"Murphy" moved into our extra bedroom.

Let's begin with closing...
April 30th, closed on our new house  Happy times!
May 3rd and 4th... Aaron's parents came down to see the new house and help us move in.

May 5th. Saturday. Aaron leaves at 6am for FL for another fire detail. Will be gone 16 days.
Around 3pm realized that even after turning our fridge on high, it was just not getting our  food as cold as usual.  The freezer part of our fridge had died a month or so before. 
Go to Lowes with 5 kids in tow to look at fridges and realize once I get there, that dummy me forgot to measure to see what size fridge we could handle.
Almost cry at Lowes, decide to just go get pizza for supper and go home. 
After supper, Hannah comes downstairs and says "Mom, the ceiling in the boys' room is on the floor!"
WHAT!!!
So I run upstairs, and sure enough, a 4ftx4ft hole in the ceiling, water dripping from a pipe in the ceiling, soaking wet insulation everywhere.  I got our elderly neighbor, who happens to be a retired plumber/electrician, etc to come over and see what happened. He figured out that the AC duct that was held up by tape, finally fell and broke the pvc pipe that was to collect the condensation from the AC and channel it outside had broken.  So I turned the AC off upstairs and cleaned up most of the mess. Tried to soak the water out of the new carpets and turned a fan on it.

Thankfully, our wonderful neighbor said he could get it fixed before Aaron gets home.  Here are some after pictures. He put in two access holes that weren't there before so we can look at that area without having to crawl from the other end of the attic. He also put the texture back on the ceiling.

May 8th Tuesday  Came home from work.  Was standing in the kitchen and realized that I was standing in water.  Water from our kitchen sink, which was draining incredibly slowly, had somehow gotten into our dishwasher, which we have never used, and leaked out on the floor. 
Cleaned up the mess and tell Mom not to wash dishes tomorrow and  not use the kitchen sink.
Started a new job on and had to go to orientation Monday through Friday of this week.
May 15 Tuesday...
Gave the boys a bath in the morning.  Realized 20 min. after taking out the bathtub drain that the tub had more water in it, not less.  And the toilet was bubbling.  Called Mr. Rooter.  The diagnosis of this problem took 48 hours and 3 trips to our house.  Finally on Thursday afternoon, after our wonderful neighbor rented a huge saw and cut chunks of cement our of our sidewalk to find the pipe leaving the house...we realized that #1 the pipe runs diagnally under our sidewalk #2 it is full of roots and has to be replaced asap #3 our septic tank is also full and has to be drained. here are some pictures of that miserable 48 hours.

Our neighbor wants to check on our AC downstairs on Friday.  May 18.  So he goes down and notices that there is about 1 inch of water pooled in a section of our basement. He thinks that it is the hot water heater, but I figure out that it is this thing connected to the AC that collects condensation and then shoots it outside through a tube.  I only figured it out because it was barely leaking before Aaron left town and he had a replacement that we were going to pay a friend to replace for us.  So yesterday I was downstairs with a snow shovel and wheelbarrow scooping up water.  Thankfully, our great neighbor got it fixed also.
Didn't think to get pictures of that.
Also, the sink in the girls bathroom wont turn on and the toilet won't stop running, but that can wait. 
So, Monday our front yard will be churned up and a wreck from the backhoe.
And this house that we thought was movein ready two weeks ago has already cost us an extra $3300.
Did I mention that my husband has been out of town this whole time and as I am typing this, still does not know about the hole in the ceiling... i wanted to spare him the worry while he was gone. Add to that the new job last week. 
Still have a lot of stuff to move in our rental house...

At least someone at our house doesn't have a care in the world,
Then I woke up this morning and looked outside.  And there was some type of creature lying on our sidewalk.  I went out to inspect and it was a dead chicken.  I didn't realize that there were even chickens around here.  And I really have trouble believing that our dog killed it since she is the biggest wimp ever.  She is scared of puppies and kittens.

Kids are enjoying the sidewalk. Unfortunately it will be a pile of rubble on Monday.

MOVING!

