On Leaving our Current House

We have given our notice at our rental house. Our official last day is the 31st of October. We'll be out of here before then, though. However, with Brian gone on business trips for 5 weeks in a row it will be nice to have a couple weeks after the move to clean and do the little things without stressing about getting it all done the day after the move!It's a little difficult to get stuff done with the kids around. Women from my MOPS group have offered to watch them while I get set up in the new place and clean the old place. I may have to take them up on that offer. It'll be the only alone time I'll get for a while.

Brian and I were almost giddy about telling our landlords that we are leaving. We don't hate this place. We just have a strong dislike for it. When things were looking slim in the house-hunting world we decided that yes, we could live here through the winter if necessary. Neither one of us was excited about that, though. We've lived in worse places before. It just gets complicated when you throw kids into that mix.

Things I am looking forward to (besides the fact it is our house):
• All of the bedrooms on the same floor.
• A guest room in the finished basement, complete with a 3/4 bathroom.
• A backyard that's level with the main level of the house.
• The fact that I'll be able to see the kids in the backyard while in the kitchen (great for starting dinner).
• A bedroom that fits all our bedroom furniture, not just the bed and one dresser.
• Real closets. I'm tired of using the coat closet for my clothes.
• A bathtub/shower combo for my main showering place.
• A coat closet with a flat floor (ours is slanted due to the stairwell).
• Screens on the windows (only 3 windows in our entire house have screens).
• A kitchen that really holds our stuff.
• New carpet.
• Hardwood floors – especially by the entry ways.
• Storage. Our current rental is ill equipped storage-wise.

Things I will not miss:
• The 6 inch clearance between me and the wall when I get out of bed (or in my case, the sliding glass door) . My right elbow has been bruised since we moved here
• Our teeny tiny bathroom shower. Our box shower is not made for real people. It is made for short, skinny supermodels
• The world’s ugliest fireplace in the “family room” downstairs (which houses our dressers and desk), that takes up a quarter of the room and doesn’t even work!!!! (There's a hole cut into the chimney in the living room (upstairs) to house a TV. Our entertainment center is covering that large hole)
• The screen door on our sliding glass door that doesn’t work. I want one that opens and shuts, instead of falls off and has to be put back in the door frame every time we go outside
• We have 3 screens in our entire house. Each screen has at least one hole. I've covered them with clear packing tape to keep out the yellow jackets. How white trash of me.
• A bathtub with a slow leak. Brandon is always accusing me or Caitlin of letting the water out.
• Windows that are hard to open, and even harder to shut!
• Our kid unfriendly back yard, full of jagged rocks, un-mortered bricks, and loose flagstone. Caitlin’s legs and arms are constantly scrapped up and bruised from falling in our rough yard. She hit the back of her head on a brick the other day and has a big knot and a small bruise underneath her hair.
• The back yard play structure. It's great for Brandon, but Caitlin just hurts herself. She loves the slide, though. It doesn't help that if you fall off the right side, you hit bricks, and then fall down another 3 or 4 feet on to jagged rocks and woody bushes. If you fall off the left side you hit a brick wall. The play structure is less of a problem than where the thing is located!
• Downstairs flooring of rough stone. Seriously – it should be on a patio, outside!
• A dishwasher that is the noisiest one ever made. You can’t run it overnight because it will wake you up! Even if you’re on a different floor! Even if you reset it to go off again in a couple of hours!
• Neighbors that yell at each other, or their dogs, all the time.
• Our large pasty-white neighbor that insists on going shirtless when outside. NOOOOO!!!!
• The neighbor dogs that constantly run to the edge of their own back yards to bark at the dogs at the 4 neighboring back yards at any given moment. This is especially concentrated around 4:30, when we're most likely to be in the back yard. They also like to howl for half an hour after the train whistle blows.
• The train whistle blowing for 10 minutes at 2:00 in the morning. How do I know it's a 2:00 am? Or midnight? Or 5:00 am? Because the stupid thing wakes me up almost every night! Still! After 5 months!

I shouldn't be so harsh. There are a few things I'll miss. Like the big trees outside. The attic fan. The window seats. Our neighbors across the street. The 2 minute commute to Brandon's preschool.

This neighborhood is very blue collar. We're more white collar folks, and honestly just don't have much in common with most of our neighbors. I think our new place will be a better fit. The new town is very family friendly, and has lots of families with young kids (which, incidentally, is one of its selling points!). We'll live walking distance to the community park when most of the events are held. I'll be less than 2 miles from the mall/shopping center where I do most of my shopping. It will also be closer to Boulder, which is better for Brian's commute and for church. I'm happy we are moving. We knew we wanted to buy a place from the first day we moved into the area, and now it's happened. I think that is partly why we have issues with our rental - we knew we wouldn't be here very long. But then again, there's just the issues with the rental place. It would have been nice to be better informed. I still remember how I felt when we first saw the place. Now it will be available for someone else. I hope someone else moves in here soon after we're gone. It wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have kids.