Oh, Hai.

Hello, my poor little neglected corner of the Internet.  Yes, I do believe I dropped off the face of the earth there for a good 2 1/2 months.  I come armed with lots of good reasons.  I'm going to try to make this a short version, because I am suspicious that the long explanation I felt was needed was part of the stuff bogging me down and preventing me from starting back up again.

In short:  my last post before this one was April 10th.  We closed on our current home on April 26th.  For the two weeks after that post, I packed like crazy and lived in a bare bones home while a.) teaching kindergarten full time b.) single parenting Monday through Friday.  Most nights I would force myself to pack up until midnight after Sam and Anna's bedtime, then get up at 5 am to start my day all over again.  The week before we closed, we had literally next to nothing in our home- no beds, no TVs, no dishes.  I slept on an air mattress and the kids and I ate out every night.

Then after we sold our house, I moved into a friends apartment to finish out teaching the school year.  She was going to be mostly gone during the month and half that Sam, Anna and I stayed there, so it worked out well.  It was fully furnished so we just had to bring toys and clothes.  I also started to focus on applying for a new teaching position for the next school year.  Although I thought things would get a little easier  for us once the house selling was out of our way, it didn't because I was spending evenings applying for jobs with long online applications and working on tying up the end of the school year for my current students.  I was still solo parenting Monday through Friday, while teaching kindergarten until June 7th.  Throw in a little bit of drama with trying to buy a house in our new area, and I had absolutely no extra time for anything.

After that, I ended up having an interview (4 hours away from where we were currently staying, of course) on the last day of school for my current class, but still had to be back to work the following day.  Stressful on top of an already stress-filled and emotionally charged week with saying goodbye to my students and co-workers on top of prepping to move again.  I did not get the position, nor have I gotten one since then for next school year so I am still carving out time to fill our massively long applications online. That's where things stand on the job front.

The weekend after school ended for the year, we packed up our things and left the state we had lived in for the past 10 years and uprooted Sam and Anna again.  This time (since we had not gotten our home we had been attempting to buy since March) we moved in with my parents.  Originally we were going to stay with my in-laws, but after some last minute drama, we had to change that.  (In other words, my step-father-in-law was a jerk and decided he wasn't okay with that anymore. My husband had been staying there Monday- Friday since January 1st, and he was over house guests.)  So THEN, all of us moved in with my parents in their small one bathroom house which is where we've been for the last 2 weeks. But on the plus side, our 6 months of my husband living Monday-Friday in another state and me on my own taking care of our kids during that time is OVER.  That certainly ranks in the top three hardest things I've ever gone through.  #1- still infertility for 3 years.  #2- uncontrolled reflux until 6 months old for twin babies #3- solo parenting twin 2/3 year olds on my own without family support while working full time in a challenging career.  Never gonna agree to doing that again, I tell ya.

On the house buying drama front, we are still trying to buy the house I originally posted a photo of in March.  It is a short sale and has been quite the process.  We have almost bailed several times, but we both love that house, feel like it is supposed to be the home we spend Sam and Anna's growing-up years in and are trying to be patient.  We have not seen another house for sale since December that we like as much or more in our price range.  Really, it is more house that we should be able to afford.  The latest information we have is that we should be able to close in July, and are in the home stretch of the process.  So that's why we are still homeless and staying with my parents.  I just can't let that house go when we know it will be ours as long as we are willing to wait for it.

After having most of our stuff in storage since the beginning of April, I CANNOT WAIT to be unpacked and settled again.  Sam and Anna have not seen most of their toys for months, so I'm sure it will be like Christmas for them as they see everything come out of boxes.  Until then, I have been trying to keep us all busy doing lots of things out and about, since the few toy staples we have with us (and grandma's toys) have gotten really old by this point.  The long winter we had (snow in mid-May!) did not help matters.  Where we used to live was a smaller city area, and now we are staying in a suburb of the Twin Cities in Minnesota.  The great thing about that is that there is limitless opportunities for things to do with small children.  That also means I rarely have time to hop onto a computer unless to check for new elementary teaching positions or to apply for jobs in the evening.  Plus, all these changes (along with daylight lasting much longer each night and the typical challenges that 3 year olds cause!) mean that sleep for my duo three year olds has been less than stellar so I can not count on much time at naptime or before I go to sleep to be on the computer either.

So that's where I've been, what we've been doing, and why I've been absent for so long!  I'm hopeful that this current waiting period we are in will allow me to carve out some time to post about some of the things we've been doing to keep entertained in the past few weeks!