still waiting

Prayers needed!!! As most of you know we did place an offer on the brown house. They have 2 offers. Ours and the other realtor. We are pretty certain it is the same realtor that we were in a bidding war last time. We both didn't win that war. Last week the bank looked at both offers and came back and asked us both for our highest and best offer. I sure hope we win. They have until Wed Feb 28th - 12 pm to respond. I would love good news. I have claimed it with God. He knows my weary heart. I am tired.

This is only a house, could you imagine if it were a child we were desiring? I pray for those waiting and weary people much more than myself.

a fresh new day

The weekend was long with sick kids. We didn't make it to church because both Dan and I had only a couple of hr sleep. The preds made Ella hyper and Jera was coming down with the cough too. Tues pm I finally took Ella, Jera, Jed and Josey into the ER. After waiting 3 hrs we were seen. They all had ear infections and Jera had the beginnings of what could be croup so they got new meds. Last night they all slept GREAT. Dan and I feel we are new people. Yeah! I hope the recovery goes well as we all hide in our house so we don't pick up a new germ.

We haven't heard about the house offer. Tomorrow is our deadline we gave. I pray we hear some news.

Here are a few pictures to share of the twins in the sink.

Friday 2-16-2007

captains log

my day started with another sick baby -
9:20 am computer almost crashed - blue screen- I prayed heavily when rebooting- Praise God, He listened - bought a removable hard drive - 10 am - 12:30 pm deleting unwanted files and organizing the wanted - 12:30 pm- 6:30 pm transferring thousands of photos and media files to the removable hd - salvation! - ate the best scrumptious Dan burgers (he makes the best!) - 7 pm another sick child coming down with fever and cough, 3 more kids to go - 7:30 pm talking to realtor to make a written offer on the "brown" house tomorrow - 8 pm kids watching movie, putting babies to sleep - 10:37 pm babies are in bed, kids just finished with the movie and it is my time to sleep

tomorrow- Gabby's 8th birthday.

Monday ... a day in Ellaville

again, sickness. We just got back from taking Ella to the Dr. Her monthly sickness is back. This time croup (sp?) and an ear infection. They tested for the flu but it was neg. She got a shot in the leg and a prescription for 2 meds. Poor baby. I pray that the others do not get this virus. I just finished my Scrapdango design team layouts. I think I like them! lol - I thought it would have been hard since this was a sick day. It was using Dream Street papers so I was used to them. I can't get enough of that company! We are going to look at the "brown" house again tomorrow. 2nd showing. We need to know if this is really the one we want. There are so many negatives as well as positives. Which outweighs them? I have no clue. Will leave it to Dan for the final decision. Submission at it's best!

