Hello Nebraska!

It's been a long time coming, but we are now officially Nebraska residents! We've been dealing with unemployment for almost a year, and are glad to have it come to an end. The house selling and buying process has also been a royal pain, and pretty much anything that could go wrong did!

It took us almost a year to sell our house, and when we finally did, we had to spend a fortune taking care mold and radon issues. Lemme tell ya, when you've been unemployed forever, it is an even bigger pain than it would be otherwise!

Thinking the buying process would be easier, we were frustrated to find out it was not! We looked at approx 40-50 houses and offered on 4 before we one was accepted. As we waited to hear back on our offers, our "backup houses" sold left and right, leaving us with fewer and fewer to choose from. The one we wound up with was probably #9 on our list, but it's in a great neighborhood and was priced well below its worth, and should turn out to be a great place for us in time.

We have been victims of Murphy's Law during the house selling/buying and it still hasn't ended! We were fortunate to have movers load our stuff and truck it to our new house, but the morning we closed on our house in Peoria, we quickly realized we couldn't fit all the leftover stuff into our minivan. In a slight panic, we carted all our crap over to the neighbor's garage (thank you Val!!) so that the house would be empty when we left for the closing. We decided the best course of action was to rent a car to haul the extra junk, so we were running all over town collecting the extra automobile while trying to get all our last minute banking done (which was ridiculous in its own ways.) We wound up with a huge 12 passenger van, which was quite comical to those not involved. LOL Scott drove it while I hauled the cats and our fish Sushi across Iowa for the umpteenth time.

We arrived at our new house shortly before midnight, only to find that there was not a single fully functioning bathroom. The house has been empty for quite some time and there has been "work" done to it, which is really just CRAP work. Scott has since been busy fixing all the "work" that was done so that we can live here. Lots of plumbing and electrical kinks to work out. Anyway, the movers showed up bright and early the morning after we got here, so we didn't have time to do anything before our house became crowded. I've been trying to paint and unpack, but it's been slow-going with all the kids and stuff in the way.

I know many of you are dying to see....here is our new house! It's a tri-level with 3 bedrooms, 2 three quarter baths, one full bath, and one half bath (if only they all worked!) There's a family room, formal living and dining room, kitchen and eat-in dining area on the main floor, and the laundry and "playroom" are in the basement. There is tons of yardwork to be done. The tree in front needs to go and we are removing tons of overgrowth from everywhere. We hired a cheap and eager handy-guy to help us out with the yardwork and gutters (hence the ladder.)

(The arrow is to show you the tree that is on the eviction list!)


The neighborhood sits on a creek and is very wooded, which is nice, but it makes for a dark house! We are making plans to brighten things up and make lots of play space for the kids. In the backyard, there's a cute little shed/playhouse that will get some love and attention one of these days. It's kinda scary in its current state.


On the back of the house, there's a huge screened in porch, which is kind of unusual in these parts. There's a porch swing and tons of room, but it too needs work. I have plans for it to make it cheerful and cute (of course!)


I found this page in my "idea file" that I had pulled from a magazine. I'm hoping to get our porch looking this good by next spring!


And I think we'll pull up the astroturf and paint the concrete like this awesome floor that was blogged at Design Sponge. Seriously, I'm obsessed with this floor! Can't you just see it in my new porch!?


Scott started work at his new job this week, and needless to say, I'm quite overwhelmed by the amount of work before me at the house! It will take me forever, but I will keep at it.

I will be sharing more of the house, room by room, with the inspirations from my idea file so you can go through the process with me (and help me out with a few decisions along the way!)

Thanks for all the prayers and well-wishes! Hopefully we are at the end of our long journey so we can begin a new one.