4 AM ramblings...

Well I'm wide awake at 4 am so I might as well blog. :)

Now that Christmas is over I'm in a purging and planning sort of mood. My mind is on hyper overdrive (hence the reason I'm wide awake at 4 am). It might also be close to my time of the month, my hormones do crazy things. I get way more frantic and my mood swings are usually ridiculous. But what ever, I'm getting side tracked.

I've been organizing like crazy since the day after Christmas. I bought my weight in storage tubs and tackled the clutter/extra stuff like a mad woman. I started in the playroom, then moved on to the kids bedrooms. It's not perfect, especially the kids rooms, but it's better. I so want to do a major over haul on the kids rooms, but now is not the time. Although I don't know when is! We've been talking about it on and off since we moved in over 6 years ago! It just keeps being pushed to the back for more important stuff. Next on my list is more storage tubs for my closet mess. I have to get a game plan going and do some serious organizing in there! I also want a new larger desk in the playroom, I need more space to spread out as a teacher, and I've always got a million projects going on or different things that I'm researching so my little computer desk is just cluttered/littered all the time! It's ugly, awful and needs to change.

I think because it's close to the new year my brain is ticking off all the things that I want to get done, all my goals. House goals, personal goals, yard goals, goals, goals, goals. I need to just stop and write them down like usual. It helps me to stop obsessing over them and it focuses me better. But I'll mull them over here a bit first. ;) Then I'll read last years, cross off what did happen and re-prioritize what I want to happen in the next year.

One big thing my husband and I discussed last night was what our plan is for this house. Originally we had a five year plan, after five years we were going to move. It seemed like such a long time when we first moved in, ha ha! Well long story short, we suffered financially right after we moved it, Ryder got laid off for a really long time, we had to start putting lots of stuff on credit cards in order to pay the bills and have cash for the mortgage (which was now double what we were use to paying). Then the market crashed and our house went way, way, way, under water. It was all really depressing and overwhelming. We were in debt up to our eyeballs. We still had a roof over our heads and food in our bellies, but moving was out of the question, and we were feeling the financial squeeze. For a while there I lost focus of our blessings and how awesome this house really is. I saw it as the problem and wanted out before we lost it. At one point we almost made the choice to walk away. But I just couldn't do it, it didn't feel right. I started looking at cheaper houses for sale, or rent,  thinking that a different house would solve all our problems I guess, focused on the negatives of living here. Watching my husband work himself silly over the years trying to pay down our debt and thinking that if we just didn't have such a huge mortgage things would be better.
Well in the last two years things have slowly changed. Through hard work and a bit of financial luck we have been able to pay off all of our cards and vehicle loans. Yes ALL! We only have the trailer loan (It was so hard to apply for that loan after paying everything off! But we needed to figure out a solution for J living with us and just didn't have enough room in the house.) and the house mortgage now. Ryder has been working like a mad man for the past year. Often seven days a week! (His work is so all or nothing!) So we have been able to sock away as well. It makes such a huge difference not having to pay all those high credit card bills! I never, never, never, want to be in debt again! Life happens, and I'm glad we were able to hang on even though it required getting in debt, but I am trying to take safety measures now in order to never go down that road again. I all depends on Ryder's work though to an extent. When he's able to work it's great, but man when he gets laid off, ouch! Our goal is to have at least three months worth of money saved to cover all expenses. This was the first Christmas in a long time where nothing went on a credit card and we didn't dip into savings! That felt good! I started early, in September, which helped a lot. Breaking it up into smaller, more manageable chunks. :)
Anyways back to the main reason why I brought up the discussion between Ryder and I. We decided not to move for a while. I'm thinking we will live here 12 years total. We've been here over 6 now. We are going to focus on continuing to fix the place up (finish the kitchen, bedrooms, flooring in parts of the house, etc…) and then after about three years, if all of that is done, we are going to start keeping a close eye on the market. We don't want to buy at a high this time, so we might turn our house into a rental and buy when it's low if we can. I've come to realize how much I do love this house, and there are so many perks of living in this area. I started focusing on the blessings and realized that I wasn't appreciating what I do have, but instead was thinking the grass was greener on the other side. I don't like that. I strive to be happy where I am at, and if I'm not happy I strive to solve that by fixing what I already have. I don't like to throw in the towel, although there are times in life to move on and let go, they are far and few between. It felt good to say out loud that I don't want to move and I love this house. After so much confusion and stress, as I said I was focus on moving being the answer, it feels nice to embrace this home. We both feel that it will be too small for three teenage boys and a teenage girl though, so we will be moving. Just not yet. It's perfect right now for where we are at. I like the homeschooling network we have found and don't want to take my kids away from that. They love the Monday school, and if we moved out of Skagit (which we probably will when we move) we might loose that. We are close to our church, Awana, sports, etc… I don't want to isolate them from these things, it's so important for homeschooling children. When we do move we don't want to settle for any ol' thing, it will have to be perfect, which for us would include more space and be farther out in the country. When I really started thinking about that, with life being so busy and the kids still so young, it just didn't fit for where we are right now. As much as I wish they had more property to explore, it would get lonely to be so isolated. Not that we couldn't keep doing social/fun things, but it would be harder. Who wants harder? Right now I'm super close to everything and yet live on the edge of town, which is nice. Right across the street there is an amazing walk along the river with birds all over the place to spot and the dogs/kids can run and explore. There are so many places to go hiking/exploring. So many parks to go to. Even though they can't venture out on an adventure into their back yard there are still many, many options. I want to be able to enjoy my newly remodeled kitchen, which should be finished soon! I love my gardens, and I'm proud of the work we have put into them, I'm not ready to say goodbye yet. I feel so thankful that we are not drowning under a finical burden anymore. That I have the breathing room to embrace what we have and invest into it. I feel like this coming year is going to be a good one.
I have a lot of personal goals as well, and some plans for the outside, but I won't go into those, at least not right now as this blog post is way too wordy and not enough pictures. ;)
Maybe I should get up early more often, it might end up being the best time to blog. I was unaware that my brain could work this early in the morning. Well maybe not work, but definitely ramble, ha ha!

Here's to an amazing New Year, full of plans! Lots and lots of plans! What's life without goals really!?! Ha ha!

I keep my husband's life interesting. ;)