Tired Mama

I am such a tired Mama. I almost didn't write tonight because I feel like I am just going to be complaining. So, real quick I will just tell you that this whole moving thing really sucks and I am getting way too old for it. So, I will say in a very loving tone to my dear sweet realtor husband that this is it. This is the last move for a long time. I just don't have the energy that I had the first three houses we flipped together. We are a great team, there is no doubt about that. We can make something really undesirable and ugly-beautiful, and we have had fun....but, My Love, This is the last. I will give it another 100% but I am telling you: I am tired. The next time if there is one, we will hire movers who will pack up our house and unpack for us and I will just sit and watch. Ahhhhh... okay, so I vented. Now on to the good stuff! We had our last garage sale today and sold most of our furniture we know we won't need. We added all proceeds to the "sectional fund" we will be purchasing when we find a house. We are closer. We put an offer on a house a few days ago. A "short sale" in a fabulous neighborhood on a little over a half acre! Yes, it is a huge, huge lot and ideal for raising kids. Our dogs would be in heaven, and I could have my chicken coop I have always dreamed of! Fresh eggs....totally dreamy! Anyway, please pray for us. This house is a mess on so many levels. 11 agents walked it the day we did. Walking it was a production in itself. The man who owns the home is an odd one. He has 11 dogs, and they live in the house with him. Just him, and he was a bit strange to put it nicely. In order to walk it we had to have his agent call him to warn him "We were approaching the property" so he could move the 11 dogs around so it was safe for us to go from room to room. The house had an overwhelming smell of vinegar. It was really hard to be in the house. It is just a smell, and I know re finishing the wood floors, and primer and paint would take care of it... but that wasn't all. He was the hoarding type. Things were randomly propped in front of closets and doors and windows and really not a lot of room to see around things and get a great feel for the rooms...but we could tell it had good bones, it just needed our love! Yes, we might be slightly crazy that we put a bid in, not expecting to get picked out of all the offers that we competed with. We met this man, and he chose us. He wanted our family to live in the house. We found out late today that the contract will go to the bank with our escrow money and we have to wait now "90 days" for bank approval since this house we are buying is a short sale. If the bank turns down our offer then we are back to square one again. If they accept our offer we will be sitting on a pretty lot in a great area with a 1800 sf home that needs a lot of love and care throughout the years. This is a great investment. The neighbor homes are selling for 200-500K more then this house we are buying(and in Texas that is a lot)! It is a great investment!

Moving day is in 4 days!

GoodBye Casa

Another house gone. We are terminating our contract today on the house with the pool we were moving forward with. My husband was concerned that the temperature of the pool seemed to be worse or as bad as our Texas heat outside, warm bath water is what he said it felt like(yuk). Not going to cool us off at all...so was not worth a house with a pool in full sun. So, back to square one. We will focus on packing up again and moving into storage on June 29th. Staying with my mother in law until we find JUST the right house for us is exactly what we plan to do. Just right needs to fit our criteria of:

A one Story House
Small, easy to take care of
3-4 bedrooms, most likely 3
Pool a plus, or a large yard where we could build one in the future (with CASH)
Must not exceed our 60K mortgage max as we are paying most of house with CASH and will pay off house ASAP!
Big usable yard for kids and dogs
CLOSET space, praying for 2 closets in a master bedroom

On to packing!

Necesito Yoga

I need yoga today more then any other day ever. Oh, I wish I had time to go! Pack, pack, and pack. I dropped two of our three kids off at Grandmas today so that my middle daughter could help me pack. I am cooking lunch and she is in her room watching TV. Hmmm? Hopefully gears will change after I re-charge.  Well, somehow our closing keeps moving up. Now we close ON moving day the 29th of June! Anxiety is high, I am still having trouble packing up. SLOWLY our house is going into boxes, very VERY slowly. My husband is working harder then ever this week. Did I mention he is a Realtor? He has 6 closings this month including our two. Yes, you read that right! We put an offer on the reduced house with the pool. Inspections will start tomorrow. If all goes well we will close on that house mid June which puts us at Grandmas house for ONLY 17 days (wow-so cool).  The house is a great deal smaller then what we are moving out of, but not as small as planned so we are feeling pretty giddy about having a one story 1959 sf home with 3 living areas! We still need to massively de-clutter and plan to have one more garage sale this next Friday! The house is not our style completely but it is move in ready with a few late nights of fresh paint on the walls. We will then make a priority list with all the hopes and dreams for the house and SAVE UP for them a little every month with our main focus being on creating a 6 MONTH'S of living emergency fund. When we meet that number we will begin knocking out a few weekend projects here and there. We are using all the garage sale money for a new sectional that we plan to spend a lot of time on in the main living area. This will help motivate me to get more stuff out in the yard next week! Well...we fell off of our plan of waiting to close before we submitted an offer....but we feel like we are making the right decision. The main thing is: WE will have both cars paid off in a few weeks, all medical and credit card debt paid off, we will have 2 months of our 6 months living emergency savings started, and we will be saving a ton of money each month on bills! So we are feeling pretty good right now. We are saying prayers that all inspections go well next week, and that this house will work our for our family.

