What a week

I wish I had better news to report. I don't. Chief is no longer with us, he is with Jesus.

He died at the same moment I was leaving to drive to North Carolina. I had made the decision that if he was alive when it was time for me to leave that I would head south but if he had passed away I would head north. For some reason, he was pushing me South. I had not driven a tenth of a mile and my phone rang. It was my mom. I knew from the tone in her voice that he was gone. At first, I did a u-turn. Then, I did another u-turn. I knew that I had to keep heading south. Natalie would not survive another change in plans, it was getting too late in the day, I just needed to keep driving. Thankfully Natalie had already fallen asleep when I got the call and I could cry as much as I wanted/needed to.

We knew that his death was coming. His body never got strong enough for surgery. They made him a hospice patient on Monday afternoon and told us that he would live about 24-48 hours. He lived about 49 more, he had to fight. He clinged to life until all of my dad's brothers and sisters were there with him. He passed away about a minute after the last one arrived.

I love my Chief. He was a great man. I am going to miss him.

There are still LOTS of boxes to unpack. Unpacking with two children around while you are emotionally and physically exhausted is not easy. Right now I feel like I will be unpacking for the next 10 years!

I should be...

• Taking a shower
• Going through closets
• Calling the utility companies
• Working
• Cleaning out the fridge
• Reading a parenting book (Natalie's behavior has been terrible the past few day, TERRIBLE!!)

But I am here blogging. Why? Because it is relaxing me and bringing a little bit of peace to my day.

I am really sad today, really sad. The tears have fallen, lots of them. I know that we will make it through this transition. I am really excited about being back home. But today I am stuck thinking about how much I am going to miss my friend, Sarah.

We have lived life together since I have been here. We see each other nearly everyday. We talk everyday. She is my friend I can talk about anything with, the minor things in life and the major. I know that I have dear friends waiting for me in Winston and that is the only thing getting me through. I can't put into words how much I am going to miss her. She has blessed my life so much.

I am sad for Natalie. I have a feeling her sadness is the root of her TERRIBLE behavior. She and Madeline are best buddies and I know that she will miss her.

Change is hard, not to mention stressful. Stress makes me overly emotional which is not a good combo. Wow, it could be a long week.

Naps

It happened for the first time today. Both girls napped at the same time for over 2 hours!! Praise God!!
I got lots of work for my job done, woohoo!!
Kim's mom and dad came up this weekend to help us out, i.e. watch the girls so that we could get some stuff done. What a blessing! We were able to get tons done and feel like we might be ready to move in 10 days, wow.
OK, I need to go get some more done.....

Ranting

This is getting really old, really fast.

When we moved up here we did not buy a house. We are renting. The housing market in this area was way too crazy for us to think about getting into. This remains to be a decision that we are glad that we made. I am so glad that we are not trying to sell a house right now.

Having said that, our landlord is trying to sell our house. She broke the news to us with about 24 hours notice in October. Because the housing market here is suffering there have not been a ton of showings but enough for it to be really getting on my nerves!!

The thing that bugs me the most is that agents will call and say, "I am in the neighborhood, can I come see the house?"

Me: When?
Them: In 10 minutes!

Are you freakin' kidding me?!? Often my response is, my child is taking a nap. I cannot leave but if you must come by you can.

This, of course, is better than what happened last weekend when the agent and her clients just showed up with no notice at all!! Thankfully Kim was home and told them that they would need to come back at a later time.

None of this makes sense to me, I guess I am just used to the way it worked for us when we bought/sold our home in NC. We made appointments to see houses. We talked with our realtor before we went out looking and she made appointments for us, hours, sometimes days in advance. It is not like this house just went on the market, it has been on for months!!

The up-side, it has made me be better about keeping the house clean.

I am ready for this to be over!! I want to be done and be living in my house that is waiting for me. Although, if someone does but this place then we have a whole other set of problems. Where the heck would we live for the rest of our time here??

Our house!

Kim, Natalie and I went to Winston-Salem at the beginning of the week to start looking for a house. Well, we started and ended. Everything worked out so well. We found a home that we love, in our price range, in the area that we wanted and we found a seller that was glad to wait to close until May. Perfect! The seller even threw in the pool table to sweeten the deal, everyone is invited for a party!!!