(first off...grammy, i'm so sorry i didn't blog last night to let you know that we had closed on the house! i hear you were a bit worried!)

we closed on the house by 6:45 last night! is it everyone's experience that sitting at a closing table is one terrifying experience? all those dollar signs and legal terms and hoping the selling party doesn't just say, "forget it, we want the house back!?!" i was SO relieved when we got home that i joined kenny in drinking a glass of wine to celebrate and relax. (yes, i'm still pregnant and yes, i drank wine last night. a few sips isn't going to hurt at 33 weeks along, and apparently my mom drank through all four of her pregnancies. that sounds like she was a pregnant lush - she wasn't, but she had an occassional glass of wine or beer when she was pregnant in the 70s :) ).

my mom visited yesterday mostly to watch the boys while we closed, but also to just hang out for a few hours. rowan was chomping at the bit to show her every detail of his new house. and the first thing he wanted to show her wasn't his new room (which he tells me we're going to "paint it green, mama!" every time we go into it) but the washer and the dryer. like mother like son. :)

let the unpacking and remodeling/demolition begin! this house is over 100 years old. it's held together by plaster walls and real 2x4s. a family whose decorating and showering preferences are far different than ours lived here for 38 years. the first order of business was to install a shower in the second floor bathroom. the cast iron/porcelain tub was surrounded by WOOD and WALLPAPER - not conducive for showering in. the woman who lived here used the shower in the basement. i've used the shower in the basement and i'm happy to say that soon, i won't have to anymore. it's concrete and you have to wear something on your feet to shower. and it's IN THE BASEMENT! remember, this house is over 100 years old. these old basements are cold, damp, and surrounding by concrete - great for being a basement, but not your shower!

kenny dug into our shower bulkhead this morning to see what he could see. we have no idea why the shower even had a bulkhead since the rest of the bathroom has 9 1/2 foot ceilings like the rest of the house. so, we decided today was demolition day! he pulled out all the wood wainscotting and pulled off the drywall that created the shower's bulkhead. there were shelves behind the shower plumbing (next to the tub if you're looking at the tub), also covered in the same wood with shutters for doors that he is tearing out as i type (and the boys take their nap). he took out the ancient tub spigot and tap and fortunately found an old shower pipe behind the wall which will make it easy to install a new one.

the remainder of the week will be patching and fixing and eventually (over the next year) we'll replace the lovely blue and wooden toilet and sink, either paint the rest of the wainscotting white or tear it out and drywall/paint, and tear down the lovely flowery wallpaper.

before pictures of the bathroom:
[link(pics/aprilmay_06/tub.jpg)][thumb]pics/aprilmay_06/tub.jpg[/thumb][/link] [link(pics/aprilmay_06/mcg bath.jpg)][thumb]pics/aprilmay_06/mcg bath.jpg[/thumb][/link]

painting rooms and adding furniture (a dining room table!) will come throughout the year. but a shower is a necessity. and so is a vegetable garden, which we hope to start in the next few weeks after we plan it out and install a rain barrel under one of our gutters (which we've been wanting for years!).

some people want to move into a house that is move-in ready. and while this house was certainly in move-in condition, there are things that we want to do to make it nicer, or more liveable or more "us." i like this - i like the feel of a house under construction (only if it's small projects!). i'm fortunate to have married someone who likes to do these projects himself. it saves money, and gives us both a sense that we're building our house ourselves (and hopefully on a rock, not in the sand!).

i know i said i'd update again with some good news after the closing, but since you are all incredible with your outpouring of love and prayers for us, i wanted to post again and let you know that today, thursday, brings good things. :) (and after reading the post last night, kenny said i made us sound pathetic. ha ha! we're really hanging in there and enjoying the country-life as best we can right now - i promise!)

- babies are being born: to our friends kelly and peter and 19-month-old daughter hannah, they have a son, daniel! to our friends susie and JB, and 19-month-old son will, they have a daughter, annelise!

- a red-feathered (red-tailed, perhaps?) hawk swooped low into our back yard a few minutes ago, and then ascended and soared above our yard for 10 minutes. it was a gorgeous sight. we had a hawk in our whipple street yard once, but it was there to eat the cardinals. not very gorgeous. :) and yes, we're bird-watching nerds.

- our appraisal came back excellently (is that a word?).

