Oh...where to begin?!!

The last month has been a whirlwind and beyond STRESSFUL.
We do have a buyer for mom's house after: countering back and forth with two different buyers, each with different contingencies, a three hour inspection with seven strangers in the house, fixing the short list of requests following the inspection, debating two different radon tests and having an engineer come in for one and a half hours to check the structure. Joy. The house is over 100 years old. Yes, you are going to see some signs of "settling"!!
As far as building the new house goes, this is our progress: we all attended the Town Board meeting at the end of August with our builder, realtor, her boss, town attorney and the Planning Board chair WOMAN who is one tough cookie lemme tell ya!! The owner of the realty office introduced us all and explained why we want to build a mother/daughter (he is a fantastic speaker!!). The builder then went on to show the board our blue prints and a new development land map. Their latest hang up is that we had to have four "good acres" on our lot in order to build a two family home. The engineer looked into it and out of 15, we have 10 good acres, so he created a new map for the board to reflect that. A little bit of back and forth went on and our builder tried to explain that time is being wasted. At that point a man in the audience spoke up to explain that this is a "process", blah, blah, blah...that is when my husband chimed in to let him know that he understands "processes" as he was a commissioner for five years and he works for a municipality! I thought I would die! I was giving him the "'please shut up look" and our realtor was tapping him on the shoulder. Hahaha!! Turns out the "man in the audience" is on the Planning Board. Terrific.
Thank goodness one of the Town Board members spoke up right then and said "Listen, at this point, I don't see any problems and we saw these blueprints and other land maps back in January." Amen!!! I love him. Yes, it has been 8 months of this craziness, so with that they all voted in favor.
This means the Town Board has given their blessing. What's next? We have to be approved by the PLANNING BOARD at their next meeting on October 7th. Yeah, Fred will be staying home with the kids that evening! Just kidding, he promises to sit quietly. =]

Other than that, we would all be homeless come the end of October with the closing of mom's house, so I scrambled to find a rental for all of us.
Luckily I was able to find one that was just completely renovated inside and out, it's in our existing school district and it was to be available Sept. 30th.
Perfect. Looked at it and paid the deposit.
The next day (being the same day we found out there were things that needed to be fixed from the inspection and it was the day of the Board meeting) I get a phone call from the rental owner saying that "the current tenants had the sale of the house they were buying fall through and they would like to stay in the house". What? Oh, hell no!! As I began to go crazy on the poor woman, she went on to say "But, we have decided that it's only fair that you get the house since they said they would be out by 9/30 and you have paid the deposit." She just wanted to check with me and see if it would be possible for us to take a different house that she has for rent in another town and then they could stay there. At this point, I can't do things just to be nice so, NO. They have no children to worry about school districts, so they can take that house!
On a positive note, Sophia started fourth grade and really likes it. She has a teacher that is highly interactive and believes that most of their work should be done in the classroom where they can all work together. Homework will be kept to a minimal amount. I love her.
Alena is talking like crazy. Her pronunciation is getting better and better. We switched all of her sippy cups to straws and what a BIG difference with speech. She continues to be as funny as ever and smart as a whip. Her newest obsession is Blues Clues, Periwinkle being her fav. She has a stuffed "Periwhipple" that goes EVERYWHERE with her and we watch the DVD's endlessly. She thinks Steve rocks and that Joe is scary!! We all think Joe just tries too hard to be a dork, where it comes natural to poor Steve. :-)
The next post will hopefully be much more positive with us getting settled into the rental house and the Planning Board meeting behind us.
With love,
Jenni