Paralyzed Envasador

I am officially The Paralyzed Packer. I go to touch a box and look around and can't pack. I am getting distracted by the three kids being home wanting to go to The Soda Gallery (a promised outing for being good yesterday when the girls got their haircuts). I have packed one little box of books off the bookshelf today(omg). I am hoping we can put the Soda Gallery off till tomorrow, and just maybe... today can be productive? The buyers want to close on this house a day early(scream). We do in fact have our eye on a little house with a pool very close by. They just reduced the house 10K, and now it is looking very appealing. We will just wait. and watch. and see. and if it is still there on the 30th after funds hit the bank on this house we will most likely make an offer.

Cranky Mama

I confess, I am not a whole lot of fun to be around at the moment. 14 days to pack up the entire house and nobody is helping me pack! I caved and hired a two men movers and a truck to load up our boxes and bring to storage though. I shopped around and found a great deal for $450.00.  I turn 40 in August and my muscles aren't working as good as they were 10 years ago and I am married to a busy man who I love more then anything in the world, but I'm sorry to say I can not rely on for "being punctual".  So on June 29th, 2011 I know that all of our belongs will go to a storage unit down the road and this... makes me happy knowing there is an end to this part of our journey.

On to packing!

Adios Debt

Part of deciding to sell our house was so that we could be closer to being 100% debt free.  Debt free meaning: ZERO car payments, ZERO credit card balances, ZERO medical bills, ZERO mortgage. Please understand that this was an extremely difficult decision to make when we have a family of five + two huge 100 lb dogs, and we are all very comfortable in our lifestyle. We live in a tri-level house with 4 spacious bedrooms, three bathrooms and 4 living spaces. Change seems scary. I will say that three weeks in to Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University classes, we knew that we were making the right choice. It still is hard...to let go of  the "Mom control", the not knowing where we will be next, the having everything in it's place and in a few weeks it will be in storage, the comfort of knowing we have a home that we won't have soon. We will be moving out on the 30th of this month and closing on July 1st. As soon as funds clear the bank we will be paying off all debt with our large amount of equity and we will officially be DEBT FREE. We will begin our home search again on July 1st. We have stopped looking realizing we have much more negotiating leverage being cash buyers + we don't want to get emotionally attached to another house and make impulsive decisions. So, we just wait now. And begin packing soon. Time will tell if we find a house we can pay for in all cash or if we will have a small mortgage? We do not want to go over 60K(but that would be our only debt). We can chip away at that pretty fast, but the lower the mortgage the closer we will be to financial freedom and we will begin saving for the 3 kids to go to college, for us to retire and budget for a few special vacations a year. This is also about simplifying as I mentioned in my first post and simply disregarding all the unnecessary fluff in life that has no importance or meaning in shaping our kids character. A home is shelter, a happy place where memories are made and our belongings are kept. Does it have to be big? The happiest times of my life were after we started our family and lived in a small space. There is something about small spaces that challenge us to live smart and live with less. We are weirdly excited about this adventure and finding Casa Not So Grande soon. This journey will be difficult for us to all let go of things and our attachment to material objects...but I know once we do, we will feel more free. This is a process and I am sure it will be emotional. Thanks for walking with us on our journey.

Garaje Sale

What a long HOT Texas day it was to have a Garage sale.  I am exhausted. Kudos to the two older kids (ten and eight) for pulling their weight and taking charge. They both earned their pay today!  And it was fun to find out that we actually have two pretty savvy negotiators with great sales skills. I left it all up to the kids, we let them price things, they handled all the money, did all the work... AND we made $450. Hard work pays off. It was a teachable moment. I loved that our son decided to GIVE his ridiculously massive Pokemon collection that he has just outgrown to our friends younger boys down the street. His sweet heart is always working. He is walking the walk, and I could not be more proud to be his Mom.

We looked at a house today.
We move out of ours if all goes as planned on June 30th.
Closing on July 1st.

