Our engineering firm we hired for the survey and a long laundry list of items I didn't understand but still wrote a check for, called today with the good word that our approval came back from the DEP! Amen. 

I'm still in a consistent state of confusion on who all is doing what.  There's two different "engineering firms'  One seemed to have handled our survey, plotting the points, laying out the subdivision for us.  The other, I believe took care of designing our sand mound, the placement, and other assorted things I'm not aware of?  As you're reading this, I hope that you're envisioning me shrugging my shoulders with a look of utter dumbfoundness on my face.  As stated before, consistent state of confusion.  

From here, we'll take our papers from the first engineering firm, get signatures from us along with the current landowners and get it notarized.  That will then go to the Planning Commission for approval.  These two things I know for certain because thats what the engineer man told me today.  Yes, I use very technically terminology.  At this point, at 10 pm on Wednesday evening, my plan is to go to work tomorrow morning, leave at approximately 9am and head to the firm.  Pick up the paperwork, meet my husband and the landowners at the notary office.  Sign, notarized, bam.  Straight to the Planning Commission.  Let's all have a moment of silence in the hopes that this part of the process isn't crazy long. 

Past the stage of approval from the Planning Commission, we'll get our parcel number, deed etc.  And, praise little baby Jesus, once we have that we'll get to close on our loan.  Have mercy, it feels like sort of a finish line.  I suppose though, its nowhere near is it?  It's only the beginning.  

Goodbye Farmhouse

As of today, our beloved farmhouse is finally sold.  It seems like it took an eternity.  We started talking to the new owners back in the Fall of 2017. 

It's a fairly amusing story actually. 

Last year, 2017 I'd say that my husband felt the itch.  I'm not sure what the motivation was or how it began. He started browsing real estate websites, sending me links.  In fact, I went to see one of the houses he sent me almost a year ago now. 

At some point, he reached out to one of his cousins who had previously mentioned if we'd ever want to sell, he'd be interested. Turns out this cousin had moved out of state but told us to call his brother.  Steve apparently did. Because one Sunday afternoon, while my husband napped on the couch in his underwear and I was busy doing dishes or laundry or something equally unflattering, this cousin showed up.  On our porch.  To see the house.  At this point in the story, its important to note that I thought the house talk was still just that.  Talk.  And now, here was this young couple I had never met, standing on my front porch, asking to see my house.  To buy my house.  I quite literally closed the door on them, rudely woke up Steve and stormed upstairs to put on a bra.  I left that poor couple standing on the porch not knowing if I was coming back to let them in or not.  Steve eventually put pants on, let them in and showed them the barn while I continued the dishes, laundry, whatever it was.  I pretty much stayed away.  I wasn't happy.  I thought the talk of moving would pass.   At some point I did feel guilty and walked down to the barn and asked the young woman if she'd like to see the house.  That would her domain after all. 

It wouldn't be until April that we'd finally give them that call and say we were ready, we were really going to sell.  When we finally got the word that we could move forward with purchasing our dream property, we immediately called the young couple and gave them notice. 

The closing date for our house continued to get bounced around despite two months notice.  We all agreed we wanted to close by June 1st.  That did not happen.  We didn't close the 7th or the 14th either.  It took all the way til the 22nd to close.  Goodness, what headaches.  For us it was annoying.  But for that young couple, I did feel terrible at times for what hoops they seemed to need to jump through.  Thankfully its finally all done and over with.  I cried.  Heck, I'm still occasionally crying.  When I think of Charlie's height measurements on the kitchen wall or bringing her home from the hospital.  How beautifully my husband crafted each room to match my vision.  I loved that house.  I hope that the new owners appreciate the blood and sweat and love put into that home. 

Charlie turns 4!

Charlie turned FOUR on a Monday.  I'm in a mix of disbelief that this little girl is four already.  That she uses better sentence structure than most adults I know.  She's obsessed with Barbie and horses.  Loves pink, purple and anything that is frilly or girly.  She is most definitely not a morning person and would prefer to stay up late with her mama.  Although once she does go to bed, she still is an excellent sleeper.   Though this age has brought some of her first nightmares, causing some middle of the night wake ups for us.  They seem to be few and far between about fairly simple things such as bears under her bed.  Charlie can count to ten when she wants to, knows her colors and is getting pretty good at her ABCs.  At the age of four we are finally over the major potty training hurdle! Hooray! 

We aren't a family that gathers during the week so we decided to keep it simple with just the three of us going to the local "zoo."  We're also not the family that seeks out the perfect photo opportunity.  Mama is, but child and husband doesn't concern themselves with such matters.  So I present to you my basic iPhone photos.

On Friday, we had family over for some pizza, cake and presents.  It was low key and the perfect end to the week. I imagine as my little gets older we'll need to go a bit bigger on the birthday parties but for now this works.  Especially since we're camping out in the rental house chuck full of all our stuff AND the rental unit items. 