- our new washer and dryer combo work well AND they're energy-efficient. i use 2/3 LESS water with each load, and less electricity for drying. GE front-loaders. i'm using a high-efficiency detergent now and when we're more settled, plan to make my own low-sudsing detergent thanks to the inspiration from my friend serina. AND i bought clothes pins for our clothes line which i plan to use after today's loads (i'm using the heat feature to kill the eye virus that's been making the rounds...). yes, i get excited at the thought of hanging my clothes to dry. :)

- kenny gets to pick up his new tractor tonight. it's a john deere 5-something-or-other. i can't wait to post pictures of him on it. i'll have to dig up a baseball cap and flannel shirt for the photo-op. ;) we bought it used from the previous owner who had it serviced recently.

- the baby is staying put for now! he's happily rolling and i've had NO contractions all day today. i even drove into Lindora with the boys to Target (a brand-new HUGE target...i MUST limit my shopping there or we'll all be in trouble!).

- the boys went down for their nap so easily and they love playing with their toys which makes resting a lot very easy for me. we packed away a lot of their toys months ago, and now we're digging them out again, and it's like christmas to them!

- i didn't have to make dinner on monday, or tonight because our housegroup friends stocked our freezer with lovely dishes. tonight's entree is chicken enchiladas!

more house-owning news tomorow. i promise.

We have so much to say, but won't bore you with heavy details.

I wish I could tell you that we were happily unpacking in our new home, with the hecticness of moving and closing on our homes behind us, and getting ready to welcome home baby boy #3 in about 7 weeks (who is still unnamed). I can tell you that we are in the house that we had planned on purchasing, but we are basically paying rent by the day to the seller because we have no mortgage.

A week ago Monday afternoon, we learned that our mortgage had been rejected by the bank because of the rented mobile homes on the property. Why this became an issue at the 11th hour is beyond us - the apraisal should have happened a few weeks prior to the closing, but we were scheduled to close the very next afternoon. The real estate agent of this home is acting as a dual agent for us and the seller, and we have been...let's just say, "less than satisfied" by how he's represented us and helped us in the purchase of this house.

We frantically looked for another mortgage, having to make some heavy decisions in a very little amount of time, at the same time closing on our Whipple Street house, moving into this house, and caring for Rowan and Sawyer and the baby inside of me. I sorely underestimated the power of stress on your body. Packing and moving and watching the kids on the workday we had (in the previous post) was physically demanding, but the baby seemed to kick and dance and be happy as usual. The mounting stress of last week, continuing into this week has brought on contractions and soreness I haven't had yet in this pregnancy. It's a frightening thing, but I'm really taking it easy physically and trying my best to remain calm in light of everything that's happening.

It's hard to live in a house where you're afraid to unpack another box (for fear of having to repack everything up again), but have to purchase an internet and phone line just to stay connected with all of this. It's hard to see your little boys become so attached to their "new house" - they haven't even asked about the "old house" since last week! We pray they're attachment to their new room, and this big open yard isn't for nothing.

We have learned a lot from Rowan: We've been singing the Doxology ("Praise God from Whom all blessings flow/ Praise Him all creatures here below/ Praise Him above ye heavenly host/ Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.") every night before we put them to bed and he's been asking to sing it at different times during the day. It's as though he's reminding us to praise God through all of this. And I seem to "lose it" around meal time - usually dinner, and the words of our family grace bring me back to a sense of calm: "Give us grateful hearts oh Father, for all thy mercies. And make us mindful of the needs of others...."

We are not in this alone.

I hope to post some great news after this Friday, our new closing date. Please pray with us that all goes smoothly and that we can unpack our boxes and finally call this "our home" once again.

[disclaimer: if you don't know our housegroup members personally, i apologize for using their names without a description of each of them. this post would get very long if i did that - and i have more boxes to go pack up for the remainder of our move on tuesday!]

yesterday, the day between Good Friday and Easter, our AWESOME housegroup helped us pack a 26-foot Penske moving truck full of stuff from our Swisshelm Park house to our new home.

the boys and i dropped kenny off at Penske (does anyone else think of George Costanza everytime you hear that?) truck rental to pick up our MAMMOTH TRUCK on friday evening. we drove behind him all the way home and i cringed everytime he turned a corner and the back right tires lifeted off the ground. it's a lot longer than you think when you're driving it. :)

saturday, the boys and i caravaned up to the new house (rowan's favorite new phrase is "the new house") with 10 friends of ours from our housegroup to begin painting and stripping wallpaper. the drive took longer than usual and the boys were so ready to get out and run once we got to the house. fortunately, singing songs kept them happy for the last 20 minutes of the drive. they LOVE to sing and dance (or wiggle) in their car seats, and although i run out of song ideas after about 5 minutes, they don't mind repetition. kenny, his friend craig, roger and volus stayed back at the house and packed up the truck.

