Making room for LIFE

The past few blogs I've written, included words such as "hectic", "busy" or "crazy", which has prompted me to blog about a recent sermon series that has started at my church. For the past two weeks, and another week to come, our pastor has discussed how important it is for people to not cram so much into their lives that they barely have time to do normal every day tasks. I have been trying to make my life less busy. Of course there are some things that I just cannot change (ie. the house situation - but once we close on the house, we won't have that craziness anymore. Well, just the craziness of unpacking. But once that is all over, and we're settled in.... there are no more excuses!)

Owen started preschool about two weeks ago and he is LOVING it! I don't know who loves it more, Owen, or myself. They have this drop off system where the moms line up in their cars and drop their kids off at the front door. It's great because Owen unbuckles himself and when the teacher comes to his door, he gets a huge smile on his face, grabs his back pack and hops out. Sometimes he's so excited that he forgets to wave goodbye to me! This is SUCH a relief because last year was anything but joyous. He would kick and scream and cry, and the teachers would have to pry his arms off of me. It was a nightmare. I felt like the worst mom in the world every single day when I left him (which was only 2 days a week, but it was torture for both of us) So that was the reason why I took him out of preschool last year. This year is just amazing. He goes four days a week, but always says "I wish I went to school every day!"

We thought that once everything settled down, we would sign Owen up for hockey because he is obsessed! I can't wait to see him out there on the ice in his hockey gear.... so cute!

I see your promises, promises

I promise I will get better at updating this at least once a week now that Owen goes back to school on Tuesday. There has been a lot going on here (when isn't there, right?) To our great disapproval we haven't moved into our new house here yet. That is a LONG story that I most certainly do not feel like getting into right now, but it looks like we will close on the house by the end of September, or early October. It's ironic because we closed on our house in NY in October of 2007. Speaking of, our house in NY didn't sell - which complicated the whole house buying issue here even more. We took our house off the market after our contract expired after five months. Several people were interested in the house, but nothing concrete ever surfaced. We felt like we would have been taking a huge hit if we had sold it, after all of the upgrades we had done to it, and the sale price which would have been what we paid for it three years ago if we were lucky, or less.

You're probably wondering how we pulled this off. Well, a couple circumstances were in our favor and we were able to rent it out to Navy nukes stationed nearby for training (the same site Brian was at almost 8 years ago when I met him). We plan on doing that for however long it takes for the real estate market to pick back up, and then sell it. Meanwhile, we're buying another house here! We are in love with this house. It is absolutely perfect for us. It has everything we were looking for and here's the best part.... it's 10k less than what we paid for our house in NY and it has SO much more than our house in NY has. Unbelievable.

We feel so blessed to have found such a wonderful city to call home. Not only is the cost of living lower here, but the quality of life is so much greater than in NY. Great schools, great hospitals, low taxes, more for your money house-wise, low home prices, friendly people, great churches.... I could go on and on. We are confident that we made the right decision in moving to Fort Wayne, Indiana. The move has been tough, and things haven't gone smoothly the whole time we have been trying to settle in here, but nothing worth it is ever 100% easy. We have learned a lot about ourselves, our family, people in general and our faith. We miss our family in friends a LOT, but look forward to seeing them whenever they can make it out here, or we can head over there.