Thursday, September 23, 2010

report card on life: C+

we have moved!
and that's why i haven't been around much.
sunday was dooms day, but every day before that felt pretty 'doomy' if you ask me. i really take for granted the fact that they say moving is one of the top 3 stressors in life. the way that chris and i have been moving of late, has not necessarily been 'easier'. the frequency of the moves doesn't help either. but why do we do it? cause all these different opportunities arise for us to buy houses, so we jump on em. meanwhile we have to land on different family members' hospitality mid-jump to make the most of said opportunities.
right now we are flat out taking advantage of the wonderful barb and jerry osborne pad. we have gone swimming almost everyday. we all could have our own rooms, but we choose to share. i don't have to make dinner to night, which is awesome, cause barb said she wanted to make spaghetti. AND i haven't even asked the crazy woman to do it-but barb has packed chris' sandwich for lunch for the last two days! (she says it's easy cause she makes a sandwich for jerry everyday anyway. great wife. great mom.) man, we might never leave!...
and at the rate the banks are working on our contracts, it kinda looks like we might actually have to stay here forever...
here's where we are at with our future housing-
house 1. we put an offer on it in APRIL. yeah, like five and a half months ago. we just signed something that said we will not close faster than 45 days. but 45 days from when!?!?... sounds like things are moving... but at the same pace my children come running to me when i tell them we are eating broccoli and horse poop for dinner.
house 2. we put an offer on this house a little over a month ago. or maybe it's been two months now. i don't know. this house is definitely moving faster than the other house (since the other house had a 3 month head start!!!) but we're not entirely sure where we are at in the process.
so, we are getting pretty comfortable here, and trying to be on our bestest behavior. i have been trying to pump these people up with korean dinners, to give the impression that we are wonderful house guests...

anyhoo, sunday was moving day and it was a record high hot day in arizona for september. awesome. even when i wasn't moving anything- i was sweating. 111 degrees. boo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and we asked our friends to help us move our crap from our apartment to our storage unit- but strangely enough, we didn't have many takers. shocking, i know. but everyone had a legitamitely good excuse. people couldn't get babysitters, it was their birthday, they were at church for almost 10 hours speaking or singing, etc etc. i don't know why we keep moving on sundays and in the summer, but whatever. we did sucker two of our friends from our small group to come and help us and we are forever indebted to Jay and Shelley. they don't read my blog, but i'm giving them a shout out anyway cause i am in love with their hearts and strong muscles. my girlfriend mary beth also watched lily and topher for me, so i continue to be indebted to her as well.

the move went well enough. we were not as well-packed as we should have been, nor were we as well-prepared as we should have been. basically, we are getting worse with every move we make, not better. i think it's a sign we should STOP. chris started the moving process at about 11 am. we were out of the apartment completely by 9pm. but not without some idiotically ridiculous stuff happening to us first:

i don't know if i mentioned our 'vinegar terror' story from when we moved into the apartment, but last year when we moved into the apartment, there was a bottle of vinegar in a box, and it spilled in our car. nasty. the car stunk. needless to say it made selling that car VERY DIFFICULT a few weeks later. so i pretty much hate vinegar. and the worst part is, we still had that same bottle of vinegar when we were getting ready to move out. i learned from our previous mistake, so i dumped the remainder of the bottle down the drain and then threw out the bottle in a big black trash bag. well, of course, as i am taking the trash out to the dumpster, the bag rips a bit and disgusting garbage juice spills on my legs. yes, it's vinegar. ugh. how i loathe vinegar. and then i had some balsamic vinegar spill onto some stuff in a bin in the front seat in the van. i was fortunately driving by the dumpster when i noticed the rancid reek, so i threw out anything the balsamic vinegar had touched. it was dark so i don't know what i was throwing out. but i didn't care. vinegar and i are not friends.

in the year that we lived in our fairly gross apartment, i had never seen a scorpion. as chris and i were really getting ready to leave, the last item that needed to be brought out was his big ol' gun safe. chris, in all his buff glory, goes to pick the thing up from underneath, and he gets stung by a giant scorpion. really??!?! are you frickin kidding me scorpion?!?!? on chris' middle finger no less. and it, and a good portion of chris' arm went numb soon after. that kinda just stamped and sealed our whole moving process. a scorpion bite on the middle finger. nice touch...

anyway, the next day chris and i found ourselves in a serious funk. i went to work for a few hours. as i drove to work i found myself in the perfect pathetic fallacy. it was a hot sunny day, the mark of a bright new day and start for our family. but it suddenly started raining, though the sky maintained it sunny appearance. ah! perfection. i was definitely trying to keep up a sunny and cheerful front but i was definitely crying inside! i was so physically tired. i was so tired of moving. i was so disappointed we weren't in a house yet. i was kinda just pissed at life and doubting a lot of decisions that chris and i had made that had brought us to the place where we were at. did we make a wrong turn somewhere? were we being greedy and selfish and a ton of other unflattering things?

when it comes down to it, we keep moving because we are trying to secure our financial future. i know it sounds crazy to still think real estate can be part of anyone's financial future, but God has really blessed us with our 1.5 homes (jeehon owns half of one) that are being rented out right now and this next house (should we ever get to officially purchase it...) is going to be a real steal of a deal. what would you sacrifice for your family's future? our sacrifice is our comfort about 1 week a year. (my in-laws unfortunately have to sacrifice a bit too...)

anyhoo... this is a pretty long post so i should probably wrap it up now. but my kids are still napping so i will add this one verse that i was reminded of while driving in the sunshiny rain in the midst of my joys and woes:

"Let us acknowledge the Lord;
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises, he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth."
- hosea 6:3

so as always, God is good. He and nothing else. definitely not me. i started off this week on sunday with an 'F' attitude (as in failing. not anything else. well...) anyway, it's thursday and i am doing better. i'm no all-star so i haven't been able to pull myself up to an A+ attitude just yet. i have not had a ton of internet access, which is good cause it makes me waste my time a lot less. and makes me have quiet time more. i am living in a beautiful, very well-decorated home, that belongs to two people who really love the crap out of me and my family. and they also happen to love Glee, so we had a great time watching the season premiere of that on Tuesday all together. i could not be more blessed. though you wouldn't always know it from my attitude. but i'm working on it!

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