I moved...

It's been a long time since I have blogged... why you might ask? Is it that I have four children that keep me super busy? Is it because I recently celebrated my 11 year anniversary? Is it because it seems like no one actually read blogs anymore anyway? Nah, it's because we had to move. The house that we have been renting for two years was being sold, so there was no renewing of the contract available, so on the 31st of July, we had to be out of there. It was sad for us, we loved it there but I'm ready for something a little more permanent. For the first seven years of our marriage we were in the same condo, we bought it and closed on it a few weeks before the wedding, and stayed there until we were bursting at the seams with three kids in one bedroom, us, the piano, treadmill and second TV in the other bedroom and one bathroom to share. Needless to say we were completely relieved to buy our first house. Too bad we were only there for 4 months. We bought the house, moved in, fixed it up and then got offered a job in Las Vegas. It just felt right, and as hard as it was to sell my first house (especially because I loved it SO much!!!) We packed up and moved to Vegas, it was an adventure, and luckily we rented our house down there... especially since houses dropped so much in value the two years we were there. Then when the company my hubby worked for laid off 200 employees (including us unfortunately) we wanted to stay there, but ended up finding a job closer to home. So we moved back, and after being out of work for a few months decided to wait on buying, so we rented again. Renting isn't bad, in fact I think it's pretty responsible, especially if you are going to move a lot like we have. People say we are wasting our money, but it's not a long term solution for us, it's just a few years... can't be any worse than losing 120K on a home, which is what happened to the house we were renting... actually it's not worse than that, it's much better. But anyways, now we are ready to be in ONE place for a VERY long time... the problem now? We are self-employed and with the stricter lending standards, we have to jump through a few more hoops. PBBBBLLL!!! So we wait until January, when we can file taxes again, and while we wait, we are lucky enough to have a house to live in for about 6 months. So that's where I've been. Packing for a temporary move so we wouldn't have to unpack everything. We are living with about 1/3 our stuff, the rest we are storing. That way it's not as hard to pack up and move again when the time comes. So that's what I've been doing, organizing, and packing and getting rid of stuff and having a garage sale, and organizing and packing some more... but we are here now, and we are mostly settled, and we are grateful to have some time to save up more money to make us less of a risk to the lovely banks who have really low interest rates but don't want to lend any of their money, and eventually it will all work out and I will again own a home and I will never move again!!! Well, maybe not "never" but at least for several years! So yeah, did you miss me?