I'm starting to see a pattern here

OK, so you tell me if you can see the pattern, too. Here is a list of all of the neighborhoods we have/will have lived in:

1. Great Oaks
2. Standing Oak
3. Spring Oaks

Hmmmm... I'm not sure why we keep buying houses in these "tree" neighborhoods considering neither of us enjoy raking up all the leaves that come along with them. Luckily, our new house has NO TREES in the yard. We do have woods behind our house, but other than that, there are absolutely no trees in our yard. Yeah!!!! Here's to throwing out all of our rakes! :)

One week to go!

We should be in the home stretch now. We haven't heard anything different, so we should be all set to close on our new house next week. Holy Cow. I can hardly believe it myself. I've never been so excited in my life to clean and paint a house as I am right now. Jacob is getting really excited, too. That's a relief. He doesn't really seem too fazed by switching schools yet, but we'll see how it goes as we get closer. Luckily, we still have about two months left before we have to actually cross that bridge.

My birthday was GREAT! Our dinner was awesome. It wasn't as nice as Yamato's back in Midlothian, but it was still really yummy and a lot of fun. We're definitely going back. And SOON!!! :) Dylan did a great job with the shopping, but he went a little overboard. You would have thought it was Christmas around here, but you're not going to hear me complain. OK, so I complained when I looked at the bank account after he was done spending, but what do you expect? At least he used the coupons I gave him. Yes, that's right - I sent my husband with coupons when he went out to do my birthday shopping. Would you expect anything different from me? Oh, and one of the items he bought came with a free gift card which he was able to use on another gift. That news was almost better than the gifts themselves. :)


All my birthday loot.


I would like to say that it took a lot of convincing to get me to wear this hat. Yes, I would like to say that, but I can't.


Me and the boys. Daniel stole my hat!!! :)


Me, Jacob and Will at dinner.


Dylan & Daniel at dinner. Too cute.


My cake that my loving husband made for me. Jacob picked out the candles. If you look closely, you can see that the flames on the candles are different colors.

All this math gives me a headache...

So... our contract was accepted and we got through the home inspection with flying colors. Yeah!!!! I wish I could say the same about the current interest rates. Ugh... We are scheduled to close three weeks from tomorrow and as of right now, we are less than pleased (to say the least) with our current interest rate. Best case scenario: the rates go down in time for us to re-lock before closing. OK scenario: the rates go down before we close, but we may have to postpone closing for a week. Worst scenario: the rates don't go down until long after we close and we have to refinance sometime within the next year or so. And with all of these scenarios, we still get to buy a house. And that makes me happy. :)

I give up!

I keep waiting to update the family blog for a time when I can upload all the pictures, but that just is not happening and it has been far too long. So, the pictures will just have to come later...

Let's see, things are truckin' right along here in Lynchburg. We've been driving around trying to pick out a few good neighborhoods so that we can look out for houses when they go up for sale. So far, we have found quite a few good prospects. Most of them are older neighborhoods, but they are all pretty well-maintained and seem to be nice and quiet. Most of them are also split-level houses (even the new ones). Back in Midlothian, the only split-levels I ever saw were in neighborhoods that were built in the 70's, but they seem to like them around here. Which I guess is not a bad thing since a lot of square footage usually comes with a split-level. I'm just praying that the interest rates don't go crazy before we can pick out a house.

We don't have any definite plans for moving, but all I know is this renting stuff is for the birds!!! It's quiet here during the day, but there is no yard for the boys to play in and no good parks in this area (except for one in the city). Then, every night when I am trying to go to sleep, the lovely people next door decide it is time for their smoke break on their front porch (which is almost directly below our bedroom window). This also usually involves their dog out there with them barking (probably at all the bats flying around - seriously, what is up with all the bats out here??? Eeewww!!!) And don't even get me started on the girl next door whose fan belt desperately needs to be replaced. (I'm this close to going across the street - that's right - just ACROSS the street - to the Saturn dealership and making an appointment for her car to be fixed.) I know, I sound like a cry-baby, but I guess I just really forgot how much different being a homeowner is from being in a townhouse/apartment. It's doable, but as soon as we can get out of our lease and find a nice house with a nice yard, we are SO out of here!

Dylan will be hired on as a permanent employee as of the 25th (the same day as Jacob's first full day of school.) Everything seems to be falling right into place. I can just feel that this is right where God wants us to be for the moment and I don't think there is a better feeling in the world than that. I'm still very homesick, but I did find a MOPS group to join, so once I meet a few people, I think it will get better. Although, I have really enjoyed this downtime with the boys. No plans, no schedules, just us!

And yes, I will eventually get some pictures up here. We've actually done quite a few fun things with the boys. We took them to a Hillcats game (baseball), putt-putt (no pictures of that, but just thinking of Daniel swinging his golf club around like a hockey stick makes me laugh!) and lots of trips to Mr. Goodies (the best little ice cream stand up the road.)

Ok - it's off to bed now. I'm praying that while I was writing this, Dylan got all of his snoring out of him. :)

Ahhhhh!!!

I can hardly believe it myself, but our thermostat is set to 73 degrees and it is actually 73 degrees in our house. Wow!!! The new a/c repairman was here for about 3-1/2 hours, but he figured out the problem and is coming back later to replace the broken part.

OK - back to packing. We are picking up the truck at 2:00. It's crunch time, baby!