Day 7

Blame it on Pinterest.  No, that's not fair.  Blame it on my learner's brain, the constant need to research, dissect, investigate everything aspect of something.  I stumbled upon a blog a woman had wrote about building their home.  She marked posts by how many days into the project they were.  I found this fascinating and extremely useful in my, "how long is this going to take," category of research.

I mark this as Day 7 because we have been living in our rental house for exactly one week.  Its a bit of a stretch to call it a rental.  We are extremely fortunate that my Grandfather's brother had a house sitting empty in town.  He's allowing us to live in the home, rent free and sending him the money for the utilities.  Even more fortunate, its a rather large home, enough room that we were able to store all of our belongs in the basement, throughout the house rather than need a storage unit.  It's about as ideal as it can get. 

So as of day 7;
- Our first home is prepared for sale.  We have a buyer, a sales agreement and we're hoping to close within the next week. 
- Our new construction loan is in process and we should close on June 25th

There's so much more than just that.  Much more than I had anticipated to build a house.  But first, how did we get here? Most people were shocked when we said we were leaving our beloved farmhouse. We bought our first home in November 2011.  It was love at first sight.  Perhaps love at what it could become would be a better term.  An old farmhouse with almost 10 acres of ground in our price range was certainly hitting the jack pot in our opinion.  Steve could walk in every room of the house.  Even mostly able to stand in the basement.  We poured so much love, sweat and equity into that home.  You can see our last big project in previous posts.  However, in the back of our heads, it had always been a dream to build something of our own.  We had reached the point with our farmhouse that we either finished our projects entirely and stayed or sell and give someone else the opportunity to increase the equity.  We would mildly browse real estate websites.  There was never something that caught our eye enough to give up what we had.  Until one Sunday drive, sometime around February I think, we wound up in the driveway of a family friend.  They farmed and Steve had worked for them while in high school.  It was a visit that was meant to happen as it turns out.  When we asked if they'd ever be willing to sell a few acres, their response was that it just so happens they had been discussing that very thing a few weeks ago.

So here we are, a few months later, awaiting closing dates, permits and all the other specifics to get the Big Project started. 

And what the future holds looks so bright.

Views from our future front porch

Potty Training

There is no fancy title that can be thrown to the subject of Potty Training.  It's merely what it is.  Although, as a parent I could toss some serious sarcasm towards the efforts that is teaching a mini human how to use the toilet.  Stressful, frustrating, flat out annoying doesn't even begin to cover the emotions that come out from both parent and child during the process.

Disclaimer, I do not know what its like to potty train a child as a stay at home mom.  So all my opinions here are based on what I experience and what I imagine are some stark differences between a working mom and a stay at home mom. 

As with everything about child rearing, every parent has an opinion, a method or trick.  What I came to find was it was really rare to find a parent that just said, "it sucks."  So I'm here today to say. It sucks. You can use whatever method you think will work.  You can try six or seven different tricks.  Bribing, begging and black mailing are not off limits.  All that said.  The child, this little mini version of you, will not do it unless she or he is ready.  Mind blowing, isn't it? The power rests in a small person who can't possibly decide between the strawberry or blueberry pop tart at 10 minutes past the time you needed to leave to be at work on time. 

As a control freak, this was my largest obstacle.  I was ready to potty train.  Heck, everybody around us was ready to potty train.  To the point that despite my general urging not to, some took it upon themselves to begin training when Charlie was in their care.  Here's where I envy the stay at home mom's.  While I'm so grateful to the "village" of friends, family and our daycare for caring for Charlie when we cannot, its hard to give up parenting control.  For a working mom, it makes it a tad difficult.  As said before, it just sucks.  Because potty training was introduced, in my opinion, too early we dealt with a lot of confusion on the subject.  She would pee on the potty just fine for a few weeks, then revert back to diapers/pullups.  There was months of this, with little to no pooping on the potty. 

I have to admit, because there was so much back and forth with her decision, I eventually stopped keeping track.  In fact, my method at this point, around the age of 3,  I just did whatever she asked.  I was tired of methods, tricks, the scorn of other parents because she wasn't trained yet.  I merely just didn't care at that point.  If she asked to go, I would take her.  I'd occasionally ask her if she had to go.  But I let her lead.  And I conveyed this thought process to all involved with her daily care.  Eventually she was consistently peeing on the potty at the age of 3 1/2 with occasional poops on the potty.  There were a few weeks that she refused to poop at all, terrified to go on the potty.  That wasn't pleasant for all involved.  Now we're one day away from the age of 4 and she is strictly, fully potty trained. 

Looking back, I wish I had stood firm in my decision to go with the flow.  I didn't honestly feel the pressures of potty training from myself as much as from other parents and family.  When I started listening to them and not to the one who was ultimately going to decide, thats when it went down hill.