Slowly but surely

I am writing this post mainly bc I read a post from a blog friend about their month of moving woes. They are further along in the moving process than we are but I totally get what she is going through and what I don't get yet, I will soon enough!

We have been talking about moving for a long time now. We have always "wanted" to have acres of land. It is a dream of Brad and mine. Also we "want" our next house to be our last house. We have been here since the beginning and the next place we are hoping we will stay until the end. Of course, those are our wants, not our needs. This house has been an amazing first home and I am continually reminded of the Lord's gracious blessings here. Hence, a lot of talk, not a lot of action in the past. We know this has to be something the Lord works out for us.

Last summer/fall two of the three families who lived in front of us moved. The familes who replaced them have lots of kids and grandkids and family and are always around. They are not respectful or considerate of other people (us and Brad's gma) and are ALWAYS in our yard. We tried to "love your neighbors as yourself" and so on. But we can't let our dogs out and are constantly moving their bikes and other toys out of our driveway so we can get to our house. It is just getting too much to handle. We can't go outside and be alone. They are not exactly the best influence on our kids. We want to influence them but their is only so much we can do. And that is why we decided we need to get serious about moving and praying it is what God wants for us.

We have several things working against us: the above mentioned neighbors and the railroad tracks being 20 ft out our back door. So we need "beef up" the inside of the house to make it attractive. That is the hard part for us. Brad works long, laborous hours every day at work and doesn't really want to come home and spend hours sanding down the wall so I can paint or fixing the shelves in the closet that he broke sanding said wall. Obviously, I don't know how to do these things and can't do much with a 12 month old around my feet all day.

So far we have bought all the wood to finish the porch and actually finished it. Brad has been working on patching a spot on the ceiling in the laundry room that had a water spot on it. He had to buy a big tub of the patching product bc he has not been able to get the texture to match the rest of the ceiling so he has sanded it down and started over a handful of times. He has been working on the wall in our bedroom that needs sanded down for a very long time. Just about every room in the house needs painted. He wants to tile our bathroom (we have had the supplies to do this for well over a year). I am going to do major cleaning that I have never done (clean down the air vents). I have been packing up a lot of the "stuff" we don't need or use every day (a diaper box full of pictures on CD that go back to 2004 among other things)and tons of toys and taking it out to the building so our house doesn't look so cluttered. Painting will be my job and the deep cleaning and rearranging. I'm sure their is more that I can't think of. I will be surprised it we get the house up for sale by the fall at the rate we are going.

So there ya have it.