rachel, becky, lisa, amy, and matt started stripping the boys' room wallpaper 10 minutes after we arrived and they didn't need any of the wallpaper strippers that i bought. it came off that easily! this bodes well for the kitchen wallpaper (which i don't plan on removing right away...but eventually) and the bathroom wallpaper (as fast as i can!). sue, ellen, and a due-at-any-moment-with-baby-#2-sara entertained the kids (rowan, sawyer, abigail, and owen) in the big empty rooms on the first floor.

after a great lunch provided by carol and walter, everyone took a tour of the grounds. as they were walking back, kenny, the truck and his caravan arrived. i had to drive the boys around for their nap as they were already tired. ellen and i tried to find the nearest stores and didn't find much (a giant eagle about 10 miles away...). this is one of the things i will get used to eventually. we returned to an almost-empty truck, and two rooms that were stripped and primed, ready for a first coat of paint! we all walked over to explore the barn - i was amazed at how ready it was for animals. a gorgeous hay-loft on the second floor, and a stall that could easily house pigs or sheep or goats. the bulbs were bursting out of the ground all over the yard - lenten rose, hyacinth, a huge row of peonies, daffodils, a freshly tilled vegetable bed waiting for us to plant. it's a yard fit for a master gardener. a little intimidating to me!

at 4:30, two pizza boxes were delivered to our front door. it was our neighbors to the right, who ordered them for us.

it had been a long and tiring day. but it was nothing but fun. we gathered in a circle to pray for the great day we had shared together just before everyone went back to the city. our friend matt, who has ties to the native american community, gave us a housewarming gift of sage and ceremonial tobacco to burn in corners all over our house. this symbolizes a cleansing of the house as it changes families. he also gave us a feather with leather ties and beading symbolizing strength, watchfulness, and balance to hang in our attic. we were well taken cared-of yesterday. and we know that we will continue to be so well prayed over and cared for...45 miles away from our pittsburgh family. :)

this tuesday, we close on both houses and we've hired movers to move all of our furniture. we'll probably all sleep really well on our new bedroom floors that night!

oh...and...our neighbors told us yesterday of the "really bad bear problem" we have on our land. i wasn't going to mention this because i really shouldn't be freaking out about it. but...how can a momma with three small boys NOT freak out about the "really bad bear problem" at her new home? i guess since our neighbors aren't at all bothered by it (it's really only a problem to them because the bears attack their bird feeders!), i'll become accustomed to bear in my back yard. and all of our garbage kept inside until pick-up day.

It is finally beginning to sink in that it's a reality...this moving thing. Our dining room is full of filled boxes. The kitchen is beginning to be empty. The basement is mostly packed up and the linens and sheets are boxed away as well. Our house is turning into a storage unit but we're still trying to keep some semblance of order so as not to freak out the boys too much.

I must admit...it's a little daunting all of a sudden. We're a week away from moving and my extreme tendency towards nostalgia very quickly takes over when I look around and see things like the empty china closet in our dining room: I remember so well filling it with my great-grandmother's china the week after we returned from our honeymoon with the china closet (we found it at an antique dealer and rented a U-Haul trailer so it could come home with us).

When I was pregnant with Sawyer, my mom cross-stitched a great picture of two boys walking away, sharing the task of carrying a bucket. It's hung above Rowan's bed in their room. Most nights, Rowan points it out to Kenny and I as we tuck him into bed and exclaims, "Rowan..and that's Sawyer!" Today, I took down the pictures on the upstairs walls and put them in a box. When we were putting him to bed, he pointed to the wall and said, "Where'd Rowan and Sawyer go?" I told him that it was packed away to be hung in his new room. He didn't like that answer, so he asked again, "Where'd Rowan and Sawyer go?" So I went to get the picture, and rehung it on his wall and he smiled and told me, "Rowan..and that's Sawyer." Kenny smiled and said, "This is going to be one of the last things we pack."

I'm finding a lot of things that I'd like to leave in its place until the last possible minute. Things that will allow me to hang onto this home until the last possible moment.

So Lenten breadbaking was put on the back burner for a few weeks. But I've been doing a lot of preparing and thinking about breadbaking while I am packing boxes and playing with the boys. Kenny reminded me oh-so-lovingly/jokingly/under laughter this morning, "The path to hell is paved with good intention!" I don't mean to brag about my husband, but he's kept to his Lenten disciplines every single day this Lent, without missing a beat. So I have him to live up to (a joke, babe).

