myJaxonIf we don’t go crazy once in a while, we’ll all go crazy. - Hawkeye

As a lot of people are aweare, we’ve been house hunting for about a month now. Each time I look at a house, I try to imagine what we would have where and what we would do to the place. I know Jesse and our Realtor may think I’m crazy about setting up each house as we see it, but that is what is going to make it a home and if I can’t envision us living there, then why would we buy it? Either way, as we’ve gone through the houses, the same things keep coming up. Things I want to do in order to make it ours. That includes how to decorate the individual rooms, anything we need to buy for the house, or anything we need to build. Here’s what I want to do to our new home, wherever that may end up:

• Ian’s bedroom: Yes he is going to get his own bedroom. He needs to get out of ours. I’m not really sure what I want to do yet, but I do know that he’s going to need his own shelves, something with baskets to more easily store his toys, and a paint job. At one house, I noticed that hte owners had painter their child’s room in two colors - the walls were a green and the trim was yellow. I wouldn’t use the same colors as they did, but it did give me an idea of what I could do with Ian’s room.
• Jesse’s office: He wants his own room where he can escape. At the moment, the plan is to build a room in the basement of whatever house we get. We would prefer an unfinished basement so we can pick where the office would be and finish the basement ourselves, but we’re not being that picky about it.
• Basement: The house has to have a basement. For one, it’s additional space that doesn’t get included in the square footage of a house; and two, it’s an area that we can build to suit our needs. Currently, the plan for the basement is to divide it into three sections: Jesse’s office, laundry & storage room, and the the rest of the area to be used as a family/play room. Someplace for all the DVDs, video games, and most of Ian’s bigger toys.
• Kitchen: I like the cook, so the kitchen has be to function and have plenty of room. At the moment, I can’t really say what would need to be done since it would depend on the house we buy.
• Washer & Dryer: Must have. According to our Realtor, we can always ask to include the washer and dryer in with the rest of the appliances, but if we don’t end up with any, then that’s fine. I can make do with a laundromat for a couple of weeks, but we would end up buying new machines fairly quickly. When we do get the machines, I want to spend some money on them. I’m not saying we’re going to get top of the line, but I don’t want a pair of cheaps ones as well. Something in between that will do big loads (I would rather do one load of laundry than multiples) and is energy efficient as well.
• Dining Room Table: I want a dining table. We currently do not have anything. When we eat dinner, it’s either sitting on the couch in the living room or standing up in the kitchen (depending on what we’re having). I want to be able to sit down to a meal with Jesse and Ian at a real table.
• New Furniture: I’m sure this one is way down on the priority list, but I would really love to get new furniture. Something that is ours and not dug out of the trash or given to us by someone else. I’m not saying our current furniture is bad, but it’s not all that comfortable. The couches are great considering they only cost us $200 for the both of them, but after sitting on them for too long, you end up with a sore butt.
• Wired: Jesse wants to wire the entire house up with ethernet (in some form) plus have wireless throughout the entire house.

I’m sure I’ll continue to add to this list, but that’s all I can think of right now. At the moment, we do have a house we’re interested in. Nothing has happened with it yet, we just saw it yesterday and we want to see it two more times before making an offer. But if I had to go on my gut instinct, something tells me we will be making an offer within the next week. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

It’s really quiet this weekend. Ian is off visiting with his Nana, so there is no one here running around (yes, he’s starting to run, however, not well) jabbering. All of his toys are put away and I don’t have to make a single meal if I don’t want to. Jesse can fend for himself. It’s kind of odd. When mom first asked if she could have Ian for a weekend, I was really excited. I would take him down on Friday while Jesse was at work, we’d have the weekend to ourselves and then on Monday, while Jesse was at work, I would have the entire apartment to myself. Do you know when the last time was that I had the entire place to myself? I was about 20 lbs heavier with Ian kicking my bladder. It’s been a year since I had any time to myself, with no one wanting attention. Granted, Jesse doesn’t require that much attention and we can sit in the same room for hours without talking, but it’s just not the same.

Needless to say, my glorious plans were not going to happen. Mom’s car isn’t working so we’re meeting halfway on Monday instead and Jesse was planning on working from home since he has a skin doctor appointment. <sigh> It was a great dream while it lasted.

Anyway, so far, it’s been a nice relaxing weekend. I’m hoping to get the office cleaned up and some other chores, as well as figure out what we’re going to do for Ian’s first birthday. I can’t wait until we get a house and we can actually have it at our own place. The apartment is too small, so we’re trying to find someplace that will give Ian a place to play, but still be a good place for lunch. I think we have it narrowed down to a couple of places, but I want to check them out before I make any final decisions.

Overall, nothing much is going on with me at the moment. Between Ian and Jesse, I really don’t have that much time for myself. My time usually comes in the form of reading or tooling around online.

QUICK UPDATE:  Not 5 minutes after publishing this, Jesse asked me to make HIM chocolate milk since I do it so much better than him.  It’s not like there is a specific science to pouring milk into the maker and adding the cocoa powder.  And people wonder why I say I have two kids at home.  

It’s so shiny! I received my Christmas present a little early this year. It was a laptop. It’s an IBM ThinkPad T61. Its so shiny and new and it’s all mine. Now I can be on the internet or doing other things I want to do while I’m in the living room. It’ll be nice. Right now, well, before tonight, the only computer I really have access to is in the office (a desktop) and it’s kind of hard to get in there during the day while Ian is up. The office is as baby proofed as we’re able to do right now, but not really. Ian can still get into a lot of trouble in here, so I don’t like both of us in here at the same time. So that meant I was only in here after he went to bed. That also means I was in the office while Jesse was home. We weren’t spending all that much time together. But that’s all going to change now. Jaxon (my old computer) died a while ago and I’ve been using Draccus since and we’ve been saying the next computer we’re buying would be a laptop, well, now I have it. The new computers name is Stabby. Can you guess who named it. Either way, I’m ecstatic that I have a laptop. Now I’m going to go play with it.

Jesse finished his novel! He still has a few scenes he wants to add and a couple of edits, but his novel - Sinblade - is finished. For those of you who haven’t heard by now, Jesse was competing in the NaNoWriMo challenge. Basically, he had to write 50,000 words in the month of November without any editing and he did it. I’m so excited for him!

And here’s a couple of family photos that were taken recently: