so, out of all that mess, after seeing over 50 houses and putting in 5 offers, one got accepted! it's a house in our current neighborhood, three streets up!  it has new carpets and paint and plenty of room for kids, teenagers, guests, dogs and even a fish tank!

here are some pictures:

this is the living room--with fire place, and this is the sun-room, it has huge windows & lets in lots of light.

so, we got an accepted offer, dragged the kids down to des plaines (an hour in the car) yesterday to sign loan documents, and scheduled an inspection for today at 10 am. whew! maybe we will be able to buy a house after all!

enter mike, the dream killer. (the inspector's name is also mike...coincidence?)

we have to wait for the official report before we decide, but there are a few things wrong. roof, crawlspace, water leakage. i left to take the girls home for lunch and naps at that point, so i don't have the full update yet. although, i believe i did hear the words "polished turd" while i was there. we get the report monday. maybe it's just not meant to be.
 

since late august, we have been hunting for a house.  it's actually largely thanks to my parents, who are doing some remodeling and pulled a some money out of their house to do their projects.  they generously offered to give us the down payment for the house, especially since that whole incentive thing is going on.

so, they gave us the money and we deposited it august 31.  then we started hunting. we have a fairly modest budget. we want to keep our payments not too much over what we've been paying in rent.

so, we looked and looked and looked.  most of the houses we have seen have been horrors. check out what i mean:

oh, yes my friends, those are raccoon droppings in that 2nd picture. they made that house their personal toilet.  but that was just the first house, there's more...so much more.

giant wasps nests, leaking walls and crumbling plaster (see the old-school slats beneath?), and other people's bathtub scum. definitely not what my house-buying dreams were made of. these were the good ones, though, we actually made offers on these three. the first and third are bank foreclosures/short sales (fyi-short sale actually means "it-takes-an-unreasonably-long-amount-of-time-sale"). we made offers probably close to 6 or 7 weeks ago. have heard nothing.(both of these houses have been on the market well over a year. you'd think the bank would jump at the chance to off-load them...apparently not).  the house in the second picture wanted nothing to do with our offer, they wouldn't even counter-offer (we offered 10,000 under the asking price--pretty good for a falling apart moth ball smelling house with a brown fridge in the kitchen!--or so i thought)

the glorious brown fridge! and check out the back-splash!

just because i'm enjoying this little trip down memory lane, here's a few more.

this garage was so rotten at the bottom, i think we could have pushed it over. you can see sariah's little piggy-tails poking into the corner of the second picture.
 
    
 
 the bathroom wall literally eroded away, and these super old fuses in another house would never pass the  FHA inspection we need to get our loan.

slanty floors, basements "newly remodeled!" not anywhere near up to code. rooms so full of crap that you could barely open the door, much less actually step inside. stinky cat-pee carpets, mean dogs, scary cellars.

at this point, i'm thinking, do i even want to buy a house? should i leave my rental for this?!?
 

i worry about the future of america. 

i help out 2 days per week at the after-school program at our church.  today, one of the kids came in eating little sausages out of a can.  here are the ingredients ( i snagged the can out of the garbage, just out of curiosity): mechanically separated chicken, water, beef, pork, salt, corn syrup, mustard, dextrose, natural flavors, sodium nitrite, garlic powder, chicken broth.  there is 25g of fat in this tiny can of about 7 small sausages, and 1150mg of sodium.  i think he was on his 2nd can. washing it down with a delicious can of orange pop (that counts as fruit right?)

first of all, ick.

2nd, this boy's growing body and brain need more than fat, sodium and mechanically separated chicken to grow and develop properly.

i'm sure he's pretty typical amongst his peers. 

it just makes me sad, that's all. sad and worried.

warning: this post is going to be kind of whiney, so you may want to skip it if you're not in the mood.

i hate my job. i hate working nights. i hate all the stupid issues and problems that are going on. i hate that i am trapped there, because as much as it SUCKS, it works best for my family at this point.  it allows mike the ability to work at his dream job (one of us should be happy, no?) and gives us health insurance. i can be with the kids alot, they don't have to go to a babysitter or daycare.  no other job that i can think of will give me that flexiblity and health insurance. (it sounds good, even as i'm writing it, and yet it's so awful i can barely comprehend it)

i hate that i'm crabby and irritable and moody.

i hate that i have no other alternative (or, if i choose an alternative, my whole family would have to rearrange everything. i hate that i'm so selfish i'm thinking of doing it anyways)

i hate that i threw out a bunch of vegetables that didn't get eaten this week. i hate being wasteful. i hate feeling guilty about it.

i hate how messy my house is. i hate cleaning my house. i hate feeling guilty about it.

i hate that i don't get enough sleep. i hate sleeping during the day when i should be hanging out with the girls. i hate being awake and crabby and not feeling like dealing with them when i am awake. i hate being awake at all. i hate that i hate it.

i hate that this post will probably make mike feel guilty. i don't hate that he's doing a job that he loves and is awesome at, but i do hate that i don't have the same opportunity. i hate making him feel bad about it.

i hate that i'm a whiner and can't just suck it up and be thankful for what i have. i know i should. i try to.i AM thankful, in my head, but i don't feel it. i know i have everything i need and pretty much everything i want. i know i should not complain. but right now i am failing miserably and i hate that. i also hate feeling guilty about it.

so, if you've made it this far, maybe you should send me links to stories about people who are less fortunate than i am yet are still happy and grateful. maybe you should send me bible verses to read. maybe you should give me a good talking-to. maybe you could bonk me over the head with a big mallet and put us all out of our misery.

i'm dangerously close to finishing the laundry!

even though it's only 3:10, today has been a pretty good day. we survived calah's trip to the dentist with no tears, and school only took about 2 hours.  we had good success with reading, too! calah read 2 books, "ned's pets" and "gum on gus". very exciting.

i had to pay for 2 library books, due to purple crayon scribbles--$21! but, that adds 2 more books to the library at home, so se la vie. (that is the extent of my knowledge of french--is it french?) and sariah colored in her (very blonde!) hair with green marker, but no major disasters so far.

it is now the 2nd day of the new after-school program at church, the first full day of school for the kids around here. yesterday was pretty good--only one minor injury requiring a bandaid and some tlc, and a small mountain of popcorn on the floor--so we'll see how today goes.  our craft is making book marks and we have the cars movie on.

today is my 32nd birthday (ho-hum). mike and the girls let me sleep in while they made breakfast for me. for the last little bit i just laid in bed and listened to the breakfast-making noises (also, shrieking and a little fighting)  i heard calah say, "this is going to be the best birthday ever!"

the last couple months she has been excited getting presents for other people, and it's been fun to see her be excited about other people's celebrations and feelings.  *sniff* my baby is growing up!

i got blueberry pancakes, bacon and fruit salad for breakfast, and flowers and cards from mike & the girls.

yes, the best birthday ever, for sure.

ah, it's good to be back. it's been awhile, and i have so many excuses.  working nights takes it out of you...i've been tired, busy, lazy, depressed (and thinking about how i've been neglecting my blog makes me feel more depressed, and i spiral downward until i'm a puddle of blubber on the floor, unable to do anything)

i have been doing some stuff, though. we're preparing to start another year of homeschooling, a sort of hybrid kindergarten/1st grade. i have completed my, i mean calah's charts and work box system, and i'm pretty excited about it. i love charts...it seems calah does too. (that makes me reasonably sure that sariah will hate charts and i'll have to think up a whole new way :eye roll:)

i used magazine holders i covered with contact paper and then printed the chart i made on cardstock.

here is cal's "job" chart: 

so, whether it's a combination of the sunshine, medication, rest, weight loss, whatever, i've been feeling better lately than in i don't know how long, so i figured it was time to get back to the blog. we'll see how long it lasts. :)

today, it's officially over. i got a refund on the fee i paid to the adoption agency about 3 years ago.

after we sold our house in wisconsin, i immediatly took some of the money and sent in an application to the adoption agency. i was so sure we would have a little one from ethiopia in no time! then we started the homestudy process.

that was our first snag. mike has a felony on his record, and that became a big problem in a hurry.

we finally semi-worked through that (enough to move on, anyways) and had an appointment to get our fingerprints taken. that's when we hit snag #2.

not a snag, exactly. we found out i was pregnant with sariah. the adoption agency we were working with would not allow us to proceed with the process until the baby was born and 1 year old.

when i contacted the homestudy agency to tell them i was pregnant, i was left with the impression that they were not interested in working with us any longer.

so, sariah turned a year in november, and i was kind of hopeful to revive the whole adoption process again.

then, recently, i got a note from the case manager from our adoption agency wanting to close our case. since we never completed a home study, we get a refund of (one third of) the fee we paid. i got the check in the mail today.

this very closely describes how i'm feeling right now:

"Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want

Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do"

It's from a They Might be Giants song.  What can i say, sometimes things just pop into my head.