My children found a book last night and brought it to me..."Mommy?" Reasa said, "Will you sing this song to us at bedtime tonight?" as she pointed to the song on the last page of the book.  "Silly Lullaby"...the song I sang (especially to her) every single night before I put her to bed (well, that and some made up words along with some of the right ones to "I Love You a Bushel and a Peck" from Guys and Dolls, thanks to my friend Sandy)...from the book I read (especially to her) every single night before bed.  They giggled the whole time I sang it--I think a total of four times, all three verses.  If you haven't read Snoozers, 7 Short Bedtime Stories for Lively Little Kids, or if you haven't discovered Sandra Boynton for your little ones (or your a-little-bigger-ones), go find her today!!  Our family favorites are Hippos Go Berserk!, Pajama Time, Hey, Wake Up!, Moo, Baa, LaLaLa, But Not the Hippopotamus, and of course Snoozers.

She visited here in her mind today...wish I was there too.  :)

...is not something I want to be doing.  Have I mentioned how much I love my house?  Now, I know it's really not that big of a deal.  In the scheme of things, this issue--this loving my current house--is so not important.  Living with my husband is important.  Right now, he works in Pennsylvania.  We live in New York--only an hour and fifteen minutes away, but just far enough that he can't come home every night and go back every morning.  At first, I think he felt like he was getting something of a break...a breather from life with three kids and a wife.  Fewer responsibilities, really only needing to take care of himself, no garbage to take out, no real conversation necessary...eating what he wanted to eat, when he wanted to eat it, from wherever he wanted to eat it.  Nobody to consult about tv shows, restaurant choices, when he would come home from work, shower schedules, bedtimes...if he wanted to fall asleep in the recliner and stay there all night, nobody was trying to wake him up at midnight to go to bed.  He still got to say goodnight to the kids every night, and he came home on the weekends to get his tank filled up again...no problem.  I think somewhere about month 8, that got old.  I don't know what changed...maybe it happened when I snapped long about January, telling him I needed a plan...an end in sight...either to the job going on in this way, or to us living here and him living there.  Maybe he suddenly realized there was more to this whole thing than just a break from routine.  I think he really started to miss us.  I think the stress finally got to him...as the responsibilities increased because he does such a good job at what he does.  The phone calls became longer.  The visits home became more filled with, "I just miss you guys so much."  At first it was camper shopping: "We can stay in this until we make a decision, and we can use it like I am using my hotel room...you can stay down here during the summer and into the fall (and really, they're built for winter living too, Min), and then we can make choices."  Yeah.  Campers like he was talking about cost more than our house.  And I'm not living in a 20 foot camper for an extended period of time.  Period.  I don't care how new it is. 

So, the kids and I drove around for 4 hours and looked at houses yesterday.  Ugh (and those poor kids!!).  It's amazing the house for which people can ask $120,000.  Our house could sell for $200,000 in its current condition (and we might list it for somewhere around $75,000, just to give you a realistic comparison) if they can ask that for those homes!!  I was taken aback...especially considering the property on which they sat--.18 acres in town.   When you can look at a house from the outside and say, "We'll have to put new windows and a new roof on that house within the first year," and the price tag is $92,000...and you haven't even stepped in the front door to see the shag carpeting and dark paneling on the walls, or the 20-year-old appliances...or the painted-country-blue kitchen cabinets, for that matter...

...maybe we'll rent for a while. 


Maybe we won't have to worry about it at all.

Who knows?

I hate not knowing.

On a brighter note, if all we were doing was gym hunting, we would have found our place!!  Last night we visited a private gymnastics center down there...with a really good, very reputed program, a coach/owner who has done this for 21 years, a permanent set-up (not set up/tear down every day like we do right now), spring floor, competitive team all the way through level 10...the girls loved the gym, and though the cost would be a LOT more than we're used to...it's a fantastic program, and it looks like a blast.  He even basically offered me a job right there.  :)  That would definitely help with the cost.  I need to coach gymnastics next year like I need a hole in the head, but I'm just saying...the girls would love that gym.  They even have a boys' program! (Poor Bryson...though he was intrigued by the boys practicing on the parallel bars last night...it's not terribly girlie when the big boys are pressing to handstand on those bars or doing mounts with a springboard...pretty cool actually, if you ask him.)  Time will tell.

Pray with us.  The time is coming to make some decisions.  Scary decisions.