a day in Naperville .... and more

on Monday we left for Naperville. Deanna (Dan's mom) came to take care of the seven kids and I let her know that I was weaning the girls since I would be gone for 2 nights. (Good luck Mom! lol) Going through Madison we stopped to see Dan's brother and his family. We haven't seen them since Oct of 2005 so we had 2 years of Christmas presents and birthday presents from last year. It was so nice to see them. Jessica gave me a couple of toddler seats so the girls could be at the kitchen table and lots of fun things and more presents to take home. We got to Naperville by midnight and we were exhausted from the 6 hrs in the car but it was so nice to sleep with no babies waking us.
On Tues. Dan left for his meeting and classes while I slept in. I slept and slept and slept. I didn't get out of bed until 10:30 am. What a dream. I took a shower and then decided to take a bath too. I don't get these peaceful moments much so I wanted to enjoy the time alone. I painted my fingers and toes. I haven't painted my toes since I had the twins. Wow! They look pretty again :) I couldn't wait to show Dan my painted tootsies!
At 12 pm I ventured out of the hotel. What in the world! A snow storm! Why? Why me? I tried to drive but only made it a few blocks and chickened out. I went to the hotel desk and they ordered me a cab. I waited and waited and waited. 1 pm finally a man came running in to the lobby and yelling about who it was who ordered a cab. Like I wasn't waiting and ready for an hour already. He asked me if I REALLY wanted to go to the outlet mall and I said yes. He said some crazy things like how Chicago was in the state of distress and that nobody should be going that far. (9 miles) . The desk manager said "I bet that is what the people who work at the outlet mall think too but they probably had to do their job to please their customers." Way to go desk manager! So he said "whatever!" and told me to hurry up. While in his cab he ran a couple of red lights, complained about taking me to the outlet mall, yelled and swore at the snow and at the radio dispatcher and kept telling me that I should go to the other mall that was only 3 miles away. He was swerving so much and cutting people off. I heard at least a few people honking at us. What a ride. I would never complain about my husbands driving again. I knew that we didn't go in the direction that the hotel told me for the outlet mall so I asked him about it. He said that we could go that way too. OK... you know where you are going I thought. He kept telling me that I would be better off at the other mall and that the cabs wouldn't be at the outlet when I was done. I again said that I needed to go to the outlet mall. We drove into the "other mall" parking lot and I figured he had to pick someone up. We stopped and he told me the fee of $21.00; I said "ahem, this is not the outlet mall." He said" @$#%F I thought I talked you out of it $@%^!" I was scared to death but said "no, I just told you a block away again" He again yelled at me about how I should just go to this mall we were at and that if not it would cost me another 20 $. I said "Are you serious? I told you where I wanted to go and they told me when I ordered the cab it would only be 18.00 for a 9 mile trip." Now he charged me $21 for a 3 mile ride and was going to charge me another $20 to go where I wanted to go! This is the cabby from hell! I said "fine" and handed the $ to him and got out. I was not going to stay in this cab when he was mad. He was crazy enough when he wasn't mad.
The first thing I did when I got in the mall was call the cab company. I told them my adventure and they are sending me 1/2 refund. The other option was them sending the SAME cabby to get me and take me to the outlet mall or my hotel. No way! Imagine what he was like after he knew that I called.
So I shopped. A new winter Fubu pale yellow coat for myself, candy flower suckers for the kids, a high school musical cd for Wynter, a new Victoria Secrets bra and The Children's Place clothes for the 5 youngest kids. What a sale! Oh no! I remembered that I left Dan a note to pick me up at the outlet mall. I called the hotel desk and asked them to change my note. They did. At 5:15 I talked to Dan at the hotel he said he was on his way to pick me up. I prayed and prayed because he finally showed up at 7:15! It took him that long to get just a few miles in that weather and traffic. Poor husband. He asked if I wanted to eat now at a restaurant near the mall. I said I wanted a shower first. Bad choice Karen. After the shower and us playing a little on the hotel computer to send an email to the kids it was after 9 pm. We decided to try downtown Naperville for some food. We drove around but didn't see anything that jumped at us. We wished we looked in the phonebook or online for a good place to eat since we didn't know where to drive. Dan asked if we should just go back to the mall area and I said sure. He took a different road. It was pretty and we were sight seeing while driving. After 30 min Dan said he may need to turn around. We went a different way and another 30 min Dan asked for directions. We had just missed the street we we turned around the first time. Once we got near the mall every restaurant was closed. Other than fast food or Denny's. We ate Denny's. Our food came around 11 pm and we were back at the hotel by 12. We slept again! This time I woke up at 9 am. I was meeting Janet at the sb store. It was so nice to meet one of my favorite 2peas scrapper :) She is so nice and her girlie was the cutest lil kiddo. Not to mention that she was the best behaved kid I have ever seen in a sb store. I am hoping that Janets creative juices escaped on me. I picked up some good stuff for Cheyenne while I was there too. When she had to leave she gave me directions to the outlet mall. One more try at it with me in the drivers seat this time. It was fun to browse and I stopped at The Children's Place one more time to find more sales. 99 cents! So if you see all four of my youngest girls in the same skirt every day but different pattern you will know they were a 99 cent find. I picked Dan up the hotel and we headed back to our home sweet home. Driving through Madison we detoured to eat at Pedro's, our favorite Mexican restaurant. This was our treat :) Add some fried ice cream and I was in heaven. We got home at midnight to an alarm going off as we entered. SpyTech trip wire sensors really work. Josey wanted to know exactly when we arrived. Kids, I missed them all!
Thursday I caught up on laundry and did a class for an elderly assisted living home. What a group of gals. Fun! Friday - today - the kids let me sleep until 10 am. They better stop spoiling me like this. I think they just don't want me to ever leave again just to be able to sleep in.

What am I doing now? After writing this I am throwing in another load of laundry, moping a floor or two, searching the net for houses and scrapping. I may even throw in some family time with a movie night. I love my family. I love my life. I really love my life.

it continues........... is it meant to be?

Just this morning I got on the net and searched. I thought that I found it! I really thought I had found my dream home.

(I added a few pictures here. Please note the first picture is looking down from the stairs into a SCRAPBOOK AREA with custom cabinets and a sink. This area pretty much only suits a scrapbooker IMO. lol)

So at 3pm we looked at the "brown" house today. While I think we may be placing an offer on it I do want to say that the pictures were taken "creatively" :o There is a lot of work needed but it has major potential. The work is not too costly or hard but it is enough to not pay their asking price. We doubt anyone will come to that asking price. It is a new listing but if they don't come down it very well may sit empty for over a year.

