Transfer, Pennsylvania and South Bend

No we did NOT fall off the face of the earth- it turns out our lives are just taken over by baseball the first half of the summer :) We were able to take a mini-vacation this weekend with my in-laws to Pennsylvania for my brother-in-law, Heath's, wedding. There were 9 of us with our baggage and gifts packed into a 15 passenger van, Jerod's other 4 brothers, ourselves, his parents, and his Grandma Carole. Although it was a long drive and I've never heard 5 grown boys complain like little school girls, including my husband, we had plenty of time to visit and made some memories on that trip that I'm sure we'll never forget. The wedding was beautiful and though I don't have pictures of the actual ceremony I have a couple from the venue where it took place. It was at a Community of Christ summer camp where Alice, Heath's wife, spent much time while growing up. It was a very small, intimate wedding where they dared serve hotwings! Gutsy to serve such a messy food on a day when everyone was so dressed up, haha!

On the way back to Iowa Jerod coerced his dad that it would be a great idea to stop in South Bend, Indiana, home to Notre Dame. It was right off of I-80/94 so we took a small detour Sunday morning and walked around by the football stadium before heading back on the road. There are a few pictures of that short jaunt below. While, in the future, we hope Jerod's brothers get married somewhere closer to Iowa, it was a great family trip, and I had a lot of fun hanging out my in-laws. Overall, good times were had by everyone!

The small lake where Heath and Alice were married next to.

Jerod and I on the bridge leading to the "reception hall", it's right behind us. It was right on the little lake, my favorite part was feeding the fish off the back railing overlooking the lake. I know, I'm such a child :)

Touchdown Jesus. This building is just to the north of the stadium, but if you're inside the stadium in the top tier, you can still see Touchdown Jesus poking over the top row.

Jerod HAD to get a picture with Lou Holtz. He can't stand Notre Dame, he only wanted to stop to see Touchdown Jesus, but was pleasantly surprised because he forgot there is a statue honoring Lou.

Just to show how big the stadium is, in the pciture I took previous to this one Jerod is giving Notre Dame "the bird", I told you he doesn't like them :)

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Not a baby anymore....

My little brother Gabriel just celebrate his first communion this past weekend in Sioux City. My mom and I went shopping to find new pants and a tie for his special occasion. While we were at Kohl's we found the cutest little outfit- long sleeve shirt, tie, vest, and dress pants, and we were looking everywhere for a size 8- but the largest they had was a 7x. So sad, he's all grown up now- I can still remember him crawling down the hallway of my dorm my freshman year of college. Now, he's playing little league ball, in the Siouxland Youth Chorus, and his "big teeth" are growing in (just as crooked as mine were, by the way). I'm sure this is only a smidge of how moms feel about their babies growing up....

Here's the little man:

Gabe receiving first communion

Gabe outside of the Sacred Heart

Gabe with his Godparents, Uncle Mike and Aunt Hope

17 years and 360 days age difference

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Home sweet home

It's been forever since we've had a chance to jot anything down on the blog! Here is a little update on the renovations:

-All rooms have now been painted with the exception of the hallway and bathroom.
-We now have a shower that is NOT olive green!!
-We can only take ice cold showers because the 15 year old water heater finally decided to give out.
-We are keeping the cupboards that were built in the kitchen. I started putting away dishes and stuff inside them and then I got attached. It will also save us $2000 dollars, not having to replace them.
-We (and by we I mean my dad) were able to shorten the cupboards over the counter that looks into the living room and they already look SO much better, need hardware and to flip the way some doors open.
-The entry to the house is now tiled courtesy of moi. I love it, and now dirty shoes won't get on our soon-to-be new carpet
-The bedrooms and office now have curtains so that our next door neighbor who is also our backyard neighbor can't see into the rooms at night, and no one else can for that matter.
-We bought new washing machine, still a top loader but with no agitator- I love it.......
-We will have carpet and a new water heater by next weekend!!

We're going to send out postcards anyway, but if anyone needs our mailing address it is:
P.O. Box 154
State Center, IA 50247

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WOOHOO!!

We are closing on Friday after school!! This is perfect because we wanted to get the bathroom redone before moving in, and we planned on doing that this weekend. We are so ecstatic that this whole buying process is almost at an end, and we really have to thank our realtor and mortgage specialist. They basically nagged the hell out of the listing realtor and when that didn't work our mortgage specialist went around him and contacted the person in charge of Iowa foreclosures for Freddie Mac, she had the papers by this morning and they are in for approval with the bank! There is a light at the end of the tunnel.....

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So close, and yet so far away

Well we were supposed to close on the house today but a whole slew of things pushed back the closing. First, after an entire Spring Break of nothing to do but relax- we find out last Saturday that actually, the appraiser found several things that need repairs before they'll okay us for our loan. All repairs that are completely do-able, and pretty easy, just time consuming and a couple are a little specialized (i.e. plumbing issues that had to wait for my dad). So he was going to come up on Wednesday to fix stuff, we could have the house re-appraised on Thursday and close on Friday right? Wrong! Dad got called in to work on Wednesday which forced us to push closing back, but that wasn't the only thing we would have been waiting on.

Apparently, the seller's had to recreate the abstracts on the house because they had no clue where they were at, these are supposed to be done by next Tuesday (fingers crossed), and then they can check the title on the house to make sure everything's good. Thank goodness for great friends with great connections, too! Without the help of our friend Jamie, we would be up a creek, since our realtor forgot to have the water turned off and one of the repairs is to the water main lever. In that same respect, we are so very thankful to the guys at State Center utilities who are making sure the water is off for that repair- and at vary late and inconvenient notice. I can already tell we are moving into a community that really takes care of each other, we kind of already knew that, but these events are just reaffirming that. Hopefully we'll have closed before Easter- that's the new goal!

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Be kind....

....for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle. This has never seemed more true to me than after my first round of conferences last night. I had a student whose mom had been out of town and we got out of school at 1:00, but despite mom calling grandpas and grandmas, no one showed up to get him until his baby-sitter popped in at about 2:05. Well, there's a law that says if you leave your child 'X' amount of time after school without picking them up, the police can be called and the family can be charged with child abandonment. I knew I had to tell her about this when she came in for her conference later, because elementary school wouldn't be as patient with a child left over an hour after school.

When she came in Wednesday evening she just looked like life was taking it's toll on her. We talked for a couple of minutes about her son and his change in behavior at school (they just moved back from living in Kansas City for a month) and then I asked her how everything was going since they had come back to Des Moines- and she broke down. She went on about several things, having to work out of town 3-4 days at a time, earning money in a way that most women would have a very difficult time doing. Her child's father refusing to have anything to do with them or help her out by picking him up from school, living with her mother who has bi-polar disorder, she and her two kids all sleeping in one small bed until she can make enough money to get a place of their own. "I never thought my life would turn out this way, it's hard because you don't think about how little choices you make will affect your future." It broke my heart.

It made me realize that I am so blessed. I have a place to live, a college education, a great job where I work with equally wonderful people that I'm not afraid would ever try to "fight me" for ANY reason. I have a husband who loves me, a family that would do anything for me, friends who are just like family to me, and when we have children- Jerod will be right there to help raise them and he will be a fantastic father.

Sometimes I forget why I teach where I do. Teaching children from low-income families is not for everyone. It's stressful and frustrating because many times you encounter families who just don't seem to understand how a lack of routine and a lack of consistent parenting affects their child's performance in school and in life. It is so difficult to accept that, in almost all cases, these families are doing the best they can do with the resources that they have. All of my students have health care, at least through Title 19, they have roofs over their heads, and they have someone bringing them to school- a place where they can get love if they aren't getting it at home.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.

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23 Days and Counting!

Everyone has been wanting to see photos of the house that we're buying. I keep telling people, they're not coming over to see the house until it's fixed up a little, so here's your "Before" photos. I'm planning on following our home renovations with our blog, and I also want to do a little before/after photo book of the house as a couple will be pretty hefty undertakings!

Living room at the front of the house, the door is to the left of the ladder

From living room, looking to the hallway that leads to the bedrooms and bathroom.

Hallway from office.

Second bedroom (nice color, right?)

Bathroom from shower view and doorway view. Again, a gorgeous color scheme....

"Master" bedroom :) Complete with a lovely view of our rear neighbors! Opaque shades will be a MUST!

The big window is actually to the left if you were standing in the kitchen from the picture's view. It is huge, which I love with lots of cupboard space. We're planning on opening up the counters though, so that we have an island. The eat-in area is really big, too. Loads of potential, I'm pretty ecstatic about this renovation!



The previous owners used this as their little boy's bedroom, but that door leads to the backyard, so we're making it an office/piano/sitting room type of place and plan on building a bedroom in the basement when the basement gets finished

This is the unfinished basement, it has the same square footage as the main level of the house, 1400. It is a walk out on the south end of the house, that's the end we plan on building the guest room. We also want to add another bathroom, utility room to close off laundry and the furnace/water heater, and of course most of the space is for Jerod to have a "man room" and place for me to put his.....stuff.

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