January:
Of course you already know that we returned home on January 2 from our trip to Kansas for Christmas. A truly wonderful time was had by all and once we got back to the daily grind of things, we were glad to be back in Maine. Even in the blizzards. And even with Tory jumping off of the deck and landing on a nail, pointed end up, of course. This made me drive to Kennebunk to the dr's office in a blizzard to have her checked out, xrayed, cleaned up and ace bandaged. So much for a fun snow day. The next day she stayed home since it was so sore, enjoying her three times a day antibiotic. I sent her back to school on Friday morning, then picked her back up for a re-check. In the few hours she'd been at school the knee had gone from fairly normal looking to swollen, red, oozy, and extremely painful. Wonderful. We were told to keep her home and constantly change the bandages. They even drew on her knee with a magic marker so they could tell for certain if the redness spread. They made us an appointment at the weekend clinic for Saturday morning, stating if it was worse or not better she might be needing some stronger antibiotics and a trip to the hospital to get the infection under control. Amazingly, the next morning it was a whole new knee. The redness was more or less gone and the oozing had stopped completely. Thank God! All she has to show for this scary experience now is a little round scar.
Gross and oozy above
It may not look it, but much much better the next day!
February:
I'm not sure I can actually tell you where most of February went. I had another sinus infection that pretty much knocked me out cold. On top of this, I was anxiously awaiting Andy's orders, convinced they'd completely forgotten about us. Furthermore, we were neck deep in The Great House Remodel of 2011. We were running out of time to get the house finished and on the market. We did, however, enjoy a nice long visit with Janette and Ember from Feb 19 to March 2nd, so it wasn't all stressful and bad. We finally received orders around the middle of February and were more than a little shocked to discover that out of 18 places on Andy's dreamsheet, we were headed to number 13. Buffalo, NY. At first I was pretty upset, thinking of the loss of sea pay for Andy and knowing he didn't really want a land job. And Buffalo is a big city, which is SO not my cup of tea. The more I looked in to it, however, the more wonderful things I found out about the area. I narrowed our house search down to three towns with Orchard Park, NY being my favorite for its smaller atmosphere, wonderful schools, yet close proximity to Sector Buffalo. Eventually we got a lead on a house in Orchard Park and I'm excited to say we're fairly certain we're going to rent it. We're making a trip down over Memorial Day weekend to meet with the owner and see the house for ourselves (I already had a Coastie Chick friend scope it out for me and she loved it!) and finalize things. It's a 4 bdrm, 3 bath, 2200 sq foot house with an enormous front and back yard on a cul-de-sac, close to the schools....I could gush on and on about this house! Fireplace! Master bath with jacuzzi tub! A whole wall of closets in the master bedroom! It's pretty exciting. LINK TO HOUSE PICS
and BEFORE PICS (more added soon)
March:
March, oh March....let's just say I'm glad it's nearly over. It all started on March 1 when I was expecting our tax refund. It never showed. So I gave it til the next day, still no money. I checked the IRS website for the "Where's my refund" application and when I checked it gave no date. Just a code, 1301, and a number to call. So of course I called. The woman I spoke to told me my refund had been delayed and I should see it that Friday, March 4 and if I didn't, to call back. So March 4 comes and goes without money in the bank so I called back. Spoke to the same woman who assured me I'd see it on March 11 if not sooner. Ok, foolishly I believed her. March 11 comes and goes without a refund. All the while, I'm still staring at code 1301 on the computer screen every morning. So on March 11 I call again. This time I'm told that there is a hold up with returns like ours trying to pay back the 2008 home buyer's credit and they were accidentally sent to errors. Mine was out of errors, being processed, please don't call back for 30 days. Say what???? Long story short, we just got real answers on Monday and a "possible" refund date of April 12. We shall see.
While all of this was going on, we also discovered that we wouldn't be able to sell our house for what we need to at this point. A flux of short sales and foreclosures in Biddeford and surrounding areas has caused the market to drop, again. Meaning we can still list the house for about 10 k more than we bought it for three years ago but after paying the realtor and paying the mortgage off, we walk away with nothing. If the buyers went for list price. Any lower and we walk away paying. No thanks. So, we've decided to rent it out. I've spent most of March trying to find the perfect people and think we finally have! It's another coast guard family which is what we preferred.
