Still Whirling

So Craig got that job offer on a Monday.  And the following Sunday he began ripping out our kitchen.  He'd wanted to redo it for years now, and had gone through several different plans for it.  But with us moving, we went with Plan C or D, which basically boiled down to: replace everything as fast as possible for as cheap as possible.

Ryder liked helping Daddy scrape up all the old linoleum

Ever since he began, I have been living in squalor.  The refrigerator has taken up residence in the dining room, crammed up against a counter that also doesn't belong there (and which is now impossible to open and use any of the things inside it); there are boxes with all my kitchen things piled in the middle of the living room floor; my computer table, Grandmere's desk, and a la-z-boy chair have all been displaced.  The dining room table is crowded with my knife block and all our plates and glasses.  And there is a fine layer of sawdust on top of everything.  It's so awful and gross.

Living the dream right here

But in Craig's defense, for only doing this after work and on the weekends, he's been working wicked fast.  (Much credit goes to his parents for all their help, both with the kitchen work and with buying us meals while we can't cook!)

Laying the tile

Look!  New cupboards!

And more new cupboards!

But.  I HATE it when my house is messy.

So this has been challenging for me.

What's worse, it seems to have inspired a "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude within myself, because I've pretty much stopped cleaning the rest of the house, too.

So, yes, squalor.


So instead of sitting around my disaster of a home, I did what any normal American would do, and I went and bought a new house for us!

I noticed it on Zillow last Saturday, obsessed over it Sunday, drove down to look at it Monday (bringing my amazing friend Tracy with me for company!), made an offer on it that night, and found out we'd been accepted Tuesday.  Whew!

All this, and Craig still hasn't seen it.  Poor guy!  (He'll see it this Thursday when they do the home inspection, so until then, feel free to live it up by teasing him about this!)  You can see the listing here, but I should warn you that the information isn't very accurate.  For example, there are 3.5 baths, NOT five.  And the rooms aren't quite as big as they look in the pictures.  And we did NOT pay what the Zestimate for the house is.  But other than that, I think the house is pretty perfect.  Especially for our family.  My favorite thing about it is that it has five bedrooms UPSTAIRS.  None of the houses we'd looked at had that-- it seemed to be some rule that the most bedrooms you could have upstairs was four.  But this one has another bonus room over the garage, and I loved that about it.  I can have all my children sleeping nearby!

Anyway.  We've been stressing out trying to get paperwork rolling on this.  And stressing out trying to figure out how to sell our own home.  And still remodeling the kitchen.  And taking care of the chicks.  And also taking care of Camille (who is three months old today!!!)...  It's a busy, busy, stressful time for us.

I have to keep reminding myself of how good I really have it, rather than focusing on the stress and the squalor.  Because really, we have it so good.

And I mean, who doesn't think that really, a fridge belongs in the dining room?