I'm Baaaa-aaaack.

This year has been bananas!  And I wrote none of it.  Not one word.  I'd feel worse about it, but I can't.  I recognize that it was all I could do to just live it, let alone set it down and make sense out of it.  My husband's job search and ultimate hiring, the 6 months of single parenthood that followed, the move (oh, the move!), two months of living out of suitcases, finding a house, switching kids' schools, a job offer for me, moving in (finally), and taking a part-time job after 10 years of stay-at-home mothering.  It's been A LOT.  Oh-so-much that only now do I feel like I'm getting my feet under me.  And perhaps I'm ready to write.

I feel rusty and don't know where to begin...

How about here?  We sold our house in one day.  ONE DAY!  For that we were not prepared.  It took me two weeks of mad work to get it show ready.  Me alone, because Mr. Wicke was working in California already.  It was a crazy amount of work, but I had the place looking pretty swanky, if I do say so myself.  Still and all, I was not prepared to sell it to the first guy who walked through the door.  But we did.

Then we were homeless...because we still didn't know exactly where in southern California Mr. Wicke would be placed.  We waited...and waited...and waited...still no final decision.  And it was July.  School was starting in a month and a half.  The kids were asking where they were going to live.  "I don't know," didn't feel comforting--to them or to me.  We came to stay in temporary housing for a week and a half, and I was determined to find our home come hell or high water.  Hats off to our real estate agent.  She was a gem and took us to about 8 different cities, giving us an overview of the area.  Then magically, one Sunday afternoon we found our home.

It was a surprise.  We were just about to sign papers for another property.  The almost house almost met all of our criteria, but there were a couple of concessions that didn't sit well.  The foremost being that it didn't have a downstairs bedroom for my mom when she comes to visit.  She just can not do stairs anymore with her back.  So we were hesitating, yet we hadn't found anything better and would have hated to pass it up only to be disappointed later.

"I want you to see one more house," our agent said over the phone.  She was out of town on business, "but the owner has agreed to let you in tomorrow, so we can make it work."

To tell the truth, I wasn't very excited about it.  The pictures on line were underwhelming, but when I walked in I actually said, "Is this the same house?"  It had a great staircase in the entryway and a see through fireplace between the living room and dining room, neither of which had been featured.  It had vaulted ceilings and a fireplace in the master bedroom.  Didn't see those in the pictures either.  It had three french doors that opened to the back patio.  A gigantic bonus room and a surprisingly huge closet in a secondary bedroom.  It had a laundry chute and a three car garage.  It had a downstairs bedroom, and it was in our price range.  Where do we sign?

Still, we didn't know where Mr. Wicke would be placed, and I should interject here that we still don't.  He has been kept busy doing interim work but has yet to be assigned a specific campus, so there is a possibility of a commute in our future.  I hope not, but only time will tell.  In the mean time, we are settling in.  The kids' school, which was priority number one for us, seems excellent.  Our neighborhood, while older than our last, has been very friendly and welcoming.  Our church has made us feel at home, and I have been offered a part-time teaching position.

But that is a story for another day.