Ups and Downs

So...I guess this is going to be an every two week thing now. I guess that's what happens as you have kids and your job picks up steam, and you get older. Other things just seem to be more important, and the blog takes a back seat to everything else.

That, and it's really hard to write a super-secret blog when there is always someone around.

So with my colleagues out of the office, I finally have a chance to write little bit and let ya'll know what's been going on in my life the last couple of weeks.

I'll start with the ick. It's been going around, and my house was not spared. First, Peanut got it...came down with a fever a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday. Took her to the doc two days later and he said it was strep. At least it wasn't the flu.

Gives her some antibiotics to take, and says she can go back to school on Wednesday. I had taken Monday off, and Juice and I decided to split the day Tuesday since she has significantly fewer days left than I do after the maternity leave. Peanut seems like she's doing just fine both days...no real drop in her energy level, so I take her with me to go look at some land south of town both days.

And we get caught at the back of a 5 acre lot when it starts raining.

This is not good for a child who is already unwell.

So Wednesday comes along, and we happily send Peanut off to school.

At 11:30, I get a call from the school nurse saying that my daughter has diarrhea and will need to go home. Damn antibiotics screwed up her tummy.

On Thursday, we send her to school and don't give her any milk. She manages to stay at school the whole day, but comes home with hershey squirts. Lovely. Friday, I get the call again to come pick her up, which means that I was at work all of 2.5 days that week.

This past Sunday, our little lovely wakes up with a nasty stuffy nose, and a cough. She's still on the antibiotics, and not running a fever, so we send her off to school again Monday, and she makes it through the day. Still coming home with dirty underwear every day, though.

On Tuesday, I'm sitting at my desk around noon when I feel my energy start to drain. Then I feel a little scratchy in the throat. Then the eyes start to itch, the sniffling starts, and then the sneezing. My GOD the sneezing.

I manage to make it through the day, but don't go into work on Wednesday (yesterday). When I pick up Peach from the sitter, she tells me that she had two really runny, stinky poops, which is a sign that now she's starting to get sick. We just can't seem to get away from this stuff. The only one who hasn't gotten it yet is Juice, and I'm hoping it stays that way. She's no help at all when she's sick. By comparison, I got up and helped get the girls dressed yesterday, did the dishes, gave baths, cooked dinner...everything I would normally do, except go to work.

So anyway, about that land. I think we finally found something that we love and that we can afford. Oh yeah, and that meets our expectations of not having some ghetto mobile home next door to us.

I guess I didn't mention this back in the spring. We never did end up purchasing land because by the time we got pre-approved (almost 6 weeks after we put in the application) the piece of land we had wanted to buy had already sold. So we put everything on hold and used what would have been our down payment to pay down a credit card.

Anyway, I was just browsing land ads a few weeks ago and found a couple that caught my eye. With Peanut being sick, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to go take a look. They're both on the south side of town in the Somerset/Poteet area.

The first one we went to I knew right away wasn't going to be what I wanted. When you turn onto a dirt road and the first thing you see is a run down mobile home with rusted out cars sitting around, that's not the kind of neighborhood I want to live in.

The second place was a new subdivision of 5+ acre lots, and there were only two homes built. Both looked really nice, and taking a glance at the land, it looks relatively flat and buildable. We stopped by the office on our way back into town and found out which lots were available and how much they cost. We went back the next day to actually walk some of the lots, which is when we got caught in the rain.

I decided that Juice needed to take a look, so we got Chica to watch the kids for us on Saturday, put on our boots and jeans, and went tromping through the woods on a couple of very nice lots. We decided we like the more expensive of the two, but comparatively speaking, these lots are a steal compared to other lots of similar size in the area. To the tune of $2500/acre less expensive.

I emailed our loan officer and asked what we needed to do to update our loan application. She said that everything looked good and that she could get me a pre-approval letter within a day or two. So we have that in our hot little hands, and now we're just waiting to hear from our realtor. We may be the proud owner of our own little piece of land within the next week or so!

If that happens, you can bet I'll be spending my weekends with a chainsaw and probably buying a used truck.

Whew...fingers are bleeding now. I guess I really need to find time to update more often, because I didn't even get a chance to tell you about the song I heard today that took me way back to my younger years. Next time, my friends.