This crazy, busy thing called life...

So, you might have heard that we're moving.  For the sake of brevity, let me only include a short list of the cities/states that Darrell and I have lived in together over the past 21 years (I'll save you from the places we've only lived individually):

1. Morgantown, WV
2. Hammonton, NJ
3. Plymouth (city), MI
4. Raleigh, NC
5. Clayton, NC
6. Greenville, NC
7. Plymouth (township), MI
8. Fairmont, WV
9. Lexington, KY

And, now, it looks like the next stop is Plainfield, IN.  Maybe this is lucky number 10?  It will be our 7th actual house/mortgage.  How crazy is that?  Can anyone beat this?  With every move, we've stayed within the Eastern time zone.  Indiana even fixed their way of not doing Daylight Savings Time just for us, I think.

There is a neat pattern we're breaking.  With every house we purchased before, we spent more each time.  This time, we are determined to spend less on a house, get me employed again, and get serious again about saving for our kids for college.

I don't think a lot of people realize (or remember) how insane things get as you go through a move.  I know I forgot a lot since we stayed put almost seven years this time.  How about just a quick picture of my week from Wednesday through Sunday?

• Pack for the kids and I to head to Indiana
• Make sure pets are taken care of, including taking our dog with us and a cat that needs eye drops every day for the rest of his life
• Drive four hours to a place I've never been in my life
• Arrive around 9:30pm, unload (with Darrell's help, thank goodness), collapse into bed (which is an air mattress)
• Get up at 6am Thursday to get ready for a 3 or 4-hour job interview an hour's commute away
• Job interview #1, while trusting that kids are ok on their own and luckily Darrell works very close by if they need anything
• Stop at storage facility to sign contract and pay initial month so we have a spot for the RV
• Fast food lunch on the way home, eaten in my car while driving, so the kids wouldn't be alone even longer
• Take the kids shopping, but just to the local WalMart because there isn't much other shopping in Greencastle but felt a bit guilty leaving them couped up much of the day
• Get list of requested inspection repairs from buyers of current house in Lexington, but have trouble interpreting half of the eight items, and know that a few are things you just won't/can't fix (like "fixing" the vent fan in your microwave when the microwave just doesn't have a vent fan in it)
• Grab a quick dinner with the kids once Darrell got home from work
• Look at houses.  Only five met our criteria (hey, when you've purchased six houses already, you know what you want) in the two towns we were looking in
• Dream about houses and job interviews all night
• Get up at 6am Friday to get ready for another 3 or 4-hour job interview an hour's commute away
• Job interview #2, different company, different type of job, but essentially the same deal
• Yet another fast food lunch on the way home, but luckily a little less greasy than Thursday's
• Get back to Darrell's condo, touch base with realtor for the house we're selling in Lexington to ask about inspection report so we can better understand and respond to repair list, touch base with realtor only to learn that the house we were trying to make an offer on was already purchased last night
• Desperately search for any new houses to go look at, all while debating if we want to make an offer on the other one we liked
• Go for a run with Lexi to de-stress
• Pack up kids in car again once Darrell got home to go talk to a builder and decide if we should have a house built (and then need to find another temporary place to live for a month or two)
• Drive by the other house we liked, wondering if it makes sense both for safety and house resale to purchase a house near a prison
• Sleep on it
• Sleep in a little Saturday morning (thank goodness!) and decide with Darrell that we need to do a little more research, but maybe we should make an offer on the other house
• Go to an open house at the plant Darrell now supports, see forklifts and all kinds of parts, listen to Darrell about how stuff is made (but no pictures allowed), and get a free lunch
• Back to condo to let Lexi out
• Head back out in both cars to drop off Darrell's car at the storage lot
• Research on our way, and drive by house AGAIN and decide yes, we want to make an offer
• Take kids shopping, much to our daughter's delight
• She shops, son tries to amuse himself, Darrell and I negotiate back and forth with our realtor who is away at a conference as the go-between
• Go to someone's house I grew up with, but haven't seen in years, for dinner
• Have a great time, son gets to play with another boy his age and make his first friend in our new city
• Stress because we don't hear anything more about the house tonight
• Crash back at condo
• Wake up, shower, pack up for us all to head back to Lexington first thing Sunday (miss church)
• Run into snow along the way, worry that Darrell will have a hard time driving the RV back to Indy
• Drop kids, dog and stuff from trip back at house in Lexington, make daughter promise to have phone nearby and help little brother get lunch
• Take Darrell to RV, finally talk to our realtor again, but he hasn't heard back about the house
• Leave Darrell at the RV, heading back to Indy without even eating lunch
• Catch up with kids and unpack at home, decide it's a pizza-ordering kind of night
• Hear back from realtor that they finally accepted our offer on the house, call Darrell on his way to ask if he can sign papers once he gets back
• Darrell goes to sign papers at 7:30pm, still having not eaten a meal since breakfast
• Builder rep has computer problems, can't print the contract for Darrell to sign
• Go to sleep knowing you still don't have a signed contract on the house you really want, but thankful that Darrell is back safe, and that things still seem to be falling into place overall

It was quite a roller coaster of four days.  I'm praying that all works out on the house.  I'm praying that I get an offer for one of the jobs (I kind of don't even want an offer on both, just because I don't want to have to decide between the two).  I'm praying that the kids have great schools up there and that they handle the move and me working full time again well.

But I'm also enjoying it, in a crazy busy kind of way.

And, as much as I wasn't going to do this until we had a signed contract, here's a sneak peak of what will hopefully end up being our new house (built in 2008 but never lived in because it was a model home for the neighborhood), complete with our kids getting ready to go inside for a look: