need to unload

I have so much inside me I have to get out I simply don't know how to begin. Perhaps I will start with the easiest. This morning I sent my oldest child with Grandpa and Grandma back to Phoenix. This is the first time she will be so far away from home by herself and for a whole week. I am looking forward to the break but at the same time I already miss her. I was surprised to feel this way since she and I often butt heads together. I know it will be fine but I just am surprised to be dealing with these feelings this morning. I still have my other two at home so it isn't like I am home alone. I guess it is the idea that I can't just go get her if she wants to come home early or if I decide I miss her too much (although I doubt I would do that even if she was right next door.) I hope I can use this time to give individual attention to my middle child. I think she needs it.

The second thing that has happened has more details to it but I will try to be brief. Nine days ago my husband and I went to look at homes to purchase. On the same day we put in an offer for a house and it was accepted. Of all the houses we had seen that day we liked this one the best but we were rushed to put in an offer because that day two other offers were being submitted. I think it is possible we still would have made an offer on the house the next day but it wasn't comfortable to be so rushed. We spent the next week worrying about whether we had done the right thing. There were a lot of things that started to come to our mind about things we didn't really like about the home and we were going to have to deal with them or accept what we couldn't change. We then transitioned to thinking that this would be our home and the new area we would be living in. Yesterday we had the home inspected and it was NOT good. As we walked through the house a second time (the first time lasting only about 15min) we started to see for ourselves more and more things that were wrong with the house and would need to be fixed. Some things were little things and others were not. These are repairs-not cosmetic changes. The cosmetic changes I could live with. The whole house was 70's décor and looked and smelled like I would be moving into my Grandmother's house. I can deal with burnt orange carpet. I can deal with bedroom doors that have holes in them. I can't however deal with water damage and MOLD!. UGH!!!!! The front living room had a whole corner near a window where the outside sprinklers had been spraying on the house and because the upper part of the house had composite panels and the sealant was gone between them the water was seeping into the house through the frame and dry wall and growing mold on the wall. The wall at the time of inspection was still measuring as wet! Had we seen this at the time we visited the house or had this been disclosed to us we would never have made an offer on the house. But there was a couch covering the wall and the only thing we were told was that there might be some water damage on the wall near the window. The contract had an "As Is" clause which should have been a clue but we convinced ourselves it was because it was an old home (1904) and because the woman was older and just didn't want to mess with fixing little things herself. This one spot of mold was anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 or more in repair work. But that is not all. There was evidence of water damage all over the basement and more mold in two of the closets. There was a water pump in the basement that was still leaking. Anyway, there were other things that we were not thrilled with so this has actually been a blessing. We have a justifiable reason for walking away from the property. It was really hard yesterday. For a while I just felt sick and couldn't believe we had made an offer on the house. Later that same day I felt more relief and now I am rather glad that God has closed that door and we won't be living there. I am not looking forward to dragging my kids around again to house hunt but I will keep praying that God will help us find the house that is right for us. There is more to this house hunting that I would like to say but I'll have to write about it later.