Congrats!!!!!! :party:

Praying.:grouphug:

We're a family of 6 and will soon (Lord willing) be living in our new 1700 sf split level. The bedrooms are small but the public rooms are large. The yard is fabulous. We have lived in 3 other houses ranging from 1600 to 2800 sf. I'll take the 1700 sf any day. It will be easier for me to clean since I'm the only one who currently does that, at least until the kids are a little older to help with that more regularly. It also fits our budget. We'll finally have some breathing room for vacations, heck, even extra grocery money. Our bigger houses were nice but I'm tired of the nagging stress of a larger-than-we-can-now-afford house. Personally, I'd take a smaller house with a park across the street any day of the week and twice on Sundays. The park can become the yard and Dh/kids don't have to mow it ;p. A good friend of mine is now a doting grandmother of 6. She lives in a 2 bed/2 bath house that she downsized to when the kids all moved out. When her kids and grandkids come to visit, the grandkids stay with her and the kids stay either at hotels or in rented RV's in the driveway. Everyone loves the arrangement. The parents get alone time and grandma gets alone time with the grands. With her smaller living expenses, she can afford to share in the RV or hotel expenses.

I have a homeschooling blog (http://notesfromtheirteacher.blogspot.com/) and a gardening blog (http://modernmia.blogspot.com/). Thanks for the thread. I'm having fun checking out other blogs. You ladies are uber-talented and fun to read.

:smash::smash::smash:

My UPS man showed up late today as well. Seems his wife surprised him on his route...She had a package delivered to a friend's house (who is out of the country for a few weeks) and was waiting on him...:blush:...well, you get the picture. He was whistling as he came down our walk today.

I agree with a pp about listening to your gut. We just finished house hunting and found a wonderful house that we will close on in a couple of weeks. We had found a different house that we didn't agree on. I only liked the price and could tolerate the rest. My gut was screaming "NO". It needed too much work. DH absolutely loved it and was willing to overlook the laundry list of stuff that needed working on. Long story short, the inspection came up with a basement and crawl space full of black mold. Not the house for us. We looked some more and one dark night drove up to a house that wasn't quite big enough but the yard knocked my socks off. Literally took my breath away. Even in the dark. Once we got inside, the house slowly won me over. We could work with it. The layout was enough that we could easily make additions in the future when we had more money. In the dark, the yard looked huge. When we went back 2 days later, the yard was even bigger in the daytime. And fenced. I was sold. With 4 kids, I would rather have more yard than more house. The kitchen is smallish but has room for adding more cabinets when we can afford it. It'll work for now. You'll find something that will work for you. It may take your breath away the first time you look at it, it may slid up next to you and woo you slowly, or it may be perfect for now and grow into a long-term love affair. You'll know. I can't explain it, but you'll know.

:grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

:iagree:We do "square foot gardening" with our kids. It also makes it easy for me to do it with them. I am a novice gardener so this book has helped me get growing, planting, and tending my garden. If only it came with a squash bug killer..... Here's our experiments with SFG: http://modernmia.blogspot.com/

Congrats!!!!!:party:

Mariann, if I was moving to your area, I'd buy your house in a heartbeat. It's our almost-perfect house (the location would make DH's commute to downtown Atlanta a little long). The kitchen makes me drool. Well, really, the whole house makes me drool. We are within weeks of closing on a split level after spending months looking for one that fit our needs/compromises. What we realized is that if the house is great shape, like yours, but has one maybe-flaw, we can work around it. The kitchen might look small in photos but there is still enough wall space to add more cabinets. We will be doing that in our new house. Our new kitchen is adequate but for a family of 6, we need more cabinets. There is a breakfast nook with great wall space that we will be adding cabinets to in order to get my needed storage space. My only recommendation from looking at your pictures is to take another front yard picture when spring arrives and the yard is greening up/flowers blooming. Best of luck with the continued sale. The market seems so strange these days. It's almost like people have too much to choose from so they can't make a choice.

Our school year will technically end Aug 31st. We school year-round but I have to report for our county by Sept 1st. For record-keeping purposes, our year runs Sept 1st-Aug 31st.

Praying.:grouphug:

Thanks for the update. Praying for y'all.:grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

Praying for you and Wolf today and tomorrow. Enjoy your coffee!

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!! Sounds promising. Still praying.

:party::hurray: Congrats!!!!!

Sanibel! We love Sanibel. We've been twice and dream about going back. You can also have small half-day trips to other parts of the surrounding coast if you get energetic. Or you can just find a beautiful spot of beach and plant yourself. We've done both and loved them. If we win the lottery, we're retiring to Sanibel as soon as possible.

Wow! That looks great! I wish my 6 year old (just turned 6) could write that well. Handwriting is a struggle for him. He hates doing anything that requires handwriting.

:iagree: All of the above. My kids are 6 (1st), 4 (pre'K), 2, and 1. We do our school work while the 2 and 1 y.o.'s are napping. That's about all I can manage.

:hurray::party::hurray::thumbup: Congrats!!!!!!!

YES!!!!!! And don't look back. Congrats!

Love this book! It completely changed my thinking on money. Hubby loved it as well. I didn't know there was a companion book. Thanks for that tip. I'll have to go check it out. We read the book about a decade ago and have lived with the results since. I love it. Like a pp, the slap on the back of the head from the title started me thinking. Also, "The Millionaire Next Door" was helpful for us.

We love it for the free shipping and the free movies/streaming videos on our Roku. We are very particular about what our kids watch and don't have live tv/cable/satellite. We recently purchased a Roku. With Amazon Prime, we can actually watch movies that we've put off seeing due to lack of funds/time. Example-this past week DD2 (just turned 1) has been teething like crazy and has an ear infection. She decided sleeping was not happening, specifically during the hours of 11pm-4am. We laid on the couch together and watched lots of cheesy chick flicks and old movies while dozing. I think this past week alone I watched enough movies to justify the costs. And then there is the free Kipper that my kids have been begging to watch for over 2 years but we didn't have access to until now......:tongue_smilie:

I think you hit the nail on the head with your quote above that I highlighted by bolding. I have 4, ages 6 and under. Rigorous for us can sometimes change daily and hourly. Within our compound (as we call it), we are quite rigorous. To outsiders, it sometimes looks like unschooling, laziness, extremely rigorous, or fun. I've learned to make sure we get our 3R's in for the 2 oldest (6 and 4) who are doing 1st and pre-k while the 2 littles (2 and 1) nap. This past week, the 1 year old has been teething and afflicted with an ear infection so any rigor I desired went out the door thanks to 2 hours of sleep per night. From over here, my only wisdom is to just keep plugging along. Some days my greatest accomplishment is that we made it supper without blood or ambulance rides. Other days, my oldest has several full sheets of copy work, math problems, and memorization to share at the supper table.