Back to Square One

Well, rats. Looks like the deal on our house fell through. We've already had someone look at it this afternoon, so hopefully it won't take too long before we have another offer.  On the bright side-we worked all morning to get ready and my house looks great!

Still Packing, Still Waiting...

We have been back forth several times with a truck full of boxes and there's still so much to do in 3 weeks time. We will be renting a trailer for the next few trips to Ft. Worth so that we can start taking furniture when we can move into our apartment on the 10th.

Haven't heard much from the realtor-we are just waiting on the appraisal before the sale of our house is finalized. Interest rates are so low, everyone is refinancing their home, so the appraisers are backed up.

Our daughter had a doctor visit and ultrasound Monday. The baby has dropped and is now head down and she is having mild contractions off and on.  She measured 38 weeks which is 2 weeks ahead of where they had thought. Her doctor would like to wait for 2 more weeks, but baby Ryan may not cooperate. He is already almost 6 pounds and has a head full of hair according to the ultrasound tech! They don't want her to go into labor since this has to be a caesarean delivery, so they are watching things closely.  I know she wouldn't mind if he came a bit early-she is miserable, bless her heart!

We're now coming down to the part of this move that I have been dreading-saying our goodbyes to everyone. We have made so many wonderful friends over the last 30+ years-it won't be easy to leave, even though we will only be 5 hours away. (That may sound like a lot, but in Texas, that's a short trip!) We plan to get together with some of them this Saturday night, and see others on Sunday. Guess it's kind of the "end of an era"-we are among the youngest in our group (still in our 50's,) so they will be heading in different directions also in the next few years. We've shared a lot of fun and tears too, first and last, all having babies, raising teenagers (arggh!) and becoming grandparents together.

We'll be back for a visit soon, when everything has settled down since our son, daughter-in-law, and another grandbaby to be will still be here for a few more years!

Fun!

I stayed on an extra week with our daughter, to help around the house, play with my granddaughters and enjoy some mom and daughter time getting the nursery ready for little Ryan. This is what we did!

Crib is on the wall opposite the dresser.

My talented daughter painted the owls above the crib to match the owls on the bumper pad fabric. She also painted the letters for his name. (She's done all the kids names like this for their nurseries.)
We enjoyed putting it all together and think it looks really good. Guess we are ready for Mr. Ryan to make his appearance on August 27th-unless he has other ideas. He is already 5 pounds and she is measuring about 2 weeks ahead of her actual date, so we'll see! 

In other news...Our house has basically sold, we should be closing by August 15th. We have rented an apartment within a few miles of their house, but are putting our land search on hold for now since we just learned that our son-in-law's company has been been bought by a very large corporation. I know this is worrying for them-their last baby was born 2 weeks after he was let go from the job before this one. We are hoping and praying that all will be well and that he will not be laid off.  If they are relocated, then we will have to decide where we want to be. (Never a dull moment-especially when you need one!)

Exciting, Frustrating....

Well-a lot has happened since I last posted. I am here at our DD's house and the Other Half has gone back home to tie up loose ends. We have a contract on our house-one of two offers we received the day after we listed it and hope to close by the middle of next month! That's exciting!

Now for the frustrating part. This past week, we started looking at houses out in the country in this area, hoping to find something for less money and fix it up. Oh. my. word.  We have looked at some really, uhm, "interesting" houses. It also appears that even with all of our talking and planning about what we wanted to do, we actually had very different ideas about what was going to happen. (As in, my idea of a "fixer upper" home was completely different from his. Turns out that after 38 years, we still don't always communicate very well.)
What brought us back in line with each other was the realization that with what people are asking, and (amazingly) getting for homes here,(even the bad ones) we can buy a few acres of land exactly where we want and build the house we really want for the amount we had budgeted for a home. So...back to Plan A-build a house. It's been a roller coaster week emotionally, but we are both a little more optimistic now. Building a house is familiar territory for us, even though it's been a long time since we've done it. We had done a lot of the work ourselves in the past, but we will be contracting out more of the work this time.
We will have to rent a place while we build our home, but there are several houses for rent here in our daughter's neighborhood, so we may be looking into those.  So-upward and onward, or one step forward and two steps back-it won't be dull whatever happens!

Heading Out

We finished working on our house this past weekend and put it on the market this morning.  It has already been shown 5 times, so we are very encouraged! 

We're heading to our daughter's tomorrow morning to look at properties there and to give our daughter a break with housework and our granddaughters. She has developed gestational diabetes and is also having a very rough time with insomnia and exhaustion, so we're going to do what we can to help them out. She saw her doctor today, and the baby is doing fine. Only 8 more weeks and we can meet our new grandson!