Brad and I have perfected a new skill: How to not go to the grocery store for a week. Or two. It works sort of like this: Go to the grocery story and buy a lot of food. Eat it all and run out. Scavage for food in the chest freezer in the basement, which is typically full of Trader Joe goodies that don’t go together, such as frozen fried rice (that my kids won’t eat), sweet potato french fries, and fish sticks. Repeat. Get take out. Make a milk and juice run at 10pm when really tired and don’t want to get a long list of food (which is exactly what we need because the cupboards are bare). Hope my mom brings in dinner, which rarely, works. Wake up, realize we have no milk, no juice, and a box of stale cereal, and decide to go down to the end of the block for DK donuts and coffee. Again! Yay!

We estimate that by this point, if you technically are what you eat, Geert is approximately 50% donut.

How is this possible? June just started. Hattie was just born. Geert just cut his teeth. Leva just finished her first year of pre-school. I remember being young and time flowing so slowly – summers lasted forever, a grade in school took years. Now, with each child we have, time seems to speed up. Alarmingly so. Even more reason to savor the dog-days of summer. And take more pictures.

July pics here: July

We should always trust our gut. When something smells fishy, it’s usually fish. I can’t think of any more sayings like that but, bottom line, we’ve been had. That beautiful stone house, that, while not perfect, was a good house for us, that house that we waited a YEAR for, that house that we had a third child in a two bedroom house for, as it turns out, was a scam.

After being told for a year that we could pay the appraisal estimate for the house, we were later told, curtly and in a freaky letter, that “for the integrity of the estate”, that offer could not be accepted. We were then told in another weird personal letter that if we upped the ante by $10k, that offer would be accepted, which it then was. We also were told for a year that the sale could be contingent on the sale of our current house, later to be told that the lawyers and the “powers that be at the zoo” didn’t want to accept any contingencies. The executor of the estate (our contact in all this) then indignantly said that she would push her weight and make sure we could make it contingent on the sale of our house by June 30, giving us effectively three weeks to sell our house. thanks. but then we were told that as long as we were in contract on the sale of our house by that time, and had a closing date set in july, we could extend the contract further. Then, out of the blue at the eleventh hour, we were told that there were three offers on the estate, two of which were “substantially higher” than our offers, cash deals, with no contingencies and we had 24 hours to offer more money and remove the contingency on the contract. Another curt, impersonal, weird letter, and something we could not do, obviously. Disappointed, and mad, but feeling that we were at least being beaten to the punch legally, and assuming that the executor of the estate had made stupid promises she had no legal backing to make, we let it go. Only to find out that, a) the house wasn’t actually closed upon until July 16, a date, we were told, was too late; b) the house sold for less than the offer we had made on it; and c) the house was sold to a contracting company, with some obscure name, from Springfield, of all places. A little internet searching revealed that the president of that company appears to be the son of the executor of the estate.

We’ve been bamboozled. Led down the primrose path. We’ve been had. And I’m having a hard time letting it go, which is exactly what I know I need to do. I guess I’m more disappointed about how my family has been treated than anything – we didn’t search out the house, the executor came to us and said she had a nice house that they wanted a nice family to live in. We were patient. Honest. We told them what we could afford and how we could do it upfront, and said that if that didn’t work for them, we’d have to decline. We were told in passing “oh, i went over to YOUR house today”, that gifts were left for Leva on the mantle, that it would be nice when we would finally starting mowing our “own” grass over there. We had the key. We hired an architect to draw up plans to knock down walls and showed the plans to the executor, who was excited for us. Man, were we had. And I don’t quite understand the motive. While I understand that a mother will look out for her family first, I don’t believe that lies and deceit are in any way warranted. I don’t think the ends justifies the means.

So let that be a lesson to you, my children – There are wolves in sheep’s clothing out there, and while you will certainly be treated unfairly and deceitfully at times, I hope that I can teach you to act honestly and kindly and responsibly, even in the face of wrong. Ugh.

Most folks out there know that we’re looking for a house. Two bedrooms + 3 babies = stupid. Now, I know that 90% of people on the planet can manage to live in less than 1600 square feet. I know there are many who would be happy to have windows, thrilled to have running water, and ecstatic to have heat AND air conditioning. In the grand scheme of things, we’re blessed beyond imagination and should be happy with what we have, darnit, but oh. Oh, oh, how we would love a bigger house. Not necessarily bigger, even, but assigned differently. Three bedrooms would be wonderful right now, and four? A dream. To be able to close a door on each sleeping child, and to do so when all of them are on the same level of the house? To be able to sleep in the same bed as my husband again – or even just in my own bed? Oh, dreams are made of this. We did have the contract on the “stone house”, a beautiful stone federal in Upper Arlington with a big yard and four small, but *separate* bedrooms. Had it until someone with too much cash came by and swiped it out from under us. Certainly for the better – I was never comfortable thinking of myself as living on that street, and was already getting sad to leave small, quirky Grandview. And let’s be honest, it was too much money for us. Now we’re considering building a house, right here, practically, in our own back yard. Well, side yard. The questions now: can we sell this house? (at this point we don’t even care what we get for it – tell your friends!) How big of a house can we build on that lot? How big would look too big? Will we be happy in a great, new house, with a tiny little yard and no driveway? Can we wait 6 – 9 months for it to be built? Hmmmm… Maybe.

Pictures: April, May/June

Our kids are the luckiest kids in the world. Not only do they have their dad’s devastatingly good looks and sparkling personality, they get to hang out with him all day every day. There’s not many men who would do that, and even less who would be happy to do it. Not many men who know how to heat up and store breast milk. Or how to play dress-up. Or how to make the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Not many who will play catch with a daughter and let a son dance in a dress. Or have dinner ready when I come home. Or throw in a load of laundry. Or know when to discipline a tired cranky child and when to let it slide. And be able to do all this without losing a shred of manliness. Brad, you’re the greatest dad a kid could ever wish for and I’m blessed beyond imagination to have you.