I wasn’t sure I was going to like this book at first. The first few chapters are a page or two long at the most and it was bothering me. I absolutely loved Walls’ first novel, The Glass Castle, and after I got into it a little bit, I really liked this one too. The Glass Castle is a memoir of the author’s childhood. Half Broke Horses is the story of her grandmother and also the author’s mother’s childhood. Reading Half Broke Horses really helped me to understand how her mother got to be who she was because after reading The Glass Castle I was flabbergasted as to how anyone could live that way, on purpose, with children in tow.
We had a horrible morning. Awful. I broke down and sobbed before lunch. There were just too many things going wrong. Let me start at the beginning. Before our realtor picked us up this morning we got an e-mail saying that our temporary housing wasn’t going to work out the way we had planned and that after the first thirty days it was going to cost us $3,000 a month to live there since it was going to be furnished. Obviously, we aren’t going to pay $3,000 a month to live somewhere so Sean asked if we could have an unfurnished apartment. E-mails went back and forth and they decided we could but we would have to break the lease agreement from the first apartment and that was going to cost money as well. More e-mails went back and forth and then it was decided upon that we could stay with the same apartment, just without the furniture.
So while all of that was going on we met with a woman who does house loans. She was trying to give us the hard sell and was going on and on about this, that and the other and at that point in the day I was worried that we didn’t even have an apartment to live in…we just weren’t ready to talk house loans and we especially weren’t ready to lock in or get the hard sell. From there we went to look at houses and that went pretty well.
Our realtor dropped us back off at the hotel and Sean and I regrouped. (That’s when I broke down in the car.) We then went and had a FABULOUS lunch at an Italian restaurant near our hotel. We then headed off to look at houses and schools on our own. What helped us narrow down our decision was the schools. After looking at the two schools we were choosing between (based on location and things we’d read on the internet about them) it became obvious to us which school was the best choice for us. One was very institutional, we had to have a map of the school just to figure out where things were, the class sizes were larger and we just didn’t get a warm and fuzzy feel about it. The other school was exactly the opposite. Loved it!!! The bonus was a parent stopped us outside and told us that it’s a wonderful school with tons of parent support. SOLD!!!!
Then we went to the subdivision we were interested in that feeds into that school. We really like the houses there; they have a similar look and feel to our current house (without the basement). We think we are going to build. We have picked the floor plan we like and the lot we like. Now we just need to decide when and if we are going to take the leap.
We are going out with our realtor again tomorrow, so we’ll see what that brings…
I love Liam’s art teacher. She comes up with the best projects. I liked this one because they got to sew. It is on burlap and the snowman is painted, but the scarf, hat, snowflakes, arms and legs are sewn. Didn’t he do a good job?
We are clearing out things around here for the big move, so we went through all of our books and thinned them out. I took all of these to Half-Price Books and got $35 for them. Not bad, although I WILL say I was hoping for a little more…that was A LOT of books!!!
The past few weeks or so I have noticed just how much older Liam is looking. He looks like a big kid. I guess it doesn’t help that he is so tall and people always think he is at least nine years old, but it just struck me one day when I looked at him and he just looked so different. I had the same experience tonight at his violin lessons. I was watching him interact with his teacher and he just seemed so much older. He does have a birthday coming up. He is going to be 8. Can you believe it?
Colm is the star student this week which means, among other things, that he gets to bring home Speckles. Speckles has a journal and each night we write about the adventures he has had that day. We get to keep him until next Wednesday and he gets to go everywhere with us in between now and then.
Look at that defense! 🙂
All the boys working together to assemble the Lego Millenium Falcon we got at Legoland.
There are only so many board games one can play on the third consecutive snow day when you don’t have a car and are stuck at home with the children for 72 hours. Honestly, it wasn’t too bad. The boys got along fairly well. (There was some crying, hitting and yelling…don’t get me wrong, they ARE siblings.) So, we broke out Sorry. Liam and I played while Colm watched which was probably for the best. (Look back at where I mentioned crying earlier.) We had already played slapjack, war and countless video games. As much fun as snow days are, I am glad Monday is going to be a balmy 33 degrees.
I called in the professionals to clean my house today. It was worth every penny. New year, clean house. Awesome. I am good at picking up and cleaning, but to be honest, the finer points of REALLY cleaning are lost on me. How they got my wood floors to look so good I have no idea. I am certain that my toilets are cleaner now than when they were installed. They even took off the couch cushions and cleaned out all the junk under there which, quite frankly, was a little embarrassing. I don’t even want to know what they found under there. Am I going to have these people clean my house every week? Month? No, but a few times a year would be awesome.