The Cadillac of Minivans

I know some of you must be wondering why I have not mentioned anything about moving. That's because we aren't. At least not right now. Here's why not:

1. I have come to terms in my mind with sending my kids to Catholic school. So what if they don't have science until 4th grade? We have "Science Saturdays" at our house anyway. Yes, Charlie is a quirky kid. That's in addition to having migraines, and possibly epilepsy (it is not as bad as it sounds). He's going to be quirky in public school, too. And besides, they won't have to spend half of Sunday in Parish School of Religion.

2. Charlie's teacher is awesome. Really, really awesome. She's about 24, cute as a button, loves being a teacher and genuinely loves kids. It gives me hope that the principal has a open mind and can move in the right direction as far as staff.

3. Not to be shallow, but we love our house. We have renovated the whole house, hands on, ourselves. We had a beautiful new garage built, and worked on the yard and garden for 9 years.

We made an offer on the house I mention in my post Legos and All, though we had not yet sold ours. It was a very fair offer in this abysmal housing market. The man who owned the home flips homes for a living and needed to sell this one in order to start a new project. Although the thought of owning two homes was scary, Mark did the math (he always does) and we could pull it off for six months. Well, the owner counter-offered with something ridiculous, actually he wanted over asking price. We let the contract lapse.

A few weeks later we were at a benefit gala for a school in memory of a woman we knew who had died recently. We had friends there from church, school, soccer, t-ball. As we spoke to people I kept saying things to Mark like "We can still play t-ball here, right?" and "Of course we'll still go to church here, right?" The husband of the woman who died, who had been bugging us for months not to move, begged us one more time that night. Is was like God Himself shined a light down upon us, and angels sang. Mark and I both had the same thought.

A few days later I called our realtor, who is our friend, goes to our church, has kids in the school etc. and told her the news. We wanted to take the house off the market. It had absolutely nothing to do with her, but that we decided everything else fell into place, and if we needed more living space, heck, we could finish the basement. There was silence on the line. I waited for the disappointment, irritation, veiled anger. It didn't come.

"You don't need a bigger house, Cindy. With three boys what you need is a better car."

Legos and All

Well, I think we may have found a house. And no, we have not sold our house yet. Every time someone says "I can' t believe your house hasn't sold, it's so beautiful" I politely kid "Then buy it." What I really want to say is that we bought in a hot housing market (and, I might add, we were in an even hotter bubble) and we are trying to sell in the coldest market in modern housing history. And... we bought on the most expensive street in the neighborhood. And... we have no central air. Well, anyway, I can't continue to lament the fact that we thought we'd be here forever.

So the house we found is bigger, on a quiet street, next to a family with two young boys and in the school district we want. I thought to myself that it was nice, but I am way beyond getting emotionally tied to these transactions. It was really on a lark we even saw the house to begin with. On Sunday Mark was on his spreadsheet for about an hour and called me into the office to show me it was financially feasible. He blah blahed on about this fund and that interest rate and I was just staring out the window thinking "This house is my home, we've renovated every inch of it with our own hands. We had a plan. Then these little people came along, and the whole game changed. And I have to pack all this crap." I started crying. Mark knows me, and wisely said we'd give it a few days before we decide.

When we put the house on the market in March, the kids freaked out. It took them a while to understand that when we leave we will be taking all of our stuff with us.

"What about our toys?" Atticus asked. "They are coming with us."

"What about the playset?" Charlie queried. "It will come with us."

"Ball," said Max. "It...will come with us."

Even when we were looking actively last summer we wanted to get feedback from the boys. We'd ask, "Which house did you like better?"

"The white one."

"Why?"

"Because they had cookies."

It just goes to show how pragmatic kids can be. I personally should take a lesson from that. All I have to remember is that we are taking ALL our stuff with us, and where we are going there will be cookies.