We have had such a busy day.  First of all, I really miss the boys because they have been at Mom's the last two nights and probably will stay until Friday night.  We have been packing and running errands the last two days with half the seats out of the van.  It is so much easier to do this without a 18month old and 2 1/2 year old under foot. Plus, it is just plain dangerous, with all the backing up of vehicles, carrying out of heavy boxes door opening and closing etc.
So, this morning we got up around 7am.  After packing the backs of both the van and the Montero, Aaron, the girls, and I headed to Decatur. First we drove straight to a brake place because I just noticed yesterday, while driving through a drive thru with the window open, that the van's brakes were squeaking AWFUL.  
We dropped off the van, then drove to Target where we looked for curtain rods for our large windows downstairs.  Right now I am planning on just hanging some old curtains up or even some sheets since I don't want people to be able to see in.  Eventually, I will, gulp, attempt to decorate.   Maybe me and Natalie (taking a sewing class) and Mom can whip out some curtains.  Just the necessities right now.  Even the necessities are expensive.
Then, since we were down to one car, the girls and I dropped Aaron off at the doctor office to get his shots for his Ethiopia trip next month. 
We stopped by our realtor's office to sign some things forgotten at closing.
Then we headed to the JCPenny outlet to see if they had curtain rods we wanted. Well, they didn't even have curtain rods. 
By this point we were starving, so we ordered Papa John's pizza (Hannah had some in TN and fell in love with the garlic sauce).  By the time we drove back to get the pizza it was done cooking. Aaron hadn't called yet to say he was done, so I sent the girls to the car to get the drinks I brought so we could just eat in the restaurant.  But as we were fixing to go sit down, Aaron called and said he was done.
Back out to the car without eating, picked up Aaron, then drove to a picnic spot and ate lunch.  Papa Johns has not changed since I was in college. My roommate and I would order it all the time and split the pizza, because it was cheap. 
After eating, we went to Home Depot and finally got the curtain rods we wanted. 
We then drove back to the Brake place to see if the van was done.  It was, so Aaron and Hannah headed to the new house to unload the Montero.  Madelyn, Natalie, and I went and had the water turned on in our name at the new house. 
By then it was Happy Hour at Sonic, so we all got drinks.  Went to the new house, unloaded the van, came home and were exhausted.
After resting about 30 min. Madelyn and I went to the store, got some food for Mom to make for the boys, then dropped it off and came home.
We have spent the rest of the evening packing and still not done.  Aaron is picking up the moving truck tomorrow evening after his work. 
I will be so glad when we are done and hope to not move again for many years.

We Closed On Our House!

So, we have had our closing scheduled for the 30th for a few weeks. We waited until then because Aaron was getting his big paycheck from the fire he went on a few weeks ago and we knew we would have enough for the down payment and all other fees at that point.
Friday afternoon around 3, the lawyer calls and says that he wanted to make sure we knew about this indemity bond? I think that is what he called it.
Anyway, this is how I understood it. We bought a foreclosure.  We are borrowing about $10,000 more than what the previous owner owed on the property. Because of that we needed this bond.  Too confusing to explain more.  The main point is that this bond was going to cost us an additional $1600 at closing!  What!!!??
So our realtor spent all weekend working with the selling bank and we finally came up with a deal. But what a wrench in the plans. And we still had to pay half.
I took all 5 kids to the bank last week to get our bank statement printed out and stamped for our loan.  Well after 15 min. of sitting there with a loan officer that didn't understand her printer and probably printed out about 10 copies of various things, we finally left.
I took it home, scanned it to the mortgage company, and it wasn't good enough.  Plus we needed to wait until Monday so Aaron's last paycheck would show up.
So I took all the kids again yesterday, worked with a different lady and she printed up our bank statement many different ways, but for some reason, because Aaron's paycheck hadn't been in there long, and it was still pending, her computer would not print the one part we needed...Aaron's last check.  UGH!  She did print me a page showing our total balance which was enough to cover closing. I emailed it to the mortgage company....Still not enough.
By this time it was around noon and we were closing in 3 hours.. I had been to the bank twice and I really doubted that this bank would give me anything different the 3rd time.
On a side note, while waiting in line for my cashiers' check the teller at the drive thru asked the customer in the car if she had a nickel because she didn't have change! the bank doesn't have a nickel change? I thought that was funny.
Finally, I printed off my account page from my computer (why cant the bank pull up the same thing I can, I don't know) and was going to drive it to the bank and get them to sign it.  We also printed off Aaron's pay stub.  Emailed both of these things to the mortgage company and they finally said that would due.
Mom watched all the kids, so Aaron and I put the seats down in the Montero and filled it with boxes since we were planning on going straight to the house.  Unloaded that, came home, took the boys to Mom's to spend the night and filled up the jeep, borrowed trailer, and the van with boxes and took another load. 
This morning I have to do some more HR stuff at the new hospital I am working at, then back home again and probably packing more.  We will probably rent a UHaul Friday and finish it all off then. 
And this house has 3 bathrooms.  33333333
Not 1 like we have been using for the last 6 months!  No more doing the potty dance in the hallway waiting for someone to get done.
We still have about 2 weeks worth of school left, so we are skipping this week. I guess this will be our Spring break because I think if I tried to do school this week, I would go crazy!  So we will start back next week.  Then be done for a while!!!!