And to add on to the stresses of March, the kids have been sick almost constantly. Literally ten minutes after we put Net and Ember on a plane to KS Livy started feeling sick. She threw up in the car on the way home. That stomach bug lasted three or four days and by the time she was feeling better, Tory came down with an awful virus that knocked her out for a week. The day before I counted Tory officially better, Livy came down with it. Another one down for a week. And yup, you guessed it, next came Chloe. I am not kidding one bit when I tell you that in the month of March I have been to the kids' dr office 8 times. EIGHT TIMES. Sigh. But {{knocking on wood}} I'm hopeful that this is all behind us now and we've done our time in sickness-land and that'll be it for us.
So there you are. Now you know and now you're caught up. :)
I'm not sure I can actually tell you where most of February went. I had another sinus infection that pretty much knocked me out cold. On top of this, I was anxiously awaiting Andy's orders, convinced they'd completely forgotten about us. Furthermore, we were neck deep in The Great House Remodel of 2011. We were running out of time to get the house finished and on the market. We did, however, enjoy a nice long visit with Janette and Ember from Feb 19 to March 2nd, so it wasn't all stressful and bad. We finally received orders around the middle of February and were more than a little shocked to discover that out of 18 places on Andy's dreamsheet, we were headed to number 13. Buffalo, NY. At first I was pretty upset, thinking of the loss of sea pay for Andy and knowing he didn't really want a land job. And Buffalo is a big city, which is SO not my cup of tea. The more I looked in to it, however, the more wonderful things I found out about the area. I narrowed our house search down to three towns with Orchard Park, NY being my favorite for its smaller atmosphere, wonderful schools, yet close proximity to Sector Buffalo. Eventually we got a lead on a house in Orchard Park and I'm excited to say we're fairly certain we're going to rent it. We're making a trip down over Memorial Day weekend to meet with the owner and see the house for ourselves (I already had a Coastie Chick friend scope it out for me and she loved it!) and finalize things. It's a 4 bdrm, 3 bath, 2200 sq foot house with an enormous front and back yard on a cul-de-sac, close to the schools....I could gush on and on about this house! Fireplace! Master bath with jacuzzi tub! A whole wall of closets in the master bedroom! It's pretty exciting. LINK TO HOUSE PICS
and BEFORE PICS (more added soon)
March:
March, oh March....let's just say I'm glad it's nearly over. It all started on March 1 when I was expecting our tax refund. It never showed. So I gave it til the next day, still no money. I checked the IRS website for the "Where's my refund" application and when I checked it gave no date. Just a code, 1301, and a number to call. So of course I called. The woman I spoke to told me my refund had been delayed and I should see it that Friday, March 4 and if I didn't, to call back. So March 4 comes and goes without money in the bank so I called back. Spoke to the same woman who assured me I'd see it on March 11 if not sooner. Ok, foolishly I believed her. March 11 comes and goes without a refund. All the while, I'm still staring at code 1301 on the computer screen every morning. So on March 11 I call again. This time I'm told that there is a hold up with returns like ours trying to pay back the 2008 home buyer's credit and they were accidentally sent to errors. Mine was out of errors, being processed, please don't call back for 30 days. Say what???? Long story short, we just got real answers on Monday and a "possible" refund date of April 12. We shall see.
While all of this was going on, we also discovered that we wouldn't be able to sell our house for what we need to at this point. A flux of short sales and foreclosures in Biddeford and surrounding areas has caused the market to drop, again. Meaning we can still list the house for about 10 k more than we bought it for three years ago but after paying the realtor and paying the mortgage off, we walk away with nothing. If the buyers went for list price. Any lower and we walk away paying. No thanks. So, we've decided to rent it out. I've spent most of March trying to find the perfect people and think we finally have! It's another coast guard family which is what we preferred.
And to add on to the stresses of March, the kids have been sick almost constantly. Literally ten minutes after we put Net and Ember on a plane to KS Livy started feeling sick. She threw up in the car on the way home. That stomach bug lasted three or four days and by the time she was feeling better, Tory came down with an awful virus that knocked her out for a week. The day before I counted Tory officially better, Livy came down with it. Another one down for a week. And yup, you guessed it, next came Chloe. I am not kidding one bit when I tell you that in the month of March I have been to the kids' dr office 8 times. EIGHT TIMES. Sigh. But {{knocking on wood}} I'm hopeful that this is all behind us now and we've done our time in sickness-land and that'll be it for us.
So there you are. Now you know and now you're caught up. :)
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