This morning, I did wake up early with him and made cinnamon raisin biscuits which were excitedly consumed by Sawyer, and not-so-excitedly consumed by Rowan, who woke up with a low-grade fever, congestion and that "I'm sick" look in his gorgeous blue eyes. It's heartbreaking everytime our boys are sick. Even if it's just a cold.

When they are sick, I let them "chill" to PBS kids. We're working on "chilling with books"...sometimes they just need mindless educational television (ha ha ha). I'm becoming quite the stickler for tv consumption. I've noticed how cranky it makes them the more they watch it. The last time they watched videos more than once a week was back in February when we all had the "stomach flu." After a week of new videos, we noticed a very cranky and mean Rowan, and a bored and cranky Sawyer. So we cut out tv cold turkey and it's turned our boys back into imaginative angels. Okay, so they're not angels, but they're pretty darn close. They fight over toys, but at least they play imaginatively with toys and with each other. They chase each other around the house, back and forth, and try to wrestle. They love to be outside and run and climb. I'd much rather be tired and take my kids to the park than get a lazy nap while they watch another video.

So I'm happy to say that a few minutes into Sesame Street this morning (and after 30 minutes of Teletubbies and the last 10 minutes of Mr Rogers), they were bored and dug into the box of toys in our living room and were climbing and running and laughing with each other. Rowan was a little more sensitive than usual, but he wasn't sitting on the couch consuming tv images for hours on end.

Which brings me back to breadbaking. I'm researching grain mills because I've been reading a lot more about how milling/grinding your own wheat is so much better for you than using store-bought flour for your bread. And if I'm making our bread because I think it's better for us than eating store-bought bread, then why not do it the absolute best way? I know many of you are snickering because you don't see me baking bread let alone milling the grain for the bread in two months when I'm caring for a newborn. You're right. We have a lot of changes coming up between moving to another county...another lifestyle, and bringing another baby into our home. But that doesn't mean I won't start back up when that glorious "balanced" feeling returns post-partum! :)

last thursday morning, i was upstairs with the boys while making beds, brushing teeth, organizing laundry when i noticed a trail of blood across our hallway floor (fortunately it's hardwood flooring). niether rowan or sawyer were crying, but when i looked down at sawyer's feet, they were covered in blood. so i put his feet in the sink and cleaned them off (this is when he started screaming) and did the normal first aid that you do for a cut. it's finally healing, which is great since he fights tooth and nail when we change his bandaid.

fast forward to 10 minutes ago when i walked two house appraisers through our home. i didn't realize how dusty or messy our living room was until these strangers were looking at every detail of the rooms. i became a bit self-conscious of my housekeeping habits but quickly reminded myself that (a) i'm packing boxes up and NOT worried about a clean house anymore, (b) i'm letting the kids mess up the living room with their clothes and toys (their clothes quickly become toys or capes or hats), and (c) i'm pregnant! i shouldn't worry about the state of my house in front of these appraisers/strangers because they're mainly looking at the room sizes and yard. they don't really care about the three inches of dust under my television cabinet.

but then we walk upstairs and i turn the corner to see the trail of blood that i still haven't cleaned up yet (please read the preceding paragraph for the reason why i am not the greatest of housekeepers at the moment). there is even a smudge on the lower wall of the office/old nursery and a few drops on the throw rug. it doesn't look pretty. in fact, i wondered if he thought we were hiding a deep, dark secret. i can't talk myself out of this one. i am still embarrassed about the not-yet-cleaned-up trail of blood. perhaps when the boys awake from their nap i will clean it. or i'll choose to pack up another box.

it'll probably be the box. or i'll take the boys to the library. or we'll head to the grocery store. see, we've got priorities!

first of all, the grass is MUCH greener all of a sudden. although the grass doesn't die away altogether over the winter, it does lose it's luster. and like magic, the calender tells us it's spring and the grass obeys by turning green. my strategically-planted hostas are pushing through the soil throughout our yard, as are the daffodils and tulips that we never planted.

but i know that it's spring because i want to spend hours at Lowes and Home Depot. it seems that since we've been married, kenny and i have a big home or yard project that we start in the spring. the first year we were married, we ripped out our kitchen and remodeled it ourselves. the second spring, we were preparing the nursery for rowan's arrival in july. the third spring, kenny built our patio and cleaned out the ivy on our side lot. the fourth spring (last year), we landscaped the yard and tore out old and dying bushes because we were sure we were going to sell our house last spring.

and now, we are moving into a new home and Lowes and Home Depot will help make that transition go smoothly for us. i love to roam the aisles, inhaling that home-improvement smell.