House and Orders

So, we've been back from Illinois for over a week now and I haven't said anything about how the trip went. So I'll give a very fast recap. I had spoken with Elizabeth Tandy and Dad talked with a teacher down in Champaign and it was decided that the school system in Mahomet was significanly better than in Champaign. As this will be the first year Ellie goes to school, this was a huge deal for me. That's how we decided to only look in Mahomet.

We drove to Mom and Dad's on Monday and were down in Mahomet Monday morning bright and early to start looking at houses. I had been doing some serious research online and had found about 10 houses to look at that I thought we would like. We started at 9:30 and went until I believe about 6:30 that evening. We found one house we LOVED. It was perfectly arranged, had 5 bedrooms, the colors were great, the kitchen was awesome, the price just right. BUT... it was right on the highway and oh so loud. I thought I could deal with that until we went back the next day and stood in the back yard for a few minutes and yelled at each other to have a conversation. Yeah, not going to work. What a huge bummer! We looked at a couple other houses, but nothing that we thought was worth the money. We looked into rentals, but there was just nothing there in Mahomet. Thursday was our last day to look, so I found another list of about 5 homes and off we went again. This time we found a home that we thought would work for us. Certainly not our dream home, but this needs to be something we can enjoy for 2 years and then move on. And this house will do it. It's 4-bedroom, 2 1/2 bath. There is tons of living space and the bedrooms are sufficiently sized. We'll probably stick all the girls in one room and Ryan in another. We'll need the 4th bedroom for storage, as there isn't a whole lot there. We put in an offer and then a counter-offer and finally the deal was set. We close on May 18th and will hopefully move in that week. (Carrie and Lance are arriving the 22nd, so we're getting kicked out anyway... hehe) I will get pictures posted as soon as we can get some of our own. It's just nice to have a place to live!

Then we've been fighting the good fight to get these orders in order to actually move to Illinois. Steve has gotten the run-around for the past month. He would be told they would fast-track his paperwork then call back a couple days later and they not only hadn't done anything, but couldn't remember who he was. Yeah... frustrating. But-he finally got his RFO (request for orders) today. He just went in to work to get the actual orders and then to arrange for transportation to come and get our household goods. We had hoped to be out by Monday, but it looks like it will probably be the 30th. Things are finally moving along! Whew!

There's more going on, but I'll have to talk about that on another post. My children are tired of me sitting in front of the computer. :-D