We are trying to stay focused and keep on track of exactly why we set out to go on this adventure in the first place. The house we saw today had a lot of really great qualities; a pool(!), a backyard where we could put a trampoline, a perfect spot for a skateboarding ramp, a basketball court, and I could even get chickens(!). The actual house fits our criteria for a one story and is teeny-tiny, which is what we are looking for. It could be (?) our Casa Not So Grande @ 1506 sf.

This journey for us is about simplifying our lives and finding peace in the memories, moments and cherishing the time we have left with our kids while they are young. Time will tell, but we do feel one step closer to finding Casa Not So Grande. 

El Plan Collapsed

We lost the house.
Gone.
Another buyer came in at full price with no contingency.

My immediate reaction was complete sadness. It really took me back, and after talking it through with my husband I realized that my sadness was more out of "our plan" collapsing. Why is it as Moms we feel such a need for control. This is all part of our adventure, part of growth, part of me trusting God that He has a plan and that we need to just sit back and have faith.

A few things that came out of this that will help us with our next home purchase:
1. We know we can live in 1488 sf with a huge lot
2. We want a huge lot, and hope to find one
3. A pool is a plus but not a necessity
4. We are trying to finance $0-60K on our next purchase
5. We may have to sit back and wait for the right house and live with my husbands Mom for a bit
6. I love one story homes

I am totally okay!
Maybe relieved because I knew my husband had a restful night sleep last night.... maybe this is good that the house is gone. There will be another one. This IS just the beginning of our adventure to find the perfect Casa Not So Grande.

Mariposas

Today our ten year old son participated in a crossing over to middle school ceremony where they released butterflies. Butterflies symbolize change. In some cultures the butterfly is considered to bring luck.  For Christians, it is considered a soulful symbol representing rebirth and a new beginning. Watching all the butterflies flying up above our heads I thought about our family and the transformations we are going through right now. I am saying prayers that our house sale closes as planned July 1st and that we will begin our relationship with Casa Not So Grande which I can not wait to tell you more about as soon as we know we can call it home!

Here is my To-Do List for today: Garage Sale tomorrow @ 7am

Go through all 3 kids closets for garage sale items outgrown
Go through Game Closet, donate 3/4 of toys/games to garage sale
Go through bathroom closets for old towels, blankets, products that never gets used
Go through kitchen for any kitchen things we never use for garage sale
Clean out my massive walk in closet and donate 3/4 of clothing to garage sale
Make sure my husband does the same with his closet
Go through and box up my art studio stuff for garage sale saving one small box of tools
Begin tagging a few big items for garage sale
Try to organize it all the best I can, or not

Besides the fact that my husband is working all day tomorrow and I am flying solo with our garage sale, I am really looking forward to waking up Sunday morning and having this behind us. I have no expectations about how much we will sell, but I do know that whatever $ we make will be going towards some minor changes that must be made over at Casa Not So Grande before we can move in. We plan to have one more huge sale before we move out because we will be downsizing to a teeny-tiny 1488 sf.  The important thing to know is that Casa Not So Grande sits on over a half an acre... and that is what makes it SO desirable to us. Do you think we are crazy yet?

La Project

Life got too messy. There was too much to clean, too much to keep up with, too much to pay off, too much to organize, and so here we are : Simplifying life, stripping toxins and starting a new beginning. It's funny how...when you don't know what it is like to have it all, you think the answers are all in that. But then when you do have it all; the nice cars, the big house, the stuff to fit in every nook and cranny of the house: the plastic toys, the gadgets, Apple TV, X-Box, playstation(s), wii(s), iPad(s), Mac(s), camera(s), tivo, premium cable, wireless this, wireless that, His and Her walk-in closets, jetted bathtubs, an insta-hot. Really? Is it that hard to boil water? Sadly I can go on and on and on, and it just makes me want to puke thinking about all of this crap and why we justify we need it to survive. The worst part is... that our kids expect it all and want more and more and more and more and have become spoiled, and ungrateful and greedy. Gag-me please! We are fed up with being caught up; "hamsters on a wheel" as my husband says, and have decided to make a big change. This is the beginning of La Project and how Casa Not So Grande was born. I won't go in to details on how much our car payments are, or how much debt we have. But I will tell you in 30 days we will be free.  We are about to begin a new chapter in life which will allow for more time creating memories with our children and less time buying "stuff" . We are creating a new meaning of family values that most people might perceive as crazy. Maybe we are crazy? Maybe we're smart? You decide. You are welcome to join us on our journey by following this project.