A Plan

Our House Hunting (Or Not) scale has tipped wildly in favor of the NOT side. On the long drive to my grandmother's apartment for her 95th birthday, dh and I had a chance to talk and hash out some thoughts on the whole thing.

We now have "The Five Year Plan." Clever name, I know. ;-) We are going to stay put here for five years. That will allow some time for this horrible house market to stabilize (all of these things are "hopefully" true). It will give us time to save up for a much heftier down payment on the next house, and some time to spiffy up some things here (like, um, put walls back on in the shower stall.) Dh's first priority is to our immediate needs here at Epiphany Springs, and because I've been so needy since the birth of my firstborn 10 years ago lately, other things are necessarily left undone. But dh sees the real needs here, the care and love of each person. He is so wonderful that way, even if I do give him a hard time because I'm only seeing my selfish wants! (And I'm not just saying that because I know he reads my blog, LOL. Hi St. DH!! *waving and blowing kisses*)

Anyway, that's the general plan. Now every time I walk into another room, I stop and look around. I get this look in my eye and dh shivers in fear because he knows I'm plotting something that involves at the best some furniture rearranging, and at the worst, backhoes and second mortgages. ;-)

Here are some of the things we are contemplating:

• putting all the girls in one room. Possibly the master bedroom, although it's really not much bigger than the middle sized bedroom, and more awkward, because of the one wall that is all bifold closet doors and the other wall that has the bathroom door and space where the room door opens into. This will involve:
• buying another set of bunks, or a loft, or something. Our youngest girls are only 5 and 3 so I'm thinking some sort of junior loft, with a mattress on the floor below it instead of play space/storage. This could then be Jeffrey's bed in 5 years if it is no longer working out for the girls. Although due to some recent mishaps I'm thinking of wrapping him in bubble wrap and keeping him next to me for the rest of his life (LOL, not that it would have prevented anything from happening - his worst mishaps always seem to be inches away from us, not off unobserved somewhere). The only other thing that might work is a twin/full bunk with a trundle underneath. The only reason this idea bugs me is that means using a whole new set of beds while our current bunks would go unused. We don't have a lot of room for "unused" here, LOL! We also don't have room to pull out a trundle if we have a second set of beds in the room.
• Fixing up the bathroom, and updating the kitchen, to include a dh-made corner island!! Woo hoo! Pulling up carpet. Also eventually having a room put in our basement area (it's not really a basement, it's the unfinished half of our raised ranch.) Maybe a small addition in the back. If we do all these things, we may find we don't *need* to move! :)
• I would love to do some more/different landscaping. Carving out more of the lawn for plants, with a stone walkway to where we always stop the car in the driveway - since I always cut across the lawn anyway! Possibly a hydrangea bush on the side of the house where we don't currently have anything other than an air conditioning unit. :) Putting in plants more appropriate to our horrible soil in the front around the foundation. Nothing grows well there. Poor Mary watches over a bunch of half dead plants every day. :( I would love love love a small fish pond/waterfall in the back, but I think it may take more maintanance time than I'm willing to part with right now.
• Paint! Lots of painting.

So my "house hunting" category will probably turn into "house fixing" and "visit me in the psych ward" categories. ;-)