Health and Heartbreak

Our health is improving (well, minus my debilitating sinus headaches). Hurrah!! I partly attribute that to our daily lap swims at our local rec center (homeschool PE at its best). I forgot what a workout swimming is! My lungs are having a harder time than the rest of my body as I swim but hopefully once we are back to 100% health things will all even out. My children are blowing me away. The girls swim laps with me. Every few days or so I show them a new skill to work on. They are growing by leaps and bounds each time we go. My boys, too. Kevin and I take turns - one of us does laps while the other is in the smaller pool with the boys. Little L feels brave enough now to jump off the diving board and swim in the deep end of the big pool which is a big deal for him. It might not be long until he is joining us for laps. Baby F just got goggles and likes to go underwater with Kevin to gather toys off the bottom of the pool. He also jumps in the water by himself, holds his breath as he floats to the surface and pulls himself back to the wall to climb out and do it all over again. He amazes me!! I think I have a family of water babies!

Remember that post I had a few weeks back about something exciting? Well, it was the sweetest little house on the most beautiful land complete with a farmhouse sink and the open kitchen shelving of my dreams. We put an offer in on it (we even wrote a letter and had our children draw pictures for the owner) and seemed pretty confident we would get it. However another offer was put in at the same time and it was cash. As I am sure you all know, nothing competes with cash. I won't lie, we were all completely crushed. After nearly 9 months of house hunting, we finally find one we liked within our budget and it just wasn't meant to be. I don't know if I took it the hardest or my children but either way we were all a miserable bunch for quite awhile.

We found another possible house. The land was beautiful, the house...well, it needed a lot of work but did I mention the land?! The owners even took us on a three hour tour of the property. Once again we started to fall in love. We contacted our lender  and then things fell apart. It was agricultural land and our lender wouldn't give us the loan unless we paid the owner's back taxes - $40,000! So here we are, still stuck in this cramped, tiny house pulling our hair out and praying for a change. I've said it a million times but I will say it again - house hunting in western Oregon is brutal. Unless you are a millionaire, I suggest not ever moving here. It just isn't worth it, no matter how beautiful the scenery is. Honestly, I am just so over it.

Health and Heartbreak