It is 16 acres but just through the woods is the 4 lane highway so it has traffic noise. (Dan didn't like that. Me? I say... I WANT A HOUSE!) lol You give and take and I really do want to TAKE something now. Anyway, I think we may be placing an offer when we get back from our Chicago trip.

Unless that is we happen to buy the house we really want before next week.
You may get a laugh at this but after looking at this house today we decided to walk on the wild side. :mrgreen: Dan and I are fairly wild side kinda people anyway you know.

Anyone who remembers my old blog and the start of our house venture may remember the "blue house". Yes, that blue house that is still in my dreams. Yes, that house that was the first of many that I said were "meant to be". One of these meant to be's are really meant to be you know. So I will keep up with my motto of "it was meant to be".

So we took a drive past the original house that we wanted to buy when we first moved here Sept 2005. It was a foreclosure. We made an offer last year. The bank wanted 14 day financing so it wasn't an accepted offer. Someone snagged it the next day when we were going to make the 14 day offer. Ouch.
It seems as if they do not have kids. Just a husky dog. Maybe they don't really "need" the 6 bedroom, 4 bath house. (lol) Hey, you never know! So Dan and I drove past to stop in and ask if we could buy it for 50-75000 more than they paid for it a year ago. (that is how we saw the dog in the window in case you thought we may be wacko stalkers) They weren't home. Dan is going to go back tomorrow to ask them. I told him to drive our 15 passenger van to look more needy and to verify that we actually did own eight children. lol. I figure it is 50-50 chance of them saying yes or no. That kind of an offer also comes once in a lifetime so if they do not take our offer they may never sell it for that.
It reminds me of that commercial where the family just comes right into the house saying "we will take it!" and the house was not even for sale. I am almost ready to squat and claim someones house while they are away on vacation. lol, just kidding. Anyway, wish us luck talking to the "blue house" owners tomorrow.

House Hunting Horror

Our house hunting is not any more fun than when we started. It is a nightmare. We have made offers on a few and lost each one. When will other people stop trying to bid over us? This last time really hurt. We had it in our fingers and we were only a few 000. under the other bidder. Ouch!

We looked at 2 places yesterday. One was a house and had 5 bedrooms but it was not what I liked and a lot of small fix up's that I knew we would never do. I just didn't like it. My husband on the other hand sort of liked it.

When we were walking out my husband said "what don't you like about it?" I didn't want to run my list in front of our realtor so I just said "a lot of things".

Dan: like what?
Me: I just didn't like it
Dan: Well, I guess we have to build then (this is his way of being cranky)
Me: We can talk later if you want

I looked up at our realtor and the look on his face was shock. I started laughing hysterically saying "you must see a lot of fights!"

He said he had and shared a few funny counselling sessions he had with some couples.

On the way to the other property I told Dan about a listing that was newer just down a road that we were near. We pulled over and waved down our realtor who was following so we could drive past it on our way to the other property.

When he pulled up I screamed out the passenger window "We decided we do not need a house after all!" He just laughed and said, "Is this where the counselling starts?" lol

Ok... so we pull up to the "other" property. It is a 12 bed elderly resident unit. Yeah Yeah, I know what you are saying. It would fit us. True! So we looked. Very nice but it is an elderly home for goodness sakes!

If we convert it to a home, where is the resale possibility? Yes, you would have awesome ramps through out the home for bikes and skateboard stunts. Yes, it would have hand rails through the long halls which would be great for ballet practice. Yes, the sweet commercial upgraded kitchen was excellent and exactly what I would want. Yes, there would be room for a scrapbook store much less just a sb room. Yes, the kids would have a gym, a music room and art room. Yes there would be enough bedrooms for everyone and guests to have their own room (even Dan and I if we wished). Yes, there was many bathrooms. Yes, the bathrooms for "him" had urinals. Dan loved that. Yes, there was a security system. You know how I love to be secure. Yes, sprinkler system. You know how I fear a fire. So why don't we buy an elderly home?
I just don't want to! Are we being picky? I mean, helllllo. These poor old folks. The new owner is going to have to boot them from their home & I do not want to be that new owner. I could see it now that we would be stuck waiting for some ladies kids to pick her up and they don't show. Poor old Betty would be stuck with us. It is a Chevy Chase movie in the making! ::::: don't mind her, that is just old Betty. She came with the place! ::::::
Maybe that is a bit dramatic but with how things happen in our life, I would not doubt it could happen.
So... no elderly home. We are scheduled to look at 2 homes tomorrow. I think we have ranked top in Rods list of showings per family. hehehehe Who said realtor's make too much?

Here is the type of house I want! If anyone finds this within 5 min from my husbands workplace, please let me know.

Purses and Hats

I got another one done as well as an altered hat. Both are using Die Cuts With a View product. Here they are.