on). We're expecting to need to work on any house we can afford on the kind of land we want, but we're not looking for something that's been "fixed" by a couple of different home-owners that didn't know what they were doing.

The land was really nice, though. It had five acres, lots of trees and even a little pond.

We're not really house hunting yet. I have no interest in buying a house with a baby due in five weeks. (Originally, I told Kansas Dad I wouldn't even look until baby was six weeks old.) Plus, we have all those plants we want to harvest before we move.

The good news is, we expect to be able to afford about 20% more than the house we saw today was priced, so there's hope for something better in our price range. (No, we haven't been pre-approved or done anything like that yet. As I said, we're not really in the market.)

It was kind of fun to go visit a house, though.