Houses

We're going to be moving at the end of April or beginning of May.

Nick had to make a business trip to California last week, so we arranged for the kids to stay with various people so I could go with him. My friend called it a babymoon, but we mostly went to see houses and scope out schools.

We went through over 270 houses that claimed to be waterfront homes, and in the end we had a list of 24 beach ones we liked, because location, location, location, right? We loved some of the homes in the Canyon Lake area, but we decided against it in the end, and a lot of homes in the South Laguna area made our list, but it was just too far from Nick's workplace. More than 4 hours a day in traffic is not a good thing for family time. Plus, we would never be able to afford a beach house on our own, and we wanted to make sure to take full advantage of the opportunity here, that being The Company My Husband Works For Will Buy Our House Outright For Us. There are a million contingencies, of course, but that's basically how it is. We won't have a mortgage or rent to pay, and we get to choose the house. So of course we want to make the most of this opportunity.

Now we've just got to narrow it down from twenty-four to one.

The hardest part about narrowing this down is we don't know what it's like to be a family of seven, and that's what we will become in the new house. We've been living in a two-bedroom apartment since before Viv was born, and before that we had a condo for a bit, and before that we were in England, and before that we were childless and travelling the world. We've never had room to really spread out.

So when we walked into a six-bedroom house last week, it felt too big for us. But I'm realizing the potential in these homes. The perfect home for us doesn't exist, a home with 7 or 8 bedrooms can be found, yes, but then the rest of the home is a huge palace with ornate details and way too many things for my kids to hit their heads on. I don't want a palace, I want a cozy home with a lot of bedrooms. And I do realize that I sound a bit like a princess with my demands and such, but I'm sorry. Lots of bedrooms. That is all.

*Nick and I have been considering remodelling one of the houses, moving around a few walls so that we could end up with enough bedrooms. We'll see.

Couldn't be any more excited

So I think we've pretty much filled up the Big News category for march, yes? Moving across the country, new job, new house, new school, oh, and another baby! Yes, we've got a lot going on.

We've only told a few people so far, and we've gotten a mostly shocked and surprised, but still very excited reaction. It's so unbelievable to me to be able to truthfully say "We're expecting our fifth child." because I never pictured myself with so many children.

When I met Nick he wanted two kids, and his absolute maximum was three, with the third child being an accident. After which both babymaking parties would be taking preventative measures to prevent further offspring. I didn't have an exact number when I was young, I wanted a minimum of two, probably three, four seemed perfect, and five only if we had an accident or twins. I was crazy.

Then Nick and I got serious and talked about it and decided to start with two and see if we even wanted more after that. So we had our boy and our girl, and we were the perfect little family, and for a long time (right up until I got pregnant, actually), I didn't want anymore kids. Nick did. He would totally give up his man-card every. single. time. we saw a little baby when we went out, ooh-ing and ahh-ing and slowly persuading me to just consider one more. Just one more.

So we all know where this went. Philippa was born after an almost three year gap, a long space for me considering Theo and Sera are 15.5 months apart. When Pippa was about a year old, Nick and I decided that we wanted another baby, and we wanted to have it close in age to Pippa, like we did with Theo and Sera. We kept things a little longer this time, with 2 years and a few months between Pippa and Viv. Immediately after Viv was born, we knew we wanted one more baby, and since we didn't want to have one child a handful of years behind the rest, we decided to just go for it. So there will be a little bit more than 16 months between Viv and Baby5.

Honestly, I think I'm crazy. Nick too. I was going to stop after two kids. I would have happily been done. And while I was pregnant with my third and fourth children, I was so done. They were going to be my last. And after each of them, we needed another. And that has led us here, a chaotic family of six, with kids ages 7, 5, 3, 11 months, and one on the way. We are loud, we do not fit into a normal car, and we spend an obscene amount of money buying groceries. Old ladies love us, and middle-aged women raise their eyebrows at our circus, surely wondering if we have heard of birth control. (We have.)

As we've told a few people we've gotten a few of the shocked and-not-in-a-good-way reactions. Like this baby was an accident so we are just going to trudge through it. No. This baby was planned, and even if he or she wasn't, we would (and are going to) appreciate every single moment of this pregnancy and new adventure into parenthood.

The Other Reason We're Moving Out

Baby #5

Due the last week of August or the first week of September, 2011.

14.4 weeks in and we've already chosen full names for the baby boy or girl, who will be a gender surprise.

Big Changes

So, after much preparation and renovation and innovation and just plain work put in to stay in our current home for at least another year, we have decided to move out. Very soon.

First, Nick was offered a higher-up job at work. The job was located in Las Vegas. We both felt like Las Vegas was not the place for us to be. We like Dallas, we have friends here, and I don't like Las Vegas for more than a week, tops. So Nick politely declined the offer. That all took place in the fall.

Immediately after Nick rejected the job offer, his company went through some big changes. They switched headquarters, set up some new locations, and a lot of new jobs became available. Nick was, once again, offered a new job, except this time it was his dream job. His words, not mine. This time, we seriously considered it, and requested all the details. The job was located in southern California, a place that both Nick and I love, but we always found it to be too expensive for us to permanently live. The job involved a once-weekly travel schedule, where Nick would need to fly out on a Wednesday morning, most likely to the east coast or ohio, although possibly to Texas, he would attend meetings and dinners and make sure everything was functioning correctly, and then he would fly back on Thursday afternoon and be home just in time for dinner.

We found out that the job was very secure, and had huge promotion possibilities, and that the pay was great. Then, in a very complicated and (for us) lucky situation, we learned that the company would provide a house for us to live in. We had until March 1st to decide.

We had a lot of late-night conversations and a few really big arguments. We've known since we first moved here that we didn't want to raise our kids here, that's why we never bought a house. While the school system is excellent, it was never my favourite place. And we were going to move in a year anyway. We have many friends here, but we have many friends in many places, so why tie ourselves down because of others? In the end, we were leaning towards taking it.

The Company flew our family, all six of us, out to LA for a week to see the house, and the area, to check out schools, and get a feel for what it would be like to live there. We all loved it. We took the kids to Disneyland and I'm pretty sure they would have been happy spending eternity on the Dumbo ride.

On the morning we were leaving I did my own thing, killed a few hours while Nick took the kids to the beach on his own, and then we flew home. And we decided to take it. Take the job, take the opportunity that is being handed to Nick on a silver platter. Amidst all these stories of people being fired and laid off, somehow we got lucky.

So for all the reasons you see above, and many, many more, we are moving. Moving across the country, away from family and friends